I know I'm coming to this party kinda late (really late, I guess!) but it was interesting seeing Gord's pedigree. Even more interesting was seeing that his great-great grandparents came from England, but he says his bloodlines are actually Scottish.
If my recollection of recent genealogical readings is right, the Lightfoot surname is seen on both sides of the English and Scottish border. Haven't seen anything, though, that definitively shows which side of the border the name actually originated from. I'm of Scots ancestry myself and even my own family name is seen on both sides. This seems to be a relatively common pattern with many Anglo-Saxon family names.
In a reply to this thread,
Brannah says he was born in Sarnia but raised in Oil Springs. I was born and raised in Sarnia too and on my mother's side have a pile of ancestors who came from the Dawn Township/Oil Springs/Petrolia area. As most students of Gord's origins know, Oil Springs isn't too far from Alvinston.
I have an uncle on my mother's side who is a bit of a rabid Lightfoot fan; he once suggested to me that his family was related to the Lightfoots in some way. A quick review of my mother's genealogy showed not a shred of evidence to support the claim, at least from a familial perspective.
However, family lore holds that the Lightfoots and my mother's family had some sort of a run-in way, way back. Again, I've seen no hard evidence of this. But considering that the Lightfoots started out as farmers in Lambton County and so did my ancestors, it's probably more likely than not they may have at least known of each other. The farming community in Lambton County isn't exactly huge, y'know.
Whenever I listen to
Brave Mountaineers, I'm always reminded of the farms and the countryside in the Oil Springs/Petrolia area. For some reason, I'm also reminded of wet country lanes on rainy fall afternoons whenever I hear
Looking at the Rain.
I would hazard a guess that the imagery in many Lightfoot songs was as informed by the countryside in Lambton County as it was by his early life in Orillia.
'Lightfoot Trucking' is a name that has surfaced in this thread. I once saw one of their trucks tooling around in London, Ontario. I also know one of Gord's uncles owns (or once owned) that business.
Indeed, I've long wondered if 'the trucker known as Bill' in 'Long Thin Dawn' was none other than Gord's uncle!
Gord's Pedigree
