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Gordon Lightfoot, the legendary Canadian singer-songwriter, has died at the age of 84.

“Gordon Lightfoot passed away this evening in a Toronto hospital at 7:30 p.m.,” a statement on Lightfoot’s Facebook page announced on Monday, May 1st. The statement promised more information “to come.”

Born in Orillia, Ontario in 1938, Lightfoot became known and beloved as Canada’s folk troubadour, an artist who stayed true to his roots despite international success. Songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” depicted the culture, landscapes, and history of his Canadian home and grew to become both hits and signature tracks.

In the 2019 documentary Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, Rush’s Geddy Lee called Lightfoot “our poet laureate… our iconic singer-songwriter,” while Tom Cochrane noted, “If there was a Mt. Rushmore in Canada, Gordon would be on it.”

Singing was Lightfoot’s calling from his youth...

Anyone who ever owned an album by Gordon Lightfoot might not immediately recognize the man sitting on a metal chair in a dressing room at New York’s Town Hall. These days, Lightfoot only passingly resembles the strapping, mustached, square-jawed troubadour whose ballads, like “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Early Mornin’ Rain” and “Carefree Highway,” became coffeehouse standards. He no longer perms his hair as he once did. Lanky, sandy-brown locks now fall around his face, which is clean-shaven and, like his body, thin and bony. His hands show purple splotches.