Gordon Lightfoot, the baritone-voiced troubadour often referred to as Canada’s Poet Laureate, died this week at the age of 84. Fortunately, the filmmaking duo Martha Kehoe Joan Tosoni had the good sense to pull together the documentary If You Could Read My Mind back in 2019; Lightfoot was clearly in his twilight years at the time of filming, but he was still touring and mentally acute enough to properly contextualize his extraordinary life and career. Lightfoot’s body of work — think “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald,” think “Sundown,” think “If You Could Read My Mind” — is permanently etched in our collective consciousness, as giants of the Canadian music industry like Sarah McLachlan and Rush’s Geddy Lee attest in this above average music doc.
Photo: Everett Collection
