Highway 400, the second longest freeway in the province, may end up with a new name—if thousands of people have their way. A petition to rename the popular highway “The Gordon Lightfoot Memorial Highway” has received nearly 19,000 signatures since it was launched in early March.
Lightfoot, a native of Orilla, Ontario, passed in May of last year in Toronto at the age of 84. The Canadian singer-songwriter, known for his pop-folk music throughout the 1960s and 1970s, composed more than 425 songs, with popular hits such as “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Sundown”.
The highway runs north from Toronto—where Lightfoot lived his adult life—past Orillia, where he lived his youth.
Douglas Walkinshaw, who launched the petition, noted that renaming Highway 400 after the Canadian icon would honour him and, perhaps in some cases, allow people to “be made aware of his songs and the beautiful country he came from.”
Walkinshaw adds that there are precedents of highways being renamed for popular singers. For example, in Quebec a portion of AutoRoute 40 is named after Félix Leclerc, an internationally renowned Quebec French folk singer, and Autoroute 50 in Western Quebec was recently renamed Autoroute Guy-Lafleur.
“In Ontario two highways come to mind, James Snow Parkway, honouring a provincial politician and the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway honouring two of the Canada’s founders,” he noted. “Imagine the happy thoughts and songs that will come to mind and be played in vehicles as people from Canada and abroad travel this highway northward to and past Orillia and onward to the beautiful Muskoka Lakes, Georgian Bay and beyond!”
That’s a mouthful to say, what about
‘The Lightfoot Highway’— Myreflection (@Myreflection__) April 6, 2024
I dunno, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald seems more fitting for the 400 series
— Mr. X of the Greenbelt Xs (@jimmiejaz) April 6, 2024
So far, the idea is picking up traction across social media.
