Terri Clark on a Bud-block, fangirling k.d. lang and touring with Reba

Picture it.

Calgary. The mid-1980s.

A 16–year old aspiring country music star with lots of family support doesn't even place in a Calgary talent contest sponsored by the Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA). But looking back on that traumatic event, she now says it was a blessing. 

"I entered a lot of talent competitions when I was a teenager living in Medicine Hat," Terri Clark told the Calgary Eyeopener in a Tuesday interview.

"A lot of the competitions that were local in Medicine Hat took place at bars, so being underage I had to wait in the alley for my turn to go. We wound up in Calgary at the CCMA-sponsored competition. I was the youngest. I was 16. I think there were 13 contestants."

And despite gobs of support from family and lots of people at the competition, she didn't win.

She didn't even place.

"My mom and I cried all the way back to Medicine Hat in the car. We were like, 'What happened?'" she said.

"I was really discouraged for a while. I thought, 'If I can't even place in a contest that everyone was predicting I would win, how am I going to go to Nashville and make a go of this?'"

A decade later and a chance encounter would revise that history. Sort of.

You know you actually won that?

Tom Tompkins of the CCMA approached Clark after an awards show and said, "I have some information you might want to know."

Tompkins was a judge at that 1980s competition that left Clark empty-handed and crushed.

"He said, 'You know you actually won that?' I said, 'What do you mean'?"

"He said, 'You were disqualified because Budweiser was a sponsor and you were underage and they could not make you a winner."

• Watch Terri Clark discuss her path to stardom ahead of her Canadian Music Hall of Fame induction
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Clark says she's now glad it went down that way.

"So the irony of that whole story is, in the same city in my home country that I thought I had been rejected in, I am now being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. The moral of the story is don't let the chips get you down and just know that fate brings you to where you are supposed to be. If I had won, it would have put me on a whole entirely different trajectory than I did going to Nashville."

Growing up in southern Alberta, Clark says it was another local voice that really caught her ear.

"k.d. lang was this girl out of Consort, Alberta, that there were little rumblings about. She was starting to record, and her music was starting to get played on our local station," Clark recalled.

"I immediately, really became fascinated with this voice that I heard. She started recording out of Nashville. She was an influence on me, vocally, and as an artist especially. I'd say [lang was] world premier, one of the best in the world."

Pride of Canadian country music

The president and CEO at National Music Centre says the upcoming induction won't be Clark's first rodeo.

"Since opening our new building, Terri Clark is the first person to add her name plaque to our Hall of Fame galleries twice. She was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 2019, and now she'll add her name plaque to the wall again as part of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony," Andrew Mosker wrote to CBC News in an email.

"She's Alberta's own and she's the pride of Canadian country music."

Today, Clark shares the stage with some of the biggest country music stars.

"We played Madison Square Garden not even a month ago. I got an hour on that show. She is such an amazing entertainer, mentor, friend. They all treated us so well and it was like a big, happy family," Clark said of touring with country music icon Reba McEntire.

Clark is being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the National Music Centre in Calgary later this week, alongside Trooper, Diane Dufresne and Dr. Oliver Jones.

"Thank you, Budweiser. Am I allowed to say that?" she asked with a laugh.

"You have your dreams and your goals. Don't get waylaid by things that happen. You have to keep your eye on the big picture and know that things may derail you getting there, but they are meant to. That's all fate and that is all meant to happen to get you to where you are supposed to be."