Music icon Gordon Lightfoot to be honoured with Geordie Lishman sculpture in Pickering park

Pickering will be honouring the legacy of music legend Gordon Lightfoot with a sculpture created by another Gordie, Geordie Lishman, to be installed at Ernie Stroud Park in the city’s west end.

Pickering Council’s Executive Committee endorsed the commission of ‘Gordon’s Guitar,’ to be installed at the park, an appropriate location as it sits a block from a street called Lightfoot Place.

The project will be financed through the Public Art Reserve, with a budget of $53,933 and installed next spring.

‘Inspire’ by Geordie Lishman. Part of a series of four sculptures installed at Pickering’s Esplanade Park

Lightfoot was a singer, songwriter, and guitarist from Orillia who was one of the most acclaimed and respected songwriters of the 20th century, with more than 400 recorded songs. Lightfoot, who died May 1, 2023, was also one of the most covered songwriters of his generation, with his music recorded by other artists more than 100 times.

Lishman, the son of celebrated artist, filmmaker, inventor and naturalist Bill Lishman (made famous by the film Fly Away Home) and fur designer Paula Lishman, has been a noted artist and sculptor in his own right since he was a teenager in the 90s.

He worked with his father creating several metal works, notably the Max Tanenbaum Sculpture Garden at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, throughout the 90s and also worked on several 3-D animation projects, including the movie ‘Air Bud 4’ and ‘A Wrinkle in Time.

In 2005 he established his own metal working studio in his Ajax home.

‘Communitree’ by Geordie Lishman. Installed outside a Shell station at Taunton and Salem in Ajax

An art teacher at Durham College since 2007, Lishman has created many notable works of art in Durham Region in the ensuing decades, including a four-sculpture collection (‘Spirit of Pickering’) in Esplanade Park in Pickering and ‘Communitree,’ which lives at the Shell station at Salem Road and Taunton Road in Ajax and represents the town’s ‘past, present and future.’

Lishman, whose dedication to sustainability inspires him to use almost exclusively recycled materials (most of his metal comes from scrapyards), lives on a farm in Ajax first settled buy his great-great-great-grandparents in the early 1800s.

Lightfoot was a singer, songwriter, and guitarist from Orillia who was one of the most acclaimed and respected songwriters of the 20th century, with more than 400 recorded songs. Lightfoot, who died May 1, 2023, was also one of the most covered songwriters of his generation, with his music recorded by other artists more than 100 times.

Geordie Lishman