Editorially speaking...
One might not, at first blush, think of Gordon Lightfoot, Canada’s legendary troubadour, as an historian. But, in many ways, he was. He wrote about real life, about real Canadians, about real events, such as the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald and its lost company.
The Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald was lost in a storm in Lake Superior with all 29 aboard, Nov. 10, 1975. - www. pinterest.com
Today, almost half a century later, that ship and her 29-man crew would be just an historical footnote, buried in old newspapers and remembered only by their families and descendants but for Gordon’s classic song.
My own favourite, one that never hit the charts, is Home From the Forest, about a dying old veteran turned to drink and on the street.
Unlike so many successful Canadian artists who’ve jumped ship for careers below the border, Gordon Lightfoot never forsook his native home and his songs celebrate some of the seminal events of our history, such as the building of the transcontinental railway.
He’s been described as a poetic storyteller. Yes he wrote about love and heart break and human frailty (In the Early Morning Rain, Sundown, etc.) I, with the greatest respect, shall remember him as an historian who told Canada’s rich story in song. Bless him.
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Further to last week’s editorial on the closure of Point Ellice House Museum and the change of management by government edict of the Yale Museum: It’s just been announced that the Royal B.C. Museum will reopen the Old Town exhibit (the one we were told had been demolished last year) with “some changes”.
And Yale Museum is to reopen for the summer but without, I gather, a single exhibit, the entire collection having been removed by the former managers and owners of the artifacts. (See last week’s editorial.) Point Ellice House is about to reopen, too, if it hasn’t already, with contents intact, under new “interim” management. The same folks who’ve taken over at Yale, as it happens.
Our tax dollars at work...