The real story of who is behind the Gordon Lightfoot is sort of like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Each media outlet has a little bit of the puzzle, but there is still a bit of a mystery.

First, Facebook played an unseen role in this drama. The social networking site has become the go-to place for public grief, so it’s no surprise that it helped set off the first alarm bells about the “death.”  The source of the first digital mention? Ronnie Hawkins‘ wife, Wanda.

From Sean Michaels’ article in the Guardian (emphasis mine):

This will have come as a relief to Ronnie Hawkins, the musician whose backing band became the Band. A friend of Lightfoot’s, he was quoted in the early Canwest story, confirming the news. Hawkins said he had received a call from his management in Minneapolis, who had in turn received a call from Lightfoot’s grandson, telling them the singer had died. “I don’t know Gordon’s grandson,” Hawkins later told the Globe and Mail. “I didn’t even know if Gordon has a grandson. I called my wife in Florida and told her, and I guess she faxed some of her friends and now, all of a sudden, it’s all over the world. It’s terrible. I can’t even get hold of Gordon. Holy smoke, it’s unbelievable.” … Hawkins suggested they trace the phone call to Minneapolis. “I think they can trace that phone call, maybe, and see who did that,” he said. “I’m glad it is a sick joke, but it’s bad.”

Several sources have now confirmed that the prank call to Hawkins’ management set the ball in motion, and this is when Wanda Hawkins took to the phone, fax machine, and Facebook.

This is where our Ottawa tweeter, @fleminksi, comes in. She knows a close friend of Wanda Hawkins. Our Ottawa tweeter’s friend shared her grief on Facebook. The Ottawa tweeter in turn expresses her grief on Twitter and concurrently (and unrelated) CanWest is on the phone with Ronnie Hawkins–who no doubt believes his wife–and expresses his grief to the newspaper.

Meanwhile, this confirmation triggers an “alert” to go out across the CanWest newswire and CanWest reporters across Canada start tweeting it.

David Akin has some reflective and characteristically classy words about all of this on his blog.

And as Media Memo’s Peter Kafka says: Twitter didn’t kill Gordon Lightfoot, Big Media did.

But say it is true. Twitter still didn’t force Canwest, the big Canadian media conglomerate, to publish a wire report that said the singer was dead. As best I can tell, it was that story, which was picked up by various Canwest newspaper sites, that convinced people that Lightfoot had croaked.

As Kafka says, this doesn’t suggest that CanWest is off the hook for not double or triple sourcing their facts. And, had an editor at CanWest News Service jumped onto the Twitter search, they too could have found–in well less than 30 minutes–that Lightfoot was alive.

Here is the point I think people should be very clear on: while the tweet from @fleminski came first, it certainly wasn’t what set off the nearly 3,000+ tweets in two hours. That is most certainly the fault of whoever pressed the “go” button on the CanWest wire alert.

All in all, only one person should be very happy about all of this: Gordon Lightfoