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Should you happen to be taking the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel from Motor City back to Canada, it’s impossible to miss the Mariners’ Church of Detroit.

This Anglican church, dating back to 1842, is an architectural masterpiece. As well, this venue was immortalized in song by Gordon Lightfoot with The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

This moving ballad was first released in 1976 – a year after the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior when “the gales of November came early.”

The song is perhaps best described as an example of beautiful sadness (much like The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band.)

Gordon Lightfoot, who passed away two years ago, scored a number one hit with the ballad that spoke of the freighter and the 29 crewmen who drowned while “Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin” enroute to Cleveland.

Lightfoot’s song is a chilling account of the tragedy. It is so intimate it feels as though Lightfoot himself was a member of the crew on that tragic night. And this song is stacked with the sort of lyrics that make one’s neck hairs stand on end (example: “Does anyone know where the love of God goes; When the waves turn the minutes to hours?”)

Speaking of God, Lightfoot makes mention of the Mariners’ Church of Detroit (albeit he misnamed the church): “In a musty old hall in Detroit, they prayed; In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral; The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times; For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

When Lightfoot himself passed away in 2023, the church honoured him by ringing that bell 30 times, representing the sailors who perished on that hellacious night in 1975 as well as the musician who immortalized them in song.

While this great musician has passed, the Mariners’ Church of Detroit remains. And it is well worth a tour should you visit Motown.

Postscript: in the department of irony, Gordon Lightfoot passed away on May 1, 2023 – May Day.