BEVERLY HILLS -- When Liona Boyd called Pierre Trudeau to tell him she was marrying an American, the arch Canadian nationalist asked to speak to her Intended.

"You're taking one of Canada's national treasures," Trudeau groused.

He was, in part at least, referring to her impressive accomplishments on the classical guitar. (She's a five-time Juno winner and she's also topped Guitar magazine's poll as the finest classical guitarist in the world another five times).

But he might have said more. She's also a stunning beauty whom Trudeau himself dated for eight years after his marriage to Margaret broke up in 1977. The relationship was longer and more intense than people knew at the time.

"Of course I thought of marrying him," Boyd says now, laughing in her beautiful Beverly Hills dream home over a life that now seems very remote. "But I don't want to go into it. There's a whole chapter in my (upcoming) autobiography about Pierre. He was one -- the first -- of three important men in my life, but we weren't soulmates. Jack (Simon, her husband of five years) really is the love of my life."

For Boyd, finding love might have taken a long time but it has meant settling into luxury few can imagine. Feature this:

-- A magnificent peach mansion in Beverly Hills (all carefully gated, wired and secured). The home is at the hub of the world's entertainment capital, but on a good day there's an ocean breeze and even a patch of ocean view. Frank Sinatra is the kitty-corner neighbor. Merv Griffin just moved from the house across the street.

-- An impeccable houseman, Durben, who learned his job working for a royal family on another continent, organizes Boyd's life and gives her a massage in the morning if she wants one. The art collection includes a Renoir, as well as contemporary greats. Her closet is bigger than most bedrooms, and one wall is lined with a long rack of designer evening gowns. And on the grand piano sits her favorite "trophy photo" taken on a recent overnight stay with the Queen at Windsor castle.

Not bad for a kid from the Kingsway in west Toronto who grew up wanting to be a journalist and see the world.

But somewhere in her formative years, Julian Bream and the classical guitar intervened. Not to mention her mentor teacher, Eli Kassner, and her mother, Eileen, who still works on her projects. (She's busy right now typing -- and worrying about -- the autobiography Boyd will bring out next year.)

At 14, Liona was casually taking guitar lessons at a local plaza when she was taken to a Julian Bream concert. That night, the world turned on its axis. Afterwards, she still cherished her Lightfoot albums, but the heroes of her musical life weren't the Beatles anymore, but Bream, Segovia and Lagoya.

Eileen Boyd and her husband, John, always encouraged creativity in their children. He taught school, but in the summers they'd pack the kids into their VW camper and travel. They even lived for a while in an artists' community in central Mexico, San Miguel de Allende.

Even though music was not a family specialty, Eileen understood her daughter's passion. She scoured the city and hired Eli Kassner, the country's best teacher, for her daughter. Kassner was immediately impressed with the dedication and talent of his new pupil.

For her part, Boyd, although she loved to play, saw the guitar as a hobby, not a career. She wanted to study English in university. She imagined some kind of writing career -- books or newspapers.

Kassner had his hands full trying to persuade her to audition for the music faculty at the University of Toronto.

But once she enrolled in the performance course, the direction was clear. Besides, he was able to introduce her to the greats. She not only met, but studied with Bream and appeared in a documentary with him. (Her first review dismissed her: "Boyd showed no talent at all.")

But the guitarists saw it differently. After graduation, she was invited to Nice to study with Alexandre Lagoya. When she came home two years later, her technique was impeccable.

Now all she had to do was create a mass audience.

ROLLING STONES

That wasn't as hard as it might have been for someone without her looks and chutzpah.

Her first record was supposed to do the usual classical fade of 300 to 1,000 copies. Instead The Guitar Liona Boyd recorded in '74, sold 30,000 copies. Her next few albums were equal "smashes" in classical terms.

Part of the reason was the Gord Lightfoot connection. Between '75 and '78, she criss-crossed the country opening for him everywhere and acquiring a large and attentive audience.

By 1977, when she was dating Trudeau, she had three records and was by far the top selling classical artist in the country. Of course, the fascination with Trudeau didn't hurt either. People magazine ran this headline in 1977 after the break-up and Margaret's much-publicized fling with the Rolling Stones: "Margaret's Fave Guitarist May be Keith, But Pierre Trudeau Digs Liona Boyd."

Boyd was 26 and her fame was continent-wide.

Today, Boyd looks in her diaries and can hardly believe how much she was doing, how frantic the travel was.

"I don't think I slept. The diary entries show I was getting to bed at 4 a.m. and getting up in the morning to travel somewhere. I lived with my parents in those days and came home to unpack and pack again.

"I'm not blessed with a lot of physical energy but I was really ambitious and determined to do everything I could."

What that meant was an exciting jet-set life that dropped her into places like Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi's yacht-launching party where she entertained and acted as hostess. She also found herself at Chet Atkins' Nashville home where they collaborated on The First Nashville Guitar Quartet.

She performed private concerts for American presidents Carter and Reagan, entertained a bevy of world leaders at economic summits and even was invited to play for the leaders of the Soviet Union on the last official day of its existence, Jan. 1, 1992. Gorbachev and Yeltsin didn't show, but it was still the most historic New Year's Eve Party on the planet.

Along the way, she's recorded 19 albums and been honored around the world. These days she picks and chooses her concerts, limiting herself to about 30 a year, so she has time to compose, do a little painting and enjoy her fabulous L.A. life. Her last record, Classically Yours, won her her a fifth Juno, but she was most pleased with the fact that every piece on the CD was her own composition. This summer, she's preparing work for a new recording next month and is busy lining up concerts in places like South America and the Philippines for next winter.

