Canadian Summer Series: Gordon Lightfoot—The Man Who Kept History Alive
- 5 days ago
- 8 min read
by Serenity W.
It's so special having Serenity on The Remnant this week, especially since we grew up attending the same homeschool events year after year! Her fascinating article about Gordon Lightfoot taught me much about "Canada's Bard," and I hope you enjoy it just as much as I did!
Note from Serenity: I decided to introduce Lightfoot through his songs (specifically two of them), instead of solely focusing on how he lived his life and his long list of achievements. It made more sense to me that we can know him best through his own songs, as opposed to knowing facts about him. :)
Background
As a singer-songwriter known for his “folk-pop” sound in the early 1970s, Gordan Lightfoot was one of the greatest songwriters Canada has ever known. He was a legend who wrote timeless hits, many of which were songs of brokenness and tragedies. Dubbed “Canada’s Bard”, he sang of past history as did the bards of old with their ballads of heroic acts and sad tragedies. If not for writers and songwriters, much of history would have been forgotten in a modern era such as ours. Perhaps not forgotten by historians who read big dusty history books, but forgotten by the common people.
But sometimes, it is necessary to reflect on the past, to remember what we have lost and what we have gained. To remember and learn from the legacies of those who have passed on before us, and to pass our own legacy down to future generations…and Lightfoot sure has left his legacy behind.
A few facts about him:
Lightfoot sang as a boy soprano at St. Paul’s United Church in Orillia (his birth town).
He made his first appearance—a solo performance--at the renowned Massey Hall of Toronto, after winning a singing competition at the young age of 12
In his teen years, he performed in places such as Muskoka and taught himself the folk guitar.
He had an extremely successful career in his lifetime, with several of his songs topping the US Hot 100. Some of his most popular ones were “If You Could Read My Mind”, “Sundown”, “Rainy Day People”, and “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald”.
He released 21 original albums
He was born in Orillia, Ontario and passed away in Toronto, Ontario (1938-2023)
Although he went to California for a time to study jazz composition and orchestration, he settled in Toronto and spent the rest of his life touring and recording. He also befriended Bob Dylan, who said, "I can't think of any Gordon Lightfoot song I don't like. Every time I hear a song of his, it's like I wish it would last forever."
Faith
Not unlike many other artists, he had rocky relationships, was divorced three times, and also struggled with alcohol. After one of the three divorces he had, he wrote “If You Could Read My Mind”. It reached number one on the Canadian Singles Chart and number five on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and was his first recording to appear in the U.S. The broken words from “If You Could Read My Mind” reveal his struggle with his relationship with his ex, and its popularity speaks of the sad truth that many people deal with the same struggle. Not surprisingly, it is a depressing song, especially these lines:
“I never thought I could feel this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where we went wrong
But the feeling's gone
And I just can't get it back”.
Later on in his life, he admitted that he had made a few mistakes in his career and went through what he called the “process of atonement”. It is impossible to know for sure whether he was truly a Christian or not in the end, but through his songs, there are signs of some of his struggles with faith. At one point in his life, he sang:
“Make my world a better place to be
Remove these chains and set me free
Give my life one reason to begin
Forgive me Lord for I have sinned”.
When he was asked what kept him going in hard times, he answered, “Sometimes I think I’m really, really lucky, no matter what has gone down. I can say one thing: it’s faith in God that keeps me going. I go to church a lot more than I used to. But the faith that I got, I learned right here in this church when I was a kid.
I remember the sermons, I remember the prayers, I remember the vibes. I remember the singing at Christmas and singing at New Year’s. You can’t help it — you have to have faith when you get that kind of groundwork.”
It seems that as he got older, he got closer to religion.
Song Analysis
“The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald”
Out of all the songs he wrote, this was one of the most popular ones. It hit number 1 in Canada on the RPM chart and on the Cashbox Top 100 in the US, and also number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. The wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald was tragic indeed: the largest freighter of the Great Lakes sank in Lake Superior with all 29 of its crew members – a total loss.
