Every once in a while, you meet a friend that you won’t soon forget. For Canadian country singer Shania Twain, that friend happens to be a Newfoundland local she met on tour 40 years ago.
While performing at the Churchill Park Music Festival in St. John’s, N.L., over the weekend, Twain called her friend Gloria to the stage. She told the crowd she met Gloria on her first-ever tour of Eastern Canada when she was 17 years old.
Twain said she and Gloria had “a very quick, sweet friendship” that she hasn’t forgotten. In fact, the singer said she still treasures a polaroid of she and Gloria, taken during their time together in the 1980s.
“She was very kind, and she was a local and she showed me around,” Twain described.
The Man! I Feel Like a Woman singer then invited Gloria to the stage and the pair embraced to the sound of cheering.
Twain, 58, shared a clip of the moment on social media.
“The hospitality and sentiment of Newfies is unmatched — thank you for, once again, showing me such a warm welcome!” she wrote in the caption.
Though Gloria turned weepy on stage, Twain continued her high praise.
“You were so kind to me,” she said. “On these tours, when you’re the only girl in the band, you never meet any girls. The only girls you meet are the girls that are trying to hook up with the band.”
That crowd of women, according to Twain, didn’t include Gloria. Instead, the Newfoundland native hosted Twain at her family home and took the singer to see all of the local sights, including the beach.
“She treated me like one of the family,” Twain gushed.
“The funny thing is that I’m still doing exactly the same thing as I did when I met you,” she laughed. “I’m still in Newfoundland on a stage singing.”
Though she is not from Newfoundland (Twain was born in Windsor and raised in Timmins, Ont.), Twain’s trip to play the music festival saw her “screeched in” as an honorary native — an unofficial ceremony that involves a shot of rum, a taste of fried bologna and a kiss to a codfish.
Last year, Twain released her sixth studio album, Queen of Me.