Why Arizona should be grateful for Gordon Lightfoot, Canada and the culture they shared

Arizona and Canada have enjoyed a cordial relationship ever since our neighbor to the north found our sunshine and easygoing nature a welcome getaway from their own icy exhales, mostly in the western provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

Ever since Ontario’s Gordon Lightfoot drifted past an Arizona signpost with “Carefree Highway” and turned it into a hit song and household name ...

Ever since British Columbia’s Steve Nash began throwing darts to the other Phoenix Suns ...

Ever since Ontario’s Ryan Gosling and Arizona’s Emma Stone twirled in the Hollywood Hills and rebirthed the MGM musical ...

Arizona and Canada have had this thing — this fond affection.

Arizona thrives off its Canadian ties

When the winter cold begins to bite, Canadians have loaded up their motorhomes and their big 707s and set their compass for the Grand Canyon State.

Today the 707s have morphed into Boeing 737s, but still some 975,000 Canadians a year visit Arizona, reports the Maricopa Association of Governments or MAG.

Yes, Arizonans complain about the “snowbirds” who drive a bit too slow, but they dare not speak ill of them around the small restaurants and coffeeshops in Phoenix and Scottsdale, whose owners thrive off the winter migration.

Snowbirds bring $1.4 billion annually to the Arizona economy, MAG reports.

Gordon Lightfoot told their story well

I was thinking about all of this on Tuesday after news broke that Gordon Lightfoot had passed away, and his aching melodies began playing across the internet.

Pierre Poilievre, head of the Canadian Conservative Party, posted Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” and I thought that was the perfect tribute.

It was not Lightfoot’s biggest hit and probably a song too long for radio, but it is the song I, too, would have chosen for the moment.

It’s about the sweat labor that built the Canadian railroad and the spine of that nation.

We are the navvies who work upon the railway

Swingin' our hammers in the bright blazin' sun

We would've lost this history, if not for him

As a young person I thrilled at that song and the way Lightfoot used the thrum of guitars to match the rhythm of the locomotive. Just like a steam engine, his song strains to gain movement until the pace quickens and the music glides down the tracks and across the forests, racing for the Canadian Rockies.

Oh, the song of the future has been sung

All the battles have been won

On the mountaintops we stand

All the world at our command

The triumph belongs to those long-forgotten working people who built the Canadian rails, who if not for Lightfoot would be completely erased from modern memory.

A culture we've adopted, only more modest

The greater part of Gordon Lightfoot’s music seems to come from places forlorn, remote towns and taverns where Canadians might have once found the real Gordon Lightfoot hoisting a pint.

Many young people today have never heard of Lightfoot and his folk rock, but in the 1970s virtually all young Americans knew his melodies — “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Song for a Winter’s Night.”

Thinking about him as the news broke and the music played filled me with gratitude for Canada and a popular culture that is very much a part of our own. But also for a culture that stands apart, charmed with a modesty we lack in the states.

I see Canada in the warmth of now deceased actor and Ontario funny man John Candy, whose comedy gleamed with goodness that could not be faked.

You can see it in the NHL, in Shane Doan

I see it in the working-class roots of ice hockey, a game the Canadians invented and that can only properly be played with a stick, ice skates, a puck and a lunch bucket.

Years ago, one of our NHL beat writers in Arizona noted that of all the athletes she has covered, the nicest are the hockey players.

When I was a kid, about 75% of the National Hockey League was Canadian. Today it’s about 50%, but the game’s culture is ruggedly Canadian.

In travel: Canadian carrier moves flights to Sky Harbor

Mostly it embraces pain, a commitment measured by throwing your body in front of a puck moving 100 mph and the teeth lost in such endeavors.

Out of such violence comes people who are exceptionally decent, as we saw in Arizona over the 21 seasons of Alberta’s Shane Doan.

It makes me long to be 16 again

I see Canada in Michael J. Fox, the All-American kid from Alberta who drove a DeLorean “Back to the Future” and who aped Ronald Reagan in “Family Ties.” We tell the most conservative kid in our own family he’s Alex P. Keaton and he wrinkles his face and says, “Who?”

Only a week ago, that same Michael J. Fox, who has been stricken with Parkinson’s Disease, told CBS Sunday Morning he can hear death knocking. But the spark is still in his eye.

“I am genuinely a happy guy,” he told Jane Pauley. “I don’t have a morbid thought in my head — I don’t fear death. At all.”

This week, as I listen to another Canadian, Nova Scotia’s Sarah McLachlan, and her brilliant cover of Lightfoot’s “Song For A Winter’s Night,” music that mimics the sub-zero wind gusts McLachlan no doubt heard on winter nights growing up in Halifax, I once again feel gratitude for Canada and its people and its culture.

And especially for Gordon Lightfoot, whose music is so much a part of my life it makes me long to be 16 again.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Gordon Lightfoot reminds me why Arizona should be grateful for Canada