Lightfoot and I

 It was a winter Saskatchewan day when our 1969 Can Lit Eng 253 class settled into our seats to wait for instructor Paul Denham to begin. I don't remember if this was known in advance; likely it was; we were all anticipating the return of papers we had written for the course. To say I was surprised would probably be an understatement when he selected my paper to read from as a good example of an English essay in the class. this from a student who could not even achieve a mark of 65 in Grades 11 and 12! He cited particularly my careful explanation of the terms used within the paper and gave me a top mark for an English class of 84. My subject was "Gordon Lightfoot: lyric as poetry,” and I still have the paper in it's original typed format of 17 pages including footnotes and the bibliography.

I am not sure if Denham mentioned it at the time or read anything to give that away, but I do quote Lightfoot a number of times in the paper, and these quotes were taken from a recording I had done of an interview with him at the Saskatoon Sheraton hotel a month earlier. I knew he was coming to the city again and I had tickets for the concert. I also realized that I was basically a nobody and how would I get to have an interview with him, knowing that I wanted to write this paper. Therefore, I approached The Quill, the University of Saskatchewan campus newspaper, and volunteered to do this as a write-up for the paper. They accepted my request and lent me the tape recorder that I really wanted. Imagine my chagrin then, when I made it to his hotel room, to find out that they had also sent someone else to do the interview. I don't think Lightfoot thought much of my competition and his simplistic questions versus the discussion we got into. The other fellow was more interested in logistics and what Lightfoot thought of his popularity, perhaps how much money he was making etc. I was more interested in discussing his writing, his thoughts about his writing and singing and particularly his thoughts about being regarded as a poet. As you can see from the previous paragraph, I was not disappointed. I borrowed a reel to reel tape recorder from a friend (this was before the days of the popularity of cassettes) to copy the tape from the machine that I had to return to the university before I did that. Unfortunately, that tape has disappeared along the way.

My relationship with Lightfoot began, interestingly, when I was working in the Manitoba Rehabilitation Hospital in Winnipeg in the winter of 1967–19 68 as a nursing orderly. One of our patients brought in Lightfoot's first album. I had heard some of it on the radio by that time but he was not that popular yet for AM radio compared to other pop and rock artists of the time. However, I liked the music well enough to buy that album myself. It was his debut album, “Lightfoot!”

I began to attend the annual Lightfoot concerts on a regular basis for a few years, often with my brothers or other friends. I had actually met Lightfoot on one previous occasion after one of his concerts in Saskatoon. Friends of mine had opened a coffeehouse, a popular venue in those days. At the intermission, we sent a note backstage, requesting that Lightfoot visit this coffee house and gave him the address. Sure enough, Lightfoot favoured us with his presence, although briefly. He and his band members said they were on the way to Prince Albert for a party. This was probably a 90 minute drive after his concert. It was evidently known that Lightfoot liked to drink in those years and that this sometimes interfered with his performances. However, I was always pleased that I do not think this ever occurred during concerts I attended. I don't think I mentioned this occasion when we met in his hotel room a year later, and I would not have expected him to remember that visit, let alone my presence there.

I also continued to buy his albums, although I only ever purchased some half dozen or more out of something like 30+ that he recorded. His third album, "did she mention my name" was perhaps my favourite, but that one has disappeared. That was the only one for which I did by the official songbook. What I have now are the original album  mentioned above, "sit down young stranger," “old Dan's records" and dubbed to cassette, "Don Quixote" and “Sundown". Much later I got his CD, "A painter passing through" and one collection CD, "60 Minutes with Gordon Lightfoot.”.

In 2014 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) listed 2 Lightfoot songs among their top 100 Canadian songs at the time: “Sundown” and “The Edmund Fitzgerald” at 17 & 29 respectively. I suspect the former related to its international acclaim and the latter to the compelling Canadian/American Great Lakes disaster tale. “Sundown” was also the title of the 1974 album that appeared at No. 11 in a 2013 CBC list of top Canadian albums. I think Lightfoot also deserves considerable credit for the fact that his very first album, titled simply “Lightfoot”, also appears on this list, albeit at No. 93.

On another occasion later on when CBC asked listeners which popular songs reminded them of Canada, still another well-known Lightfoot song, “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” came up at No. 3. Lightfoot also came out at No. 6 in a CBC collection of 25 Greatest Canadian Songwriters ever.

Ronnie Hawkins, himself a Canadian rock icon who would have crossed paths with Lightfoot in the Yorkville scene in Toronto in the 1960s and 70s, once said of him:

“I've been a fan of Gordon's since forever. Since I can remember. He was the first cat I thought was the greatest songwriter in the world.... For me, he's written the best.... A lot of people think that Gordon Lightfoot is just a superstar in Canada. He's a superstar all over the world.... If you listen very carefully to the words he puts in his songs they're unbelievable. Unbelievable how he puts them together.... Have you listened a lot to Gordon Lightfoot? Well I tell you what? You hear those stories, you can relate to them! Do you understand all of Bob Dylan's songs? Nobody does!”

Then, in September 2017, and Ann and I were vacationing in Southern Ontario and made a stop in Orillia. I tried to see if Lightfoot was at home and whether there was a possibility of making some contact with him on the occasion but to no avail. However, by that time there was a small park along the waterfront with a section dedicated to lightfoot, including a sculpture of himself and some special features highlighting some of his more memorable songs. The local museum, named after another famous son of the town, Canadian humorist Steven Leacock, had a small section on Lightfoot and I settled with purchasing a book of 50 poems by other artists published as a tribute. 

It was certainly a loss then in 2023 when Canada lost this well-loved son. What had often appealed to me besides the poetry of the lyrics and the good melodies were the stories and emotions that resonated with my own sentiments about our land and its  people, settings and stories. I list some of these aspects in the paper I wrote. The  reader will find a copy of that paper on this blog if they are interested in pursuing that further.