Who was the inspiration for the Leonard Cohen song "Suzanne"?

"Suzanne" is one of Leonard Cohen's most well known works. Cohen was born in Montreal in 1934 in an area called "The Plateau" filled with quirky boutiques, small shops, bookstores, cozy cafes, bakeries and many people who lived what could be called an "alternative lifestyle".

"Suzanne" was first published, by Cohen, as a poem in 1966 and was then recorded by Judy Collins in the same year. It wasn't until 1968 that Cohen recorded the song on his album "Songs of Leonard Cohen".

Cohen, an ordained Zen Buddhist monk, who nevertheless still stuck to Judaism, died from a fall on November 7, 2016 just weeks after Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Many commentators and poets thought Cohen would have been a more appropriate choice.

He was elected to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.

Suzanne Verdal was the girlfriend of the artist Armand Vaillancourt who Cohen knew in Montreal in the early 60's. As the song goes, she did ,in fact, feed him “tea and oranges that come all the way from China" and was dressed in “rags…from Salvation Army counters”. Their relationship was platonic in every sense in spite of the lyrics “and you want to travel with her/and you want to travel blind… for you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind”. According to Verdal, “I was the one that put the boundaries on that. I didn't want to spoil the infinite respect that I had for him".