A group of residents is bringing back Orillia Lightfoot Days this fall in memory of the late folk legend.
John Winchester, a lifelong Gordon Lightfoot fan, has been working with a group of residents to bring three days worth of Lightfoot music and festivities to the city from Nov. 3-5.
The original event began 10 years ago following the success of Gordon Lightfoot’s 75th birthday celebrations, but had since stopped taking place.
Winchester said former St. Paul’s minister, Karen Hilfman Millson, had the idea to resurrect it for what would have been Lightfoot’s 85th birthday.
“With everything that's happened in the last few months, it was thought by Karen (Hilfman Millson) to reinstitute it because this would have been his 85th birthday coming up on the 17th of November,” Winchester said.
Although the fall festivities are still in the planning stages, Winchester said the group has a number of events in the works for the weekend.
Pending final approval by the church, the plan is to host events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at St. Paul’s Centre, with tribute band, Classic Lightfoot Live, already booked by the group for Nov. 3.
On Saturday, the plan is to host a viewing of the four in-depth interviews Lightfoot had with Hilfman Millson between 2006 and 2013, projected onto St. Paul’s screens during the day.
Hilfman Millson is also thinking of hosting a Lightfoot-themed church service at St. Paul’s on Sunday, Winchester said.
Winchester said the group also has a tentative bus tour planned for Saturday, which would bring fans to various sites through the city, including the monuments at Tudhope Park and Orillia Opera House, Lightfoot’s final resting place, and other locations — such as the sites of Lightfoot’s former schools, as well as St. Paul’s — that were integral to his life.
Winchester said the group also hopes to work with local restaurants, merchants, and artists to add more Lightfoot-themed activities to the city over the weekend.
“The other idea we have is to have local restaurants, like they did 10 years ago, book artists in who might perform some Lightfoot songs on the Saturday night,” he said. “The idea being if we can attract people outside of the area to come up, go to the concert Friday night, stick around on Saturday, (it could) contribute to the local economy.”
Winchester said the group has begun reaching out to local businesses and organizations to garner interest in the event, and he said any would-be volunteers can contact him ([email protected]).
“There’s just a lot of ideas about things we'd like to put into place,” he said. “How effective we are depends on the level of interest and how many volunteers we can get to help us do these things.”
The idea is to, hopefully, bring the Orillia Lightfoot Days back as a local event, which Winchester says could both be good for the local economy, while also celebrating a folk icon who helped put Orillia on the map.
“You’re highlighting all that Orillia has to offer and it benefits hotels, it benefits restaurants,” Winchester said. “But as much as it is that, it's also celebrating somebody who's such a Canadian cultural icon, and he never forgot this was his hometown. He lived most of his adult life in Toronto, but he never forgot about Orillia.”
