Born in Fort Macleod, Canada, Mitchell relocated to the U.S. with her ex-husband, Chuck Mitchell, residing in Detroit for multiple years. The Grammy winner first relocated to New York City, then to Laurel Canyon in California in the 1960s, an area popular with the musical community.
In 2006, she reported that she regularly divided her time between Los Angeles and the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, Canada. “L.A. is my workplace, B.C. is my heartbeat,” she said. At the time, she said she still saw herself as Canadian first, though she judged it for its close assimilation with U.S. politics, economics, and culture.
That still rings true today, as Mitchell defended her Canadian identity despite the political shift 20 years later as tensions rise between the countries during an ongoing trade war.
“I became a citizen so I could vote. I didn’t give up my Canadian citizenship, and I never will,” Mitchell wrote on Instagram, calling herself a “Canerican like Neil Young.”