Long-lost daughter sings Mitchell's praises

by Trish Tervitt
Toronto Sun
April 9, 1997

by TRISH TERVIT and ROBERT BENZIE

Joni Mitchell's long-lost daughter says she's proud of her famous mom for not wallowing in self-pity after the singer gave the love-child up for adoption 32 years ago. In an exclusive interview with CITY-TV, Kilauren Gibb said last night Mitchell could have easily fallen by the wayside after the episode. "I'm proud, really proud of her," Gibb told the Toronto station. "She went right ahead. She did something with herself."

Gibb said hearing her birth mother's voice for the first time was one of the best sounds she's ever heard. Picking up a message left by Mitchell on her answering machine after the daughter searched out her mystery mom, Gibb said hearing Mitchell's voice "was magic. "(It was) so normal and comfortable. She said call me, it's Joni." The sound may have been so familiar not only because of the singer's famous voice in hits like Big Yellow Taxi and Both Sides Now, but the fact she apparently put messages in her songs, aimed at the child she left behind more than three decades ago.

Mitchell has said in a biography that: "To be pregnant and unmarried in 1964 was like you killed someone." But if only Mitchell had told her parents about the unplanned pregnancy, they would have helped her keep the child, her mom says. "We would have appreciated knowing about it so we could have helped her financially and morally," Myrtle Anderson, 85, said from her home in Saskatoon. "I hate to think of her handling that by herself."

Meanwhile, the woman who did raise Kilauren Gibb insists she doesn't feel slighted by all the hype surrounding her daughter and Mitchell. "We don't feel left out at all. We are still her parents," Ida Gibb told The Toronto Sun at her Don Mills home. "I don't want to say anything more. I have a lot I want to say, but my husband, my son and I have all agreed that it's up to Kilauren and Joni Mitchell," she said.

Gibb said the close-knit family has been flooded by media calls since the news broke of the reunion between Mitchell and her 32-year-old daughter. Anderson said she has yet to meet Kilauren and her great-grandson, Marlin, 3. Anderson and the Gibbs have been overwhelmed by the attention, but all are thankful Kilauren has a lot of support at this time.

For his part, the biological father, Brad McMath, said he's grateful she was raised by a kind, loving family. "I'm really, really happy she was brought up in a good family and was well educated," McMath said at his East York home, just 10 minutes away from the Gibbs. "It's obvious she was well brought up." McMath made a public plea for Kilauren to call him. "Get in touch with me. Phone me. I live in Leaside. I'm not far away," he said. Staring at pictures of his grown daughter and his newfound grandson in yesterday's Sun, McMath said he's excited about a reunion. "I'd like to contact her, but I don't want to be forceful," McMath said. "It's just sort of like fate that she's come back into our lives."

Kilauren's mother-in-law, Karen Clifton, said all the publicity leaves her worried about little Marlin. "He's my sunshine," said Clifton, whose son is separated from Kilauren.


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