Status Updates From Lightfoot

"Although he hadn't lived there in over forty years, Orillia always defined him, shaping and carrying him through life the way the soil sustains a tree.... [T]he song's last verse took on an eerie foreshadowing. "When I get my final slumber, when I pawn my diamond ring / I will do my final number, by Lake Couchiching." That prophecy was almost fulfilled that night." - p. 253

Admirably, in the 1980s Lightfoot became sober, started investing more in the relationships with his children and supported and covered the legal costs for Cathy Smith, his lover from over a decade earlier, as she faced charges and public ire for administering the fatal dose of heroin to John Belushi. Even encouraged her to write a memoir and connected her with writing contacts after her prison sentence ended.

"Then he turned his back to the audience...for a full minute. When he faced us he was in tears, and in broken sobs repeated that he could not continue the concert, that he was sorry, we could have our money back.... His cool, his professional composure, disintegrated before our eyes and we were facing a man whose personal tragedies had gotten him in the wrong place at the wrong time." Even our heroes fail at times.