Gordon Lightfoot Forums - rare Lightfoot photo found-St.Paul's church-Orillia

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Rare Lightfoot photo found

Robert Chapman, a member of the property committee at St. Paul’s United Church, unearthed a decades-old photo of a chancel choir that included a young Gordon Lightfoot. The young singer is pictured slightly right of middle, by the doorway.
Orillia Today
By Frank Matys
Deep in the bowels of St. Paul’s United Church, a historical treasure lurked among piles of decades-old ephemera.

A glossy black-and-white photograph, snapped in 1952, depicts the chancel choir assembled outside the building.

And there, alongside his fellow vocalists in matching choir gowns stands a young Gordon Lightfoot, the fresh-faced singer sporting a short haircut and a smile.

“You can just tell right away, that’s him,” says Robert Chapman, a member of the property committee.

Chapman discovered the photo while conducting a “purge” of old documents that had amassed in the church’s walk-in vault over the years.

“The vault was filled right to the door, stacked full,” he said.

Sifting through the boxes that crowded the small windowless room, Chapman found old receipts, building blueprints, wartime memorabilia, and photographs of staff and musical productions from years gone by.

Two boxes in particular included choir photos, and a third brimmed with “extraneous” photos, he said.

It was in the third box that was stored the picture that most captured Chapman’s attention.

“Attached to the photo is a list of the names identifying the people on the back as well as a typed version affixed to the front,” he said. “His name is listed there.”

Armed with a magnifying glass, Chapman examined the tiny faces and, before long, pinpointed Lightfoot’s image.

“I thought, ‘There he is’,” he says.

Long before ascending to the top of the charts and becoming a legendary singer/songwriter, Lightfoot, an Orillia resident at the time, attended St. Paul’s United Church.

His association with the local parish remains strong.

Lightfoot has visited the church on several occasions in recent years, reminiscing about his years in the choir and its role in developing the voice that today is recognized around the globe.

Chapman couldn’t say how the church plans to use the picture.

“That would be the next question,” he added.