In 2015, Lightfoot shared that he was inspired to write the song when he saw the misspelled “Edmond” in the Newsweek magazine just two weeks after the sinking. Sobered, he realized that in a short time, the name of the ship where 29 lives spent their last moments on Earth could be so important that it appears misspelled in a magazine. He wrote the ballad to honour their memory, and honour them he did as the popular song made the wreck one of the best-known tragedies ever in the book of Great Lakes shipping.
In the ballad, he asked the ultimate question:
“Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?”
Where, indeed, is the love of God when such tragedies happen? Twenty-nine men may not might seem much, but as Lightfoot put it:
“And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters”
Why does God allow ship wrecks to happen? This question demands an answer that is beyond our human abilities to answer. Who are we to question God? Instead of trying to answer questions we can’t answer, perhaps it’s better to focus on honouring their lives…like they did in Detroit.
“In a musty old hall in
Detroit they prayed
In the maritime sailors' cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald”
And in 2023, the “maritime sailors’ cathedral” in Detroit rang the bell 29 times plus one—once for each of the lost members of Edmund Fitzgerald and once for Lightfoot himself. The man who is responsible for ensuring
that the rest of the world has not forgotten about the wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald.
“Canadian Railroad Trilogy”
Commissioned by the CBC to write a song to honor Canada’s centennial, Lightfoot wrote the Canadian Railroad Trilogy and performed it in 1967. There was no better topic he could have chosen to write for such an occasion, for truly, the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway fulfilled the national dream of connecting the cities from the East to the West, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In his signature artful way, he paints the picture of what it was actually like back then to lay the rails. It was not all sunshine and dandelions, but it was a tale of blood, sweat, and tears. The daunting task could not have been completed without sacrifice, and indeed it took the ultimate sacrifice, for thousands of lives were lost.
Instead of just glorifying what the Canadians did back then, Lightfoot wrote with no bias. There’s no question how pivotal the laying of the railway was to Canada’s future, and on all accounts, it was unquestionably necessary for the growth of Canada as a young country. But there was a cost to tearing up the soil too: the destruction of Canada’s past for the future.
True to its title as a trilogy, this masterpiece has three themes, three tunes, and three changes in tempo - from fast, to slow, and back to fast to reflect on the past, the present, and the future.
It was fitting that Lightfoot started the trilogy with landscape of what the railroad destroyed:
“There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real”
And he captures the feeling of what it was like to complete it:
“Oh, the song of the future has been sung
All the battles have been won
On the mountaintops we stand
All the world at our command
We have opened up this soil
With our teardrops and our toil”
But interestingly, he closed the song with these haunting lines:
“When the green dark forest was too silent to be real
And many are the dead men
Too silent to be real”
What exactly was he referring to? There are several possible interpretations, but one of them is this: no great deed can be accomplished without someone’s sacrifice—whether it be your own or someone else’s. To clarify, Lightfoot was not against the laying of the railroad, for he did believe in progress, in building “the mines, mills and the factories for the good of us all”. What he did masterfully was acknowledge the truth. The truth is that with progressiveness comes both growth and destruction.
This sober truth helps us determine whether anything is worth doing no matter how big or small the scale is. If the inevitable sacrifices cost so much that they defeat the original purpose, then it’s not worth it.
Was the manner in which the Canadian Pacific Railroad brought about worth the sacrifices? It changed the country for the better, but the cost was unjustly driving the Indigenous people out of their lands and forcing immigrants to labor for very little and even lose their lives. It was terrible and unjust, but though the past cannot be changed, and the decision-makers are dead, there is still value in remembering history for what it is and learning from it.
It might have been easy to bury the wreck of Edmund F. under piles of other more significant wrecks, because numerous shipwrecks had lost many more men than 29 souls…yet 29 souls is still 29 souls, and Lightfoot honoured them with his ballad. Now they will not be forgotten.
The story of the Canadian Pacific Railroad is similar. We celebrate the completion, we never forget the benefits and what we gained from it, but rarely do we pause and think of the cost. Of those who toiled…and died. Of those whose lives changed forever because of it.
To keep history alive for future generations, stories and songs have to be written, so that even when the places in which they have happened have already long vanished, their story still lives on. This is what Lightfoot accomplished.
Perhaps he does deserve the title “Canada’s Bard”.
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