Outer join question?

Hello,

I have three tables that create a many-to-many relationship between
two of them. One of them has person data and one of them has contact
data, and, of course, the other is the bridge table. I want to select
all the people in the people table with the last name like Smith and
join it with their contact information. Sometimes they have no
contact information, but I want to put them on my list anyway. I
typically use the old syntax of the "where clause" to join tables, so
I have two questions. Is there a syntax in postgres to do an outer
join using the "where clause" and what would be the correct syntax to
join the three tables using the newer standard,

SELECT last_name, first_name, contact
FROM people
LEFT (or RIGHT) JOIN bridge ON bridge.peopleid = people.peopleid
JOIN contact ON bridge.contactid = contact.contactid
WHERE last_name like 'Smi%';?

The above query is incorrect and I can't seem to get the result I'm
looking for.

Thanks,
Carol

PS This is PostgreSQL 8.3.6, running on a Solaris 10 box.