Pop music superstar Prince had special connection to Toronto

Prince arrives with Manuela Testolini at the 77th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, on Feb. 27, 2005. (Kevork Djansezian / THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP)

Singer-songwriter Prince may have been known to fans around the world, but for a time, it was Canada that he called home.

The “Purple Rain” hit maker lived in Toronto for several years, and told the Canadian Press that he loved everything about the city.

“It’s cosmopolitan,” he said in an April, 2004 interview.

“There’s all sorts of different kinds of people everywhere you go in Toronto, there’s all sorts of great music, great restaurants, great night spots that don’t respond to a lot of American playlists and have playlists which I really dig.

“It’s a real melting pot in every sense of the word.”

Prince lived in the city after he married Toronto native Manuela Testolini in 2001.

Testolini had long admired Prince’s music and soon after she became an employee at Prince's charitable foundation, the pair were married, both converting to become Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Together, the pair purchased a home in the upscale Bridle Path neighbourhood, in the north end of the city, where they kept mostly to themselves.

But during the early 2000s, Prince would occasionally venture out to the delight of fans who spotted him at downtown nightclubs and Toronto Raptors games.

Prince recorded his 2004 Grammy-winning album, "Musicology," in studios in Toronto and Mississauga and the back cover of the CD jacket features the singer silhouetted by the lights of Bay Street office towers.

Prince and Testolini split in 2005 and divorced a year later. The singer returned to his home town of Minneapolis. But in the years that followed, he would often hold surprise concerts in Toronto venues.

In the last year, Prince played several last-minute “intimate and exclusive” shows as part of his "Piano & A Microphone” tour, making stops in Montreal and Toronto

During his show at Toronto’s Sony Centre in March, the singer walked on stage with a limp, leaning on a cane, but went on to offer up an energetic musical performance on a grand, purple piano that earned him rave reviews.

They were to be his last shows in Canada.