{"id":18262,"date":"2016-11-12T08:02:03","date_gmt":"2016-11-12T13:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=18262"},"modified":"2020-03-26T03:48:46","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T07:48:46","slug":"the-edmund-fitzgerald-ogdensburg-and-gordon-lightfoot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2016\/11\/12\/the-edmund-fitzgerald-ogdensburg-and-gordon-lightfoot\/","title":{"rendered":"The Edmund Fitzgerald, Ogdensburg, and Gordon Lightfoot"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Edmund Fitzgerald, 1971. Photo: Greenmars<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s November 10. Outside my window, the sky is gray. It\u2019s windy, and that all seems very appropriate because it\u2019s the 41st<\/sup> anniversary of the most notable shipwreck of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century on the Great Lakes.\u00a0 In 1975, the iron ore carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald<\/em> sank in a hurricane-force storm in eastern Lake Superior. All 29 aboard perished. In November 1976, legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot embedded the tragedy in the North American conscience with his six minute and 27 second ballad The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald<\/em>. Lightfoot was inspired to write the song after reading about the shipwreck in Newsweek.\u00a0<\/em>The song made it to #3 on the American charts and it hit #1 in Canada. 40 years later, the song is still on the regular playlist of many radio stations. I first learned it in 7th<\/sup> grade music class. It tapped into my love of Canadian history, the Great Lakes, and made me a Gordon Lightfoot fan.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is on the first side of Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 album “Summertime Dream.” \u00a0Holding a cigarette for an album cover photo was perfectly acceptable 40 years ago. \u00a0Photo: James Morgan<\/p><\/div>\n

In eastern Ontario and the North Country, we know about shipping because of the Seaway, but there\u2019s also another local connection to the Edmund Fitzgerald<\/em> story.\u00a0 The ship\u2019s captain, Ernest McSorley, was born in Canada but he spent most of his youth in Ogdensburg. There are more links at other places on the Great Lakes.\u00a0 \u201cThe Maritime Sailors Cathedral\u201d Gordon Lightfoot sings about is the Mariner\u2019s Church in Detroit, located on the city’s waterfront. The church bell rang 29 times for each crew member on the day after the ship went down. The actual ship\u2019s bell was retrieved from the wreck on the Fourth of July, 1995 and is now on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Point, Michigan, not far from where the tragedy occurred. One of the anchors is at another museum in Detroit. Other parks and visitor centers around Lake Superior also commemorate the Edmund Fitzgerald.\u00a0<\/em>In 2015, the Royal Canadian Mint issued a collector coin. The iconic Split Rock Lighthouse stands atop a vertical cliff by Lake Superior north of Duluth, Minnesota. The US Coast Guard retired it from service in 1969, but it emits a beam of light every November 10 in honor of the crew of \u201cBig Fitz.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald<\/em> is more than a ballad about a shipwreck. It\u2019s a tour of the Great Lakes. Lightfoot sings of Superior and \u201cthe rooms of her ice water mansion.\u201d\u00a0 Nearby, \u201cLake Michigan steams like a young man\u2019s dreams, it\u2019s islands and bays are for sportsmen.\u201d Heading downstream, \u201cfarther below Lake Ontario, takes in what Lake Erie can send her\u201d gives reference to how the water from four of the Great Lakes roars over Niagara Falls. It\u2019s the sort of song whose lyrics come to mind on stormy mid-autumn days when \u201cThe gales of November come early,\u201d or on summer days by a beach or along a highway during a Great Lakes road trip.\u00a0 Lightfoot captures\u00a0times, places, and moods very well.<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

(Gordon Lightfoot is performing at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on November 19).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s November 10. Outside my window, the sky is gray. It\u2019s windy, and that all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[880,16997,15863,64,4844,15816],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18262"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22035,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18262\/revisions\/22035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}