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Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand.

And oh yes…by Bob Dylan, who

holds Lightfoot in the highest esteem.

A historical interlude

For some Lightfoot is a painter, using

his guitar for a brush. He says as much

in one song:

If you want to know my secret

Don’t come runnin’ after me

For I am just a painter

Passing through in history

The song On Yonge Street, chronicles

the ambience of Toronto’s main street.

He has something of the historian

as well. In 1967 the CBC commissions

him to write a major work marking the

centennial of Canadian Confederation.

In the 1860’s British Columbia, then an

independent colony, had agreed to join

Canada on condition that it be linked

to the new country by a railroad run-

ning from the Atlantic to the Paciﬁc.

Canada’s ﬁrst Prime Minister, John A.

Macdonald, promised such a railroad for

1881. It would be delayed by a scandal

that toppled his government (shades

of our own day!), and it was only on

November 7, 1885 that the Canadian

Paciﬁc Railway’s last spike was driven, in

Craigellachie, BC, before a large crowd

(the event is immortalized in a famous

picture).

Lightfoot, with his talent for story-

telling, creates the poetic and touching

Canadian Railroad Trilogy.

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

This epic work becomes a major hit,

and is included on the album The Way I

Feel. It will go through several versions,

though the most interesting is certainly

his own, with the orchestra of Ron

Collier.

That same Centennial year brings

with it a buzz of activities, and it is fertile

in success for Canada’s most popular

writer-composer. He undertakes a cross-

Canada tour as well as appearances in

New York and Los Angeles.

In 1969 he leaves United Artists for

Reprise, then the property of Frank

Sinatra, and sets up his own production

house, Early Morning Productions.

With the help of friends and his sister

Beverly, he publishes nearly all his songs

himself.

In 1970 he brings out a new album,

Sit Down Young Stranger, on which one

song, If You Could Read My Mind, makes

a splash. The album will later be re-

released with that as the title song. And

in 2002 the Festival of Charlottetown, on

Prince Edward Island, will inaugurate a

cabaret show titled If You Could Read My

Mind: the Music of Gordon Lightfoot.

In 1976 another event spotlights

Lightfoot’s storytelling talent. In Cana-

dian waters in Lake Superior, a lake

that has been known to take itself for

an ocean, a large cargo ship is broken in

two by 7.5 metre waves and 125 km/h

winds, going to the bottom with 29 men.

In a few verses, Lightfoot chronicles

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

It will reach second place on the US

Billboard chart. For many, the tragedy

of the ship is the song, a sort of musical

documentary.

Over the next three decades, Light-

foot’s calendar will be well ﬁlled. By 1980

he is giving some 50 concerts a year. In

1981 a concert tour takes him to Europe,

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