2 months ago
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Posted On: August 28th 2026, 10:18 pm
Missing Gordon Lightfoot like a mf right now.
One of the best Canadians to walk among us, at least in my opinion, who wrote one of the most hauntingly beautiful ballads ever to honour and remember American sailors who died after the SS Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy. While the ship and crew were American, Lightfoot felt such a connection to the crew and felt the loss as a Canadian who grew up near the Great Lakes. He wrote memorializing the brave crew who battled a monstrous Lake Superior in the midst of storm and rath, and to show the perils of working at sea. He wrote it so no one would ever forget what these workers sacrificed – and no one ever has.
My love for this song, and for Lightfoot’s career, is a genuine appreciation for how much he loved this country. He refused to follow others like Joni Mitchell (no disrespect to the queen, of course) down to LA or NYC to start his career. He was steadfast in being a beacon for Canadian artists IN Canada. And he never stopped acting like a Canadian, whether it was honouring these American sailors, or fighting to preserve and protect our environment. He just understood what being a Canadian really truly meant.
And I guess at a time when the U.S. President thinks he can take a sharpie to a map and change the name of Lake Ontario – a lake that Indigenous peoples named over 400 years ago before either nations even existed – I think it’s important to be more like Gord, and stand up for who we are. I’m so happy he doesn’t have to witness our country go through this tough moment, but I know if he was alive, he’d be writing a song about it.🍁
One of the best Canadians to walk among us, at least in my opinion, who wrote one of the most hauntingly beautiful ballads ever to honour and remember American sailors who died after the SS Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy. While the ship and crew were American, Lightfoot felt such a connection to the crew and felt the loss as a Canadian who grew up near the Great Lakes. He wrote memorializing the brave crew who battled a monstrous Lake Superior in the midst of storm and rath, and to show the perils of working at sea. He wrote it so no one would ever forget what these workers sacrificed – and no one ever has.
My love for this song, and for Lightfoot’s career, is a genuine appreciation for how much he loved this country. He refused to follow others like Joni Mitchell (no disrespect to the queen, of course) down to LA or NYC to start his career. He was steadfast in being a beacon for Canadian artists IN Canada. And he never stopped acting like a Canadian, whether it was honouring these American sailors, or fighting to preserve and protect our environment. He just understood what being a Canadian really truly meant.
And I guess at a time when the U.S. President thinks he can take a sharpie to a map and change the name of Lake Ontario – a lake that Indigenous peoples named over 400 years ago before either nations even existed – I think it’s important to be more like Gord, and stand up for who we are. I’m so happy he doesn’t have to witness our country go through this tough moment, but I know if he was alive, he’d be writing a song about it.🍁
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