Gordon Lightfoot was born on November 17th in 1938 in Orillia, Ontario.
He took piano lessons and voice lessons and performed music as a child. He also played drums. Gordon entered several musical competitions and won first place in the under 13 years of age vocal class at the Toronto Kiwanis Festival. He won first place again the following year in 1952 and appeared at Massey Hall and sang his winning performance of a song called ‘Who is Sylvia’.

Gordon started writing his own songs around the age of 18. His first song was called ‘The Hula Hoop Song’. He later became one of Canada’s most popular songwriters and is famous for his songs such as ‘If You Could Read My Mind’, ‘Early Morning Rain’, ‘Sundown’ and ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’. The song ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ is based on a true story about a ship that sank in Lake Superior on November 10th, 1975. The song became one of his most popular songs and was nominated for a Grammy music award in 1977.

In 2003 he was inducted into the Canadian Songwriter Hall of Fame at the Glen Gould Theatre in Toronto, Ontario.