Gordon Lightfoot, Canada’s greatest songwriter, was a master of convincing millions they desperately needed a ten-minute ballad about a freighter sinking in 1975. It worked, too. Born in Orillia, Ontario, in 1938, he didn’t just write songs; he crafted highly cinematic, melancholy documentaries disguised as folk-rock, proving that Canadians could be epic, just slowly and with acoustic guitars.

Before charting internationally, Lightfoot defined the Canadian folk scene. Early on, he had the impressive distinction of having his material covered by music giants—seriously, Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan recorded his tunes like “Early Morning Rain.” Imagine being so good your biggest influences simply decided to steal your homework.

Despite the long hair, Lightfoot wasn’t a typical counter-culture radical. He was, however, a prominent figure in Toronto's Yorkville scene, a vital 1960s folk revival hub alongside peers like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. While the neighborhood likely debated revolution, Lightfoot, ever the professional, was probably just focused on songwriting—meticulously logging lyrics about highways and rivers, not overthrowing the system.

Lightfoot finally broke through with his own reflective 1970 international hit, “If You Could Read My Mind.” The song was so successful that the original album, Sit Down Young Stranger, happily demanded a name change and was reissued as If You Could Read My Mind. It’s probably the only album in history that got a confidence boost from its own track list.

But his ultimate chart-topper was the maritime masterpiece, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976), about the iron ore carrier that vanished in a brutal Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975, taking all 29 crew. The Fitz was hardly a one-off, as the Great Lakes are littered with thousands of shipwrecks, proving the lakes have an expensive appetite. The song peaked at No. 2 on the U.S. Hot 100 and got the facts right, right down to “the legend lives on from the Chippewa on down.” It proved that true tragedy, when set to a perfectly somber tune, sells more than sunshine.