After six decades of making music and poetry on his own terms, 77-year-old icon Leonard Cohen was honoured in Toronto on Monday, where he received the Glenn Gould Prize for his contribution to the arts.

Cohen said he was grateful for the award, and for all the musicians who were going to play his music that night.

Cohen gifted the $50,000 he was awarded in prize money to the Canada Council for the Arts.

He also got to choose a protégée who would receive a $15,000-award from the Glenn Gould Foundation. Cohen chose Sistema-Toronto, a program that offers music training to children in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood.

Taking the stage amid much applause, Cohen recalled his two lifetime meetings with Gould. The first, Cohen said, was in the late 50s or early 60s where he had a magazine assignment to interview Gould.

"The interview was supposed to be for just minutes, but it lasted a couple of hours," Cohen recalled.

He was so engrossed that he stopped writing within minutes, Cohen said.

"I though, these words are burned into my soul," Cohen said. "I came back to my little room on Mountain Street in Montreal and I couldn't remember a thing that he had said."

Eventually, Cohen said he stopped answering the phone, for fear it would be the magazine editor looking for the story.

Cohen also recalled his second meeting with Gould in a recording studio in a Columbia Records studio in New York.

"I was infected, in those days, with the new, hip language that was beginning to prevail among musicians. I said ‘hey man, what's shaking? He said, ‘I didn't know you were from Memphis.'"

Earlier Monday, Cohen's son, Adam Cohen, spoke to CTV's Canada AM.

"For years he would decline anything like this," Adam Cohen said.

"He's not much for participating in celebrations of his own works or his own life," Adam Cohen said in an interview Monday.

Known for the distinctive, moody lyricism in songs such as "Suzanne," "So Long, Marianne," and "Dance Me to the End of Love," Cohen is the ninth recipient of the Glenn Gould Prize.

Monday's gala at Toronto's Massey Hall included tributes from some of the biggest names in the arts, such as English actor Alan Rickman, novelist Michael Ondaatje, Juno-winning singer-songwriter Serena Ryder, as well as Blue Rodeo's singer-songwriter Greg Keelor, actor Gordon Pinsent and singer Travis Good.