When the ship went down

The storm that sank the Edmond Fitzgerald shook the Great Lakes coastal area for hundreds of miles. That was 29 years ago tomorrow. I was only 6 at the time, but I remember it clearly.

I remember getting up the next morning to walk up to my school bus stop along highway 69 north of Parry Sound. I had to turn back on our gravel driveway because trees had fallen onto the powerlines. The cables were dancing around like live snakes, spewing sparks as they fell across the road.

I ran back to the house for help. My family was in the kitchen, listening to the bulletin on the radio about the Edmund Fitzgerald being lost with all hands.

It seems like it was only a moment later that the song came out, maybe on some other sunny, frosty morning after a November Great Lakes storm. As a kid I remember feeling that the water I grew up on, the radio that I listened to, the cool of the morning air, that lost freighter, and the haunting voice of Gordon Lightfoot were all part of the same thing.

It's woven so deeply into my mind and my memory now I don't know what to call it. But perhaps the moment 'folk music' really entered my consciousness was with the realization that songs could be one of the purest forms of truth.