50 Days, 50 Songs to the 50 Years on the Carefree Highway Concert

Day 43


Another feel-good song. I like it because it’s about a small town and flowers and birds singing and-- what else-- summertime.

Where the road runs down by the butternut grove

To old Bill Skinner’s stream

Do tell at the noonday bell

It’s time for a summertime dream.

Summertime Dream, Gordon Lightfoot

50 Days, 50 Songs to the 50 Years on the Carefree Highway Concert

Day 44


This is probably one of Gordon Lightfoot’s best known songs. While Canadian fans had known and appreciated his music for a long time, this was the first song to break into the top ten. If you were around in the early 1970s, it’s the song that probably introduced you to Gordon Lightfoot. It’s a song about love that changes and feelings that have gone. A little sad, a little wistful, and even this many years later, if you’re a fan, you never tire of hearing it.



If I could read your mind, love

What a tale your thoughts could tell

Just like a paperback novel

The kind the drugstore sells

When you read the part where the heartache comes

The hero would be me

But heroes often fail.

If You Could Read My Mind, Gordon Lightfoot

50 Days, 50 Songs to the 50 Years on the Carefree Highway Concert

Day 45


This song has always been one of my favorites. Written to help celebrate Canada’s centennial celebration, it’s an ambitious song that’s played in three parts and tells of the building of the railroad across that country. A saga in itself, it says much about the men who worked and lived and died to make that dream come true.

Oh there was a time in this fair land

When the railroad did not run

When the wild majestic mountains

Stood alone against the sun

Long before the white man and

Long before the wheel

When the green dark forest was too silent

To be real

Canadian Railroad Trilogy, Gordon Lightfoot

50 Days, 50 Songs to the 50 Years on the Carefree Highway Concert

Day 46


Another song about sailing, but this one is light and mellow, makes you think of warm winds and gentle waves. It’s what I call a feel-good song.

I’m sailin’ down the summer wind

I’ve got whiskers on my chin

And I like the mood I’m in

As I while away the time of day

In the lee of Christian Island.

Christian Island, Gordon Lightfoot

50 Days, 50 Songs to the 50 Years on the Carefree Highway Concert

Day 47



Another favorite theme in many of Gordon Lightfoot’s songs: ships and sailors. Ships on the high seas, ships of the Great Lakes, and the weathered sailors who man them. Some of the songs are lighthearted and lilting, others tragic. None is more haunting than this song that tells of the many ships that were lost when they sailed around the treacherous Cape Horn of South America.

All around Old Cape Horn

Ships of the line, ships of the morn

Some who wish they’d never been born

They are the Ghosts of Cape Horn

Ghosts of Cape Horn, Gordon Lightfoot

50 Days, 50 Songs to the 50 Years on the Carefree Highway Concert

Day 48


Being down on your luck, going home, wanting to see your family, missing the people you love—they’re common themes in many of Gordon Lightfoot’s songs. This song expresses all of that.

Oh the prairie lights are burnin’ bright

The Chinook wind is a movin’ in

Tomorrow night I’ll be Alberta bound.

Though I’ve done the best I’ve could,

My old luck ain’t been so good,

And tomorrow night I’ll be Alberta bound.

Alberta Bound, Gordon Lightfoot

50 Days, 50 Songs to the 50 Years on the Carefree Highway Concert

Day 49


This song has always been one of my favorites. Maybe because I like ponies. It’s a song about a Peter-Pan-like someone who takes children on magical fantasy adventures while they sleep. The lyrics speak of pirate ships, holds filled with gold, and ponies that “live on candy apples instead of oats and hay.” That we should all have such lovely dreams!

When it’s midnight in the meadow and the cats are in the shed

And the river tells a story at the window by my bed

If you listen very closely, be as quiet as you can

In the yard you’ll hear him, it is the pony man.

The Pony Man, Gordon Lightfoot