The most famous product of this university town on the Canadian prairies is folk singer Joni Mitchell.
Yet a visitor to Saskatoon, the largest city in the province of Saskatchewan with a population of roughly 250,000, might never learn that Mitchell hails from here.
The city has no plaques and no murals honouring its most successful daughter, and a 2013 bid to build a Joni Mitchell museum collapsed in especially embarrassing fashion when the city ran short of the money needed to see it through.
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Now, with Mitchell in poor health (she suffered a stroke in 2015), the city that shaped the singer-songwriter's early work is finally giving official recognition to the woman behind "Help Me" and "Big Yellow Taxi" ahead of her 75th birthday in November, opening a riverfront park and hosting celebrations in her honour.
In the local paper, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, reporter John Gormley once likened Mitchell and Saskatoon to "star-crossed lovers, each wanting to do the right thing, reaching out but saying the wrong things, second-guessing, remembering every slight, and eventually no one can recall how it all got so tangled up."
Songs Are Like Tattoos
Canadians are known for their modesty, and it is especially noticeable in Saskatoon, a city whose nickname "Paris of the Prairies" was not coined by a local. It first surfaced in an interview with Bob Dylan after his debut performance in the city, and was later immortalised in a song by those heroes of the Great White North, the Tragically Hip.
But that self-deprecating streak can sometimes sting when it comes to honouring your own history and taking pride in your famous citizens.
Today, though, the mood in Saskatoon feels different when you arrive.
The city is the fastest growing in Canada, and its current mayor, Charlie Clark, won election in 2016 on a platform of attracting young families and championing diversity.
The ambitious, sweeping Remai Modern art gallery opened in 2017 to acclaim that helped land the city a spot on the New York Times list of best places to visit in 2018.
The time had come for a rethink.
I've Looked at Clouds From Both Sides Now
On the eve of her 75th birthday, Mitchell is said to be in poor health and rarely travels or appears in public.
ESPN sportscaster Roy Firestone reported in June that he had spotted Mitchell in a wheelchair at a concert by her friend James Taylor at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and a photo of the two musicians embracing went viral.
Now, at last, she and the city of her childhood have reached an understanding about her legacy.
A stretch of the South Saskatchewan River waterfront in the city will be named after the singer on 10 June, drawing a line under decades of awkwardness and mismanagement.
Mayor Clark, who has confessed to being a lifelong Joni Mitchell fan, became one of the project's biggest champions.
Mitchell, who took up guitar and piano as a child in Saskatoon, eventually moved to the United States and became a hugely influential figure on the folk scene.
Her fourth album, "Blue," brought her enormous fame and remains a favourite to this day; in 2017 NPR named it the greatest album ever made by a woman.
She has won nine Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.
I Drew a Map of Canada, O Canada
But to the people of Saskatoon, Joni will always be the girl who loved going out dancing on the weekend.
When Clark is asked about his own memories of Mitchell, he does not hesitate.
Like many fans, he has certain songs tied to certain memories: "A Case of You" and a first breakup; "The Circle Game," played on road trips with friends.
Strolling across the Broadway Bridge, which links Saskatoon's east and west sides, Clark points out a few landmarks connected to Mitchell's songs.
The Empire Hotel, the setting of her song "Raised on Robbery," is now a homeless shelter called The Lighthouse; the song "Cherokee Louise" was drawn from a real childhood experience of Mitchell's, playing with a friend in a tunnel beneath this very bridge.
The musician stirred up ill feeling in 2013 when she gave an interview in which she said that "Saskatoon was always an extremely bigoted community."
"The Indigenous community here says Joni Mitchell was a prophet," Clark said during an interview in Saskatoon on 25 May 2018.
Mitchell has long advocated for Indigenous rights in Canada and insisted that the community be involved in any tribute to her.
"She wrote and spoke about these issues, for instance humanising 'Cherokee Louise,' and in some of her songs she talks about the changing of the city and the theft of Indigenous land."
And the Seasons, They Go Round and Round
Beyond the new waterfront, the Broadway Theatre, a longtime landmark of the local nightlife that began as a cinema where a young Mitchell watched films with friends, will install a commemorative plaque in her honour.
Next door, the French restaurant Calories sits in a building that was once home to the Louis Riel cafe, where a teenage Mitchell worked as a waitress and gave her first paid performances.
The cafe's name was fitting for Mitchell: the real Louis Riel was a leader of the Metis community who led an uprising against European settlers.
He too was seen as a rebel in his lifetime, and is now regarded as a Canadian national hero. The parallels are impossible to ignore.
Even so, it seems that everyone in the city has their own "Joni story."
Laura Oborowski, a former employee at the Bessborough hotel, recalls several occasions when Mitchell was a guest there.
The cover of Clark's favourite album, "Clouds," features a self-portrait she painted in Saskatoon, with the castle-like Bessborough in the background.
(The property, now owned by Marriott, is often nicknamed "The Bez.")
"She would order the all-day breakfast very late in the afternoon with a six-cup coffee urn," Oborowski recounts. "We never heard from her before 11 a.m."
Once, to Oborowski's delight, she was invited to smoke American Spirit cigarettes with her idol.
Other residents told of seeing her in the back row of the theatre, hiding beneath a hat, the way you might remember a grade-school classmate or a neighbour.
Give Her a Name She'll Answer To
Now, at last, these separate stories will come together into a single narrative. And although her legacy is being carved quite literally in stone, the work of honouring Mitchell in Saskatoon is far from finished.
The University of Saskatchewan also awarded Mitchell an honorary doctorate this autumn, the first time it has granted an honorary degree in absentia.
Clark has his own idea for a further tribute to Mitchell. "One thing I picture is taking a spot, say right here [on the Broadway Bridge], and putting up a booth where you could play 'Both Sides Now.' Put on the headphones, stand here and look at the clouds."
