The day Paul Anka phoned to sing his latest tune

Joan Gottfried remembers the day a teenage singing sensation named Paul Anka surprised her on the telephone by singing one of his newest songs into her ear.

It was late 1957 and Mr. Anka had already scored big musically with his hit Diana, and he was always writing new songs. Mr. Anka played the piano and sang the then-unreleased You are My Destiny for Ms. Gottfried, a shy, unassuming teenager and first president of the Ottawa chapter of the Paul Anka Fan Club. And today, more than 45 years later, the memory of that special moment still stands out in her mind.

Mr. Anka is back in town tomorrow after a long absence, and will perform Saturday night at the Congress Centre at a benefit concert for the Canadian Liver Foundation.

"When he was playing the song, I felt very special, I was hearing it before everybody else," said Ms. Gottfried (formerly Birchall), 60, who lived in Ottawa until the mid-1960s when she moved to Toronto.

"I liked the words, and the song wasn't as upbeat as Diana, it was a little slower pace, but you could understand what he was saying; it was like a short story that he was conveying.

"It's not like the songs of today when you don't understand what they're saying."

As Paul Anka Fan Club president, Ms. Gottfried's job was to inform the dozens of members with news about the singer's itinerary, keep in touch with the international headquarters of the fan club in New York and meet with Mr. Anka, who often returned to Ottawa in the early years of his career.

She has kept all the news clippings, postcards, photos and personal letters from Mr. Anka in a scrapbook that she recently shared with a CBC film crew preparing a documentary on the singer. She said the Ottawa chapter of the fan club began long before Diana was released and it was largely at the urging of Mr. Anka's sister, Miriam.

"I used to hang around with Miriam and she said Paul needed a president, so I went for it," said Ms. Gottfried who attended the all-girls Immaculata High School in Ottawa, whereas Mr. Anka went to Fisher Park.

"Paul knew what he wanted and he was willing to make the sacrifices and he was dedicated. He thought it out well, and every step he took brought him to his dream and his goal."

She credits former broadcaster Gord Atkinson as being instrumental in the success of the fan club. The club members, mostly teenage girls, would visit the old CFRA studios on Isabella Street, where Mr. Atkinson held court as host of the Campus Corner whenever Mr. Anka dropped in to play his records.

"We even used to go down to the train station when Paul was there to take the train to Toronto where he was going to do the Hit Parade TV show. We would call up the newspapers and tell them to come down to the station if they wanted a picture of Paul and some of his fans."

At a 1956 concert at the old Auditorium, where Mr. Anka was booed by some of his Fisher Park classmates, the female members of the fan club were dressed in special outfits and sat in the front row.

"I co-ordinated with the girls to wear either grey slacks and red V-neck sweaters. I got white satin ribbons and we would spell out P-a-u-l A-n-k-a on each of the red sweaters. It was quite effective when you saw it. I was the letter P," she said.

She said fan club members were a close-knit group and all were interested in following the progress of Mr. Anka's career which took him out of Ottawa to every country in the world. Most were high school girls, although the singer also had a small male following, she added.

"Many of the girls had crushes on Paul and they wanted to know what he was really like. Initially, when he was getting started, Paul would be writing to me with postcards from wherever he was. But as he got to be a bigger star we did not hear from him as much."

The Ottawa club ran from 1956 to 1961 and at one point had more than 100 active members, she said. She said she's followed Mr. Anka's career and is looking forward to seeing him in concert. She has not seen him perform in concert since a 1984 show in Hamilton.

"His whole thought is that when people pay for a ticket they want to be entertained and that's exactly what he feels comfortable doing. He leaves you with a memorable evening, there is no politics, no bad Jokes, he's just there to entertain.

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