“I didn’t know what chauvinism was then,” he said. In the 2019 documentary, “ If You Could Read My Mind,” he ruefully acknowledges the sexism of some of his early songs. Like the country he came from and returned to, Lightfoot was wry without being cruel, modest without any disingenuous self-effacement. They sailed upon her waterways and they walked the forest tallīuilt the mines, mills and the factories for the good of us all. īut time has no beginning and the history has no boundĪs to this verdant country they came from all around To celebrate the country’s centenary, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBS) commissioned Lightfoot to write a song, and the resulting “ Canadian Railroad Trilogy” captured that unique national spirit of optimism without jingoism. But that created a spaciousness in the culture, a tolerance for a “cultural mosaic” that stood in contrast to an American melting pot that boiled away our differences. In 1967, Canada’s population was only 20 million, an astonishingly low number for the world’s second largest country. Having immigrated to the most powerful country in the world as it waged the war in Vietnam, my brother and I longed for our homeland’s lack of imperial ambitions. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) Whispers goodbye at my window 1974: Canadian singer and songwriter Gordon Lightfoot poses for a publicity still to promote his album 'Sundown' on Reprise records. No, his love affairs ended with sorrow, regret, and sometimes self-recrimination, but always with lyricism. No chewing gum love songs or self-indulgent tunes about being sad or lonely or blue ever emerged from his pen. And Lightfoot could do romance without treacle. The man could make you feel the ruthlessly damp, unforgiving city winter in your bones, as in this poignant song about a forlorn old man stumbling “ Home From the Forest:”īut he could also paint a picture of winter’s brilliant hush with equal vividness. We were also recent ex-pats, transplanted Montrealers who had only recently moved to the American Midwest and were still homesick, not just for the friends and family we’d left behind, but for Canada itself. I bin stood up I bin shook down/I bin dragged into the sand. I haven't found a place that I could call my own We ached to abandon the insular comfort of our middle-class home even if, like the narrator of Steel Rail Blues, we didn’t have a destination. We wanted to be swingin’ the hammer, not studying for the quiz to be hopping onto a freight train, not a school bus. We were adolescents, filled with inchoate longing to be out in the big world, lost to the expectations of others. Of course, some of the emotional power of these songs derived from the circumstances under which we listened to them. ![]() The record’s spare, singable, but narratively rich tunes wore out the needle long before wearing out our imaginations. ![]() We played that record obsessively, the stylus of our mono record player deepening its grooves. My older brother brought home Lightfoot’s eponymous debut album in 1966. ![]() These were the people whose stories were all too rarely acknowledged, let alone told with both sympathy and dynamism. The drunken marooned ne’er do well from “ Early Morning Rain ” The drowned sailors of “ The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The railroad “navvies” of “ Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” His characters were the men I didn’t know but wanted to. Though best known for his 1970s pop tunes like “ Sundown” and “ If You Could Read my Mind,” the Canadian singer-songwriter who died a few days ago was rivaled only by John Prine in his ability to animate the stories of ordinary working-class men doing extraordinary things. Not romantically - I’d had crushes on boys well before I ever heard his music - but empathetically. Singer Gordon Lightfoot performs during the CFL's 100th Grey Cup Championship Halftime Show at the Rogers Centre on Sunday, Nov.
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