Gordon Lightfoot, one of Canada’s biggest musical stars, died last night. Here are a few clips of him online:

As you can see, this post was originally about the death of Gordon Lightfoot, as reported in the Ottawa Citizen. The Citizen‘s report has been removed, because Lightfoot’s manager has confirmed that his client is about as dead as Jeff Goldblum. In fact, as I write this update, Lightfoot is on TV denying he’s dead. I choose to believe him; others might not.

Yes, it seems like the reports of Lightfoot’s death, as “confirmed” by newspapers, were premature. (Well, by definition, any report of a death is premature unless the guy is actually dead. This is one area where you are either right or wrong, no in-betweens.) This is a very good thing, but as someone said on Twitter, “we’ve lost a Canadian legend’s rumour.” So the celebrity death story of the day is of a celebrity who turned out not to be dead; that’s a welcome change.

Update: Now Toronto has the confirmation of his aliveness, and they’ve also saved the “official” death report that Canwest is currently scrubbing from their websites.

In the meantime, the clips are still good, so they might as well remain up.

Lightfoot as a guest on The Johnny Cash Show in 1969, singing “Ribbon of Darkness”:

Lightfoot performing his ’70s hit “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Lightfoot in 1980, being interviewed by Alan Thicke on the set of his only feature film, Harry Tracy, Desperado.

And back to that Johnny Cash Show appearance, here’s Lightfoot doing a brief interview and then doing his hit song “For Lovin’ Me” as a duet with his host: