Don't talk to Pamela Wallin, consul-general for Canada to New York, about rocker Neil Young tickling the ivories on the consular piano in the Big Apple during the recent Juno broadcast from Winnipeg.

It isn't that Wallin minds Young availing himself of the Park Avenue establishment's hospitality -- or its baby grand, for that matter.

After all, it was Wallin's idea that he base himself there during his recovery from surgery for a brain aneurysm.

"My friends from CTV called and asked if I knew someplace where he could stay," she recalled during a consulate reception here in New York on Saturday for patrons of Soulpepper Theatre Company and the National Ballet of Canada -- in town to take in the final performance of The Contract (The Pied Piper) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

"I said: 'What about my place?'' Wallin said.

Problem was, Wallin was in Winnipeg attending the Junos while Young was watching them on TV here with her New York staff.

As a result, she missed his solo when he retired to her keyboard in the wake of k.d. lang's performance of one of his songs. As to where she would have liked to have been: "I love Winnipeg, but ... ," Wallin said, laughing.

Wallin may have missed Young's solo, but her long-time assistant, Shelley Ambrose, ate it up and was still smiling about it almost a week later.

"We sat right there and watched the awards," Ambrose said, pointing to the library.

"Then he want in there," she continued, pointing to the living room, "and he played that piano.

"Then, I went in there," this time she points to a door that leads to the kitchen.

"And I almost fainted."