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Cathy Smith-Inspiration of SUNDOWN (not Daylight Katy) and other tunes has passed!

Cathy Smith has died at age 73. Gordon loved her and helped her when he could. I'm sure he is reflecting on their life together so long ago..
BRAD WHEELER-GLOBE AND MAIL.Aug.26,2020
In its issue of June 29, 1982, the excitable National Enquirer splashed a story across its front page about the confession of the “mystery woman” who had played a key role in the drug-related death of comedian John Belushi earlier that year. She was Cathy Smith. And although the audacious tabloid has never been known for its enthusiastic embrace of accuracy, a woman of mystery was exactly who Ms. Smith was.
A notorious, colourful footnote in pop culture history and the one-time muse and girlfriend of Gordon Lightfoot, Ms. Smith died on Aug. 18, at age 73. No official cause of death was given. The longtime resident of Maple Ridge, B.C., had been on oxygen and in failing health the past few years.
Ms. Smith had been with Mr. Belushi on March 5, 1982, the day he died of an accidental overdose of heroin and cocaine in bungalow No. 3 at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. She later told the National Enquirer that she had injected Mr. Belushi with the concoction known as a speedball. The confession led to her arrest for second-degree murder. A plea bargain reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter along with three drug offences, for which she served 15 months at the California Institution for Women in Chino, Calif.
After her release from prison, Ms. Smith kept a low profile and avoided the press. A woman of contradictions, she was hard to pin down. Though hard-eyed and no sufferer of fools, among her friends she was known as a caring person with an infectious spirit.
She was a capable back-up singer who shared a songwriting credit on the Hoyt Axton song Flash of Fire, but was more known in the music world as an attractive background figure who walked in the shadows of the stars with whom she associated, including Levon Helm, the Rolling Stones, Mr. Axton and, most famously, Mr. Lightfoot.
She had an intense, tumultuous relationship with the iconic Canadian balladeer in the early 1970s. “Cathy was a great lady,” Mr. Lightfoot told The Globe and Mail this week. “Men were drawn to her, and she used to make me jealous. But I don’t have a bad thing to say about her.”
Others did. Interviewing her for No Contest, the 1986 documentary about her, the film’s host and co-producer Daniel Richler asked Ms. Smith about her past reputation as a “scary lady.” She replied, “I probably was.”
She supplied and used hard drugs. She lived the high life and the low life, with seemingly little interest in the in-between. Speaking in 1986, Mr. Richler said he saw Ms. Smith as a “very tender woman who has been destroyed by drugs and needs sympathetic attention.”
Ms. Smith lived the last decade or so of her life in an apartment building for senior citizens in Maple Ridge. She moved into the building after a fire destroyed a previous apartment of hers in the same city. She lost most of her possessions in the blaze, but still had a few mementos.
“She showed me a cheque for $25 from Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones,” said James Kennedy, who manages the seniors building. “She was a nice woman who never caused any trouble. I do know she wanted to tell her story.”
Catherine Evelyn Smith, who was born April 25, 1947, was an orphan adopted by a family in Burlington, Ont. She adored her mother, who, according to Ms. Smith’s autobiography Chasing the Dragon, drank heavily and suffered from clinical depression. At 16, she quit school. Her father suggested she try her hand at data processing, but young Ms. Smith went in a different direction: rock ‘n’ roll.
After hearing a band called The Hawks at The Grange tavern in Hamilton, she became smitten with the group’s smooth-talking, Southern-drawling American drummer Levon Helm. The Hawks would later become The Band, a pioneering roots-rock quintet featuring Helm and four Canadians.
By 17, Ms. Smith was pregnant. She claimed the father was Mr. Helm, but he never accepted responsibility for the child. She gave birth to daughter Tracey Lee and moved to Toronto. Ms. Smith initially intended to keep the baby, but later opted for adoption.
Among other jobs, she found employment as a waitress at the popular Toronto coffeehouse and music venue The Riverboat. “She was one of the most beautiful girls you’d ever want to meet,“ club owner Bernie Fiedler said. “We immediately hit it off, and I hired her.”
Sometime in the late 1960s, the chisel-cheeked brunette met the ascending singer-songwriter Mr. Lightfoot. He was married to his first wife, Brita, at the time and his initial romantic affair with Ms. Smith was brief.
By the spring of 1971 Ms. Smith was 24 when she bumped into Mr. Lightfoot in an elevator in the downtown apartment building where the songwriter, separated from his wife, lived in a funky 28th-floor bachelor pad decked out with an aquarium, velvet couches and deep pile rugs. The two reacquainted quickly and began a mercurial relationship that extended into the mid-1970s.
According to Lightfoot, a biography by Nicholas Jennings, the couple’s first date took place at Winston’s, a high-end establishment where they toasted the relationship and the recent success of his breakout single in the United States, If You Could Read My Mind, with a $300 bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild.
More often the pair dined at Harry’s, where the steaks were as rare as the interruptions at the quiet table in the back of the restaurant that was reserved for them. At nearby Maple Leaf Gardens, they regularly cheered on the hometown hockey team. After a post-game nightcap or five, they’d lurch home, “drunk and madly in love,” Ms. Smith wrote.
Mr. Lightfoot, who divorced his wife in 1973, purchased a mansion in Toronto’s tony Rosedale neighbourhood. Parties were had, hosted capably by Ms. Smith. “Cathy was great, but a tough cookie,” said Bernie Finkelstein, an occasional get-together guest who managed singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn and was a business partner with Mr. Fiedler. “We got along fine, though, and it was always pleasing to me when she had a big smile on her face when I came around. Because the opposite would be scary.”