Winnipeg hosted final concert for Canadian musical giant By: Eva Wasney Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, May. 2, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/05/2023 (899 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg concert venue will go down in Canadian music history as the site of the final live performance of Canadian balladeer Gordon Lightfoot.

The iconic singer-songwriter had recently cancelled a series of planned tour dates due to ongoing health issues, making his October 2022 concert at Club Regent Event Centre his last ever appearance in front of an audience.

“Wow,” local music teacher Robert Hrabluk said upon hearing the concert he attended was Lightfoot’s swan song. “He was a Canadian legend and it’s so fitting that his last show would be in the heart… of the country.”

Hrabluk bought tickets for the Club Regent show in 2019 and was glad to finally see Lightfoot onstage after pandemic-related postponements. He described the evening’s atmosphere as calm and filled with reverence, despite some shortcomings with the aging musician’s vocal performance.

“The (audience) didn’t fall short in their appreciation, in their love for who they were seeing and the nostalgia built around that,” Hrabluk said. “He spoke from the heart, he played from the heart.”

Club Regent had hosted Lightfoot twice in the last five years, according to entertainment program manager Kelly Berehulka.

“His music has influenced many generations of musicians and fans, and his music and impact will live on,” Berehulka said via email, adding that Lightfoot received three standing ovations during his most recent show.

“The (audience) didn’t fall short in their appreciation, in their love for who they were seeing and the nostalgia built around that… He spoke from the heart, he played from the heart.”–Local music teacher Robert Hrabluk

For local producer Lloyd Peterson, the Orillia, Ont.-born musician’s songwriting style was something to aspire to.

“He could take simple chords and simple melodies and combine them with really heartfelt lyrics and end up with something universal,” he said. “He was very direct and very sincere and I think we can use more of that.”

Peterson saw Lightfoot in concert several times throughout his career. In 2013, he organized a Lightfoot tribute show at the West End Cultural Centre with a lineup that included local artists Scott Nolan, Rusty Matyas and Red Moon Road, among others.

“We did 30 or more of his songs, it was a fantastic night,” he said. “You don’t have to scratch very deep with people in the music community in this town to find his influence.”

Some Canadian musicians say that influence on the country’s collective identity is immeasurable.

Rocker Tom Cochrane described Lightfoot, who died Monday at 84 years old, as a personal friend and inspiration who proved himself as one of Canada’s “seminal cultural artists” while being “a heck of a nice guy” all the while.

Cochrane twice honoured the If You Could Read My Mind and Sundown singer-songwriter for his musical contributions — the first time was when he inducted Lightfoot into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003.

At that ceremony, he compared Lightfoot to one of the Group of Seven artists, a compliment Cochrane says resonated with the folk musician who “saw himself genuinely as the cultural embodiment of who we are as a nation.”

A representative for Lightfoot’s family says he died of natural causes at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. He had suffered numerous health issues in recent decades.

Many musicians and politicians turned to social media to express their sadness, including Bryan Adams who tweeted that he was “gutted to know he was gone,” adding that “the world is a lesser place without him.”

Jann Arden said Lightfoot’s songs are “woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. We all know the words, even if we don’t think we do.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that Lightfoot “helped shape Canada’s soundscape,” while Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said his “poetry and melodies are an eternal inspiration.”

Artists outside Canada took notice too. Author Stephen King described Lightfoot as “a wonderful performer,” while actor and director Ben Stiller called him a “genius” whose “music is such a big part of my life.”

“He could take simple chords and simple melodies and combine them with really heartfelt lyrics and end up with something universal… He was very direct and very sincere and I think we can use more of that.”–Local producer Lloyd Peterson

Guitarist Liona Boyd called Lightfoot a friend of nearly half a century and “one of the greatest songwriters of all time” who influenced her own work.

“Gordon was a unique and special person,” she said in an emailed statement.

He was “responsible for giving me one of my biggest breaks early in my career when I opened for him on tour in the ’70s.”

Sharon Hampson, who came of age in Toronto’s Yorkville music scene, recalled how Lightfoot’s name floated around the city’s venues before his rise to fame in the 1960s.

“He really was a genius and so completely understated,” said the musician, who was part of the children’s group Sharon, Lois and Bram.

Hampson recalled a passing conversation with a stranger at the 2019 Mariposa Folk Festival, a longtime music event in Lightfoot’s hometown of Orillia, Ont. that helped launch his career and became forever linked with his legacy.

“The man said, ‘I’m from Orillia and people do not know what a kind and generous person Gordon Lightfoot was. He helped Orillia over and over and nobody needed to know about it’,” Hampson remembered.

“I loved that. He didn’t need to have his name on this or that, he just wanted to do good.”

Former Barenaked Ladies member Steven Page credited Lightfoot as “the archetype of the Canadian singer-songwriter” helped by breakout success in the United States, where his album Sundown went to No. 1.

Page said in a phone interview that Lightfoot sculpted a model of success stateside that would be “broken, smashed and resculpted” by future generations of Canadians.

“He really was a genius and so completely understated.”–Sharon Hampson, musician

Despite finding fame outside the country, Lightfoot rarely uprooted himself from his homeland for long.

“Even though he did spend time in the United States and made records there,” Page added, “he was still deeply connected to the country, the landscape and the personality of Canada.”

Cochrane says Lightfoot’s steadfast ties to Canada came up in a conversation once with the singer.

“He said to me, ‘You know, trees grow in certain soils, and this soil has been a very powerful soil for me to grow,’” he recalled.

“Why would I leave this country? This is where I bear fruit.”

— with files from David Friend, The Canadian Press

If you value coverage of Manitoba’s arts scene, help us do more.
Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.