The Edmund Fitzgerald

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I notice that the stamp picture was inverted since that is the south face of the lighthouse. Cute !

Scouter, Don't forget about eel-pout & smelting!

And I did not talk about the hiking, camping, running, biking & even skiing, downhill & cross country.

I suppose the Titanic stamp on the Celebrate the Century mini sheets was for the movie Titanic, and not the disaster. Although I am not sure that that is a distinction without a difference.

Certainly all the war commmemoratives should be grouped in a disaster category, for disasters they were.

Isn't it funny how things come full circle sometimes? I had never heard of this wreck, or the song, until this thread.
My husband and I watched a re-run last night of the old cop comedy/drama "Due South", about the Mountie serving with the Chicago Police Force. This lead to us discussing the geographical position of Chicago in relation to the Great Lakes and Canada. We were trying to think of the names of the Great Lakes. "Gitche Gumee," my husband said, my ears pricked up - "Lake Superior!" I said. He looked at me in a quizzical way, "Gordon Lightfoot!", I said, "Edmund Fitzgerald!" he replied.
Turns out he knew the song from way back, but hadn't heard it in years and ddn't know the story behind it. So we watched the youtube link, and then looked up wikipedia to find out more of the Edmund Fitzgerald's story.
Scrolling down the page, reading about the ship, the night it was wrecked, the theories and the commemorations, we got to a section marked "Television". It turns out that the Series "Due South" ran a double-episode story based on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
From Wiki -
""Mountie on the Bounty," a two-part episode of the Canadian police comedy-drama television series Due South, aired on March 15, 1998 (part 1) and March 22, 1998 (part 2). The story featured the Robert Mackenzie, a fictional Canadian lake freighter slightly larger than the Edmund Fitzgerald (850 feet long by 80 feet wide), which suffered a nearly identical fate, right down to loss of radar and breaking in two.

Executive producer and star Paul Gross obtained permission to use Gordon Lightfoot's song for the episode—but on the condition the families of the sailors agree. Reluctant to cause the families additional grief, Gross and series composer Jay Semko instead wrote and composed "Thirty-Two Down on the Robert Mackenzie"."

Great story, Stampgal. I will have to find that show sometime.

Speaking of Gordon Lightfoot, this stamp was issued in 2007.

yeah, he is a Canuck, all the best singers and actors are Canucks, except of course for the greatest actor of them all. John Wayne.

Wow! Things that you learn when you thought that you knew it all. Thanks Stampgal. I remember Due South and I'll have to look up that episode as well. What I really respected about the survivors of that disaster was that anything done or that others wanted to do, the families were asked first. You really don't see that happen in normal circumstances when it comes to hype and Hollywood.

Isn't Gordon Lightfoot considered Canada's balladeer or folklorist of music?

Donna

Thanks for the reminder and interesting thread. I remember not just the incident, Lightfoot, et al, but many fond memories of the UP and route past Copper Harbor and the leaves in the fall. Autumn is one of those things we just don't get here in So CA.

Donna- anyone who can write lines like "sixteen miles to seven lakes way up among the pines" and "does the home team still win all the games and by the way did she mention my name" is a poet.

I've been reading through this post and a question still lingers for me: "Who was Mr. Edmund Fitzgerald for whom the ship was named?" Everytime I attempt to web search the name I only get responses relating to the ship and the shipwreck. I believe I read somewhere that Mrs. Edmund Fitzgerald was there at the time the ship was launched. I also think I read that Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company was involved in the building of the ship, so perhaps Mr. Fitzgerald was connected with that firm?

Anyone know for sure?

From Wik: On February 1, 1957, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin contracted Great Lakes Engineering Works (GLEW), of River Rouge, Michigan, to design and build a taconite bulk carrier laker for Northwestern. The contract contained the stipulation that the boat be the largest on the Great Lakes. GLEW laid the keel on August 7 of that year, and some time between then and its christening and launch on June 7, 1958, Northwestern (Mutual Insurance) announced their decision to name the boat for its President and Chairman of the Board, Edmund Fitzgerald, whose father had been a lake captain.

In following this post with its references to Lake Superior, the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot, Minnesota, Splitrock, etc., that an interesting thread would be a cross-border Highway 61 stamp travelogue that starts in Thunder Bay, Ontario in the north and ends at New Orleans at the mouth of the might Mississippi in the south, with a possible detour to Ely, Minnesota to pick up anything relating to Bob Dylan. I would put on the Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) Grain Elevators stamp (Canada Scott#253) to anchor the trip's northern starting point if I had any ability at submitting images, which I do not as yet. Travelling south the next stamp on the this route would, I assume, be the lighthouse stamp already mentioned. Does anyone have a suggestion for the next stamp south in the travel sequence?

Gordon Lightfoot is indeed a master songwriter and folk music hero in Canada (and well beyond, too!) and I've been a fan for a long time. In my day job (well...really it's a vocation...) I get to deal with people every day who emulate his work and draw inspiration from his songs. His Edmund Fitzgerald tune is a great story, but I'd argue that he has many much better songs. I wasn't keen on the stamp series that featured him (and others) from a design perspective, but I love that Canadian musicians got recognized by commemoratives, so I try to use them often.

Thanks Warrehouse, for the info. on the name associated with the Edmund Fitzgerald ship.

Here's a newspaper photo of the ship's namesake: