The church bell will ring one last time for Gordon Lightfoot, "the Canadian musical institution," as critic Bart Testa once termed him. That reference is of course to the last verse of the singer-guitarist-songwriter's signature song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," in which "in a musty old hall in Detroit" "the church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald," an ore carrier that sank in Lake Superior during a heavy storm in November 1975.

That bell chimes now for Gordon, who died of natural causes at age 84 in Toronto, Ontario, on May 1. Lightfoot had to cancel a tour just three weeks prior to his death, citing health issues as the reason. A bell tolling for him is sadly fitting, for it was Lightfoot's song, a Number Two US hit in 1976, that demonstrated evocatively how folk music, which might have seemed quaint and out-of-date amidst the mid-Seventies disco, glam-rock, and arena-rock, with hints of burgeoning punk-rock beginning to scratch and claw forth, still had the essence to capture the moment.

Considered an icon in his native Canada, Gordon Lightfoot was a Singer/Songwriter known for his baritone voice and his run of hits. Amongst the Singer/Songwriters who achieved fame in the 70’s, Lightfoot was stripped down even for that genre. At his best when armed with only an acoustic guitar, Lightfoot may have been the best storyteller of his genre, and at the very least he was among the most captivating. As a Canadian who achieved success in the United States, he might have an outside shot to be the next Canuck to get enshrined in Cleveland.