Gordon Lightfoot Lives!

On Thursday, the Canadian news media (not to mention the general population of the Twitterverse) was abuzz with apparent news that Mr. Lightfoot, 71, the smooth-voiced singer-songwriter of “Sundown" and “Carefree Highway," had died while on tour.

But like the man sang in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," the legend lives on: Reuters reported that Mr. Lightfoot called into Toronto's CP24 news station to say he was very much alive. “It seems like a bit of a hoax," Mr. Lightfoot said. “I was quite surprised to hear it myself." He added: “I feel fine."

The mistaken report of Mr. Lightfoot's death, which appears to have originated on Twitter, was carried by the Canwest News Service as well as the Web sites of the Vancouver Sun, Ottawa Citizen, and Calgary Herald newspapers, all of which have since corrected their stories. Mr. Lightfoot, meanwhile, has walked away like a movie star who gets burned in a three-way script, whatever that means.