Gales Of November Remembered

I took a walk around "New" Campus (or West Campus as it is now known) yesterday. I was following the line of the Lake and taking photos, since the weather had cleared...but the waves were just as bad as the day before.

On my way back to main campus, I saw this tall piece of metal and got closer to it, in order to read the plaque at the bottom. It is called "Gales Of November Remembered". I immediately figured out that this piece must be in remembrance of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

So, of course I Googled it and found an article in the local paper, about the commissioning of the artwork.

If you look close, you see the backbone of a ship way at the top of the metal. I don't think it is what the ship looked like, but it is just to give the impression of a sunken ship. Of course, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, far away from our piece of Lake Ontario, but the school has always connected with it. Especially since the Gordon Lightfoot song, mentions Lake Ontario in the lyrics.

By the way, I was going to school here in 1975, the night the Edmund Fitzgerald sank. The song came out a year later, in 1976. It is one of my most enduring memories of that time and that place, so I feel this piece of artwork belongs by our lakefront.

"Lake Huron rolls, Superior sing
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below, Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered" *

*Lyrics from Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.