But everything in her life now revolves around Jack Simon and her L.A. life. Ask if she'd consider returning to Toronto and she laughs. Simon, whose family has been Beverly Hills gentry for generations, used to own a glass company that operated all over the southwest. He has a cousin who has been mayor three times and he himself is active in the arts community.

When Liona met him, she was on the verge of breaking up with "fiance" Joel Bell who had been Trudeau's economic advisor and later ran the Canada Development Investment Corporation. (Bell, one of Trudeau's "brilliant" young bureaucrats, is famous for winning a landmark $3.4-million lawsuit against the government. He sued for wrongful dismissal when Brian Mulroney won the '84 election and he was fired one month later.)

After Boyd's relationship with Trudeau ended in 1985, Bell was the next significant man in her life. They lived first in Vancouver and then moved to Toronto and bought a lovely house on Fallingbrook Rd. built into the end of Scarboro Bluffs. "It covered five half-levels, down to the beach," Liona explains. "We could canoe out of our own back garden."

'HIT ON HER'

But by '91 they knew they would never marry, and Liona, for the second time in her life, picked up her things and decided to move to L.A. "for my career." The first time was in 1981 when she rented the "cheapest, smallest" room in the Beverly Hills Hotel for $50 a night and proceeded to "meet all the wrong people" -- all kinds of TV and movie types whose one way of relating with a pretty woman was to "hit on her." It didn't take long to figure out she'd be happier in Toronto.

Coming back 10 years later, she had friends and a bit of a history with L.A. She knew her way around, but her goal was much the same as it had been a decade before.

This time, she rented a "cosy" house in Benedict Canyon with a girlfriend and rebuffed suggestions that there was a nice man she should meet. "I didn't want to meet any man. I wanted to concentrate on my career," she explains.

But her friend persisted. She'd met this wonderful widower, Jack Simon, on a cruise. Liona would love him. He was tall, elegant, refined with three grown sons and a very established life.

Three days after she arrived in L.A., they had their first date. The third time she saw him, she played guitar for him and he played piano for her and "that was pretty much it. I phoned my parents and told them I'd met the man I was going to marry. They reminded me I was already engaged."

But a year later, Simon and Boyd were married.

Simon had his family home in Beverly Hills torn down and rebuilt as the "Peach House" for Liona. It's large, airy, and breathtakingly beautiful. But then so is his new wife.

She's thinner than she was at the peak of her fame. She doesn't look older really, but more delicate.

Today she's sitting on a plum silk French provincial chair. She's in chartreuse satin pants and a lacy low-cut top. Her red, gold hair is pinned up loosely. She does, without a doubt, look spectacular. Beauties rarely live up to their billing the way she does.

She doesn't want to talk about her age, but Sun files indicate she turned 48 on July 11. Life and her genes have been extraordinarily kind to her. She shows you a picture of her parents; they don't look much older than she does.

Jack Simon is a vigorous, decisive man in his late '60s with a deep voice and a thick shock of white hair. Today, he's in the midst of closing a big real estate deal, which is what he does now that he's sold the glass business. He's the kind of guy who's used to running things, and one of Boyd's strengths has always been her adaptability. This is the same woman who allowed Bryan Adams' manager, Bruce Allen, to take over her career and turn her into a quasi-rocker -- with a big entourage, a smoke machine and heavy eyeliner. "They even wanted me to shave my head like Sinead O'Connor," she shivers.

Now she's a protected woman, and with relish she explains how she'd like to revisit certain situations in her career where she was taken advantage of. "I'd like to go back on the arm of my husband and demand to be paid for those 17 concerts in New Zealand." She did try, but they found the promoter who stiffed her is now serving time.

She knows Simon was a big catch. The Beverly Hills women he dated after his wife died of leukemia were deeply disappointed when a Canadian guitarist with no connections -- at least none they knew about -- sailed in and picked off the local prize bachelor.

Simon hadn't even heard of Boyd when they first met. "I hadn't heard of him either," Liona quips, but now he accompanies her on many of her exotic gigs. For example, when she played in the Soviet Union, he was one of the 700 VIPs who toasted the new world order with champagne and caviar at the Kremlin. Last month, she played at Thessalonniki in Greece.

Afterward they flew to Venice, rented a palace on the Grand Canal, saw friends, ate out and took long, leisurely gondola excursions around the city.

20-YEAR AGE GAP

Much of her life is like that now. She takes leisurely walks in the afternoon in a park opposite her home. She calls friends, works on her music -- she's just commissioned a concerto from Hershey Felder, Kim Campbell's musical friend -- and enjoys her life immensely.

And so, does she ever think about Trudeau, the 77-year-old who still is capable of turning women's heads? "We're friends. We keep in touch sporadically. I sent him a postcard from Venice and he came to a concert I gave in Montreal's Notre Dame Cathedral last fall. He had dinner with Jack and I. They like each other. He travels to the Far East a lot and comes through L.A. He was at this house about 18 months ago, and my cat, Muffin, really performed for him. He lives a quieter life now that his boys are grown up.

"He even has a daughter now. At first, he wouldn't talk about it, but now he's very proud of her."

And why wasn't Trudeau the love of her life?

No, not the 20-year age gap. "I like older men." No, not the prospect of step-parenting three young boys. "We weren't soulmates," she says, turning away.