B J Cook

While Canada's music cognoscenti admire her talents as a songwriter, a singer and a talent-spotter, most locals know Cook as a former spouse of superstar music producer David Foster. Friends insist she's much more. Bonnie Jean, they say, is an unheralded female music pioneer and survivor of Canada's rough and tumble rock scene. She's a big-hearted, tough-talking Auntie Mame. Like her or not, Cook is not forgotten by those whose lives she has touched. As a young woman in the 1960s, she toughed it out at Vancouver's tough East End clubs. She hung out in dives where junkies and hookers fraternized with fans of raw, gritty music. She once even dodged a drug-addled Johnny Cash when he tried to punch her out backstage. Cook also survived a stint with Ronnie Hawkin's band -- Hawkins being the Santa Claus-look-alike whose bawdiness and joie de vivre are the stuff of legend. She was also instrumental in helping a wet-behind-the-ears Foster get launched in the business. And when they split up after a decade, Cook struggled to make it on her own. She persevered, despite years of being financially ignored by the man who became a Grammy-winning producer to the stars: Celine Dion, Michael Jac... more...