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Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum pays tribute to music icon Gordon Lightfoot

A small museum in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., remembers Canadian music icon Gordon Lightfoot, whose mid-1970s hit The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald brought greater awareness to the shipwreck.

In 2015, Lightfoot met with surviving family of crew members aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald

CBC News ·
A man strums a guitar while singing on stage at half-time during a Grey Cup match, with several stadium spotlights behind him in the distance.
Gordon Lightfoot performs during the half-time show at the 100th CFL Grey Cup game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Calgary Stampeders on Nov. 25, 2012, in Toronto. Lightfoot died on Monday at age 84. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

The flag outside the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., flew at half-mast Tuesday in memory of Canadian music icon Gordon Lightfoot.

Lightfoot, who died Monday in Toronto at age 84, was an honorary board member with the small museum, which teaches visitors about the historic dangers of travel on the Great Lakes.

Lightfoot's mid-1970s hit song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald brought greater awareness to the shipwreck, which left 29 people dead, a year earlier. 

"The reason [people] know about that shipwreck more than any other way is because of Gordon Lightfoot and his song," said Bruce Lynn, the museum's executive director.

"There's no question about it." 

An older man with a leather jacket standing next to a taller man with a blue shirt and glasses.
In 2015, Canadian musician Gordon Lightfoot visited the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. He is pictured here with museum executive director Bruce Lynn. (Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum/Facebook)

In 2015, Lightfoot visited the museum and met some surviving family members of crew who died aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

Lynn said the songwriter spent several hours meeting with them and listening to their stories.

"He didn't want this to be about him," he said.

Lynn said it was a special day for museum staff as well.

"A number of us had been to his concerts before, and obviously pretty much everybody had grown up listening to his music," he said.

Every November, Lynn said, the museum hosts a special memorial ceremony to remember people who died in shipwrecks on the Great Lakes.

This year, they will pay a special tribute to Lightfoot with a cover band based out of Mackinaw City, Mich.

With files from Jonathan Pinto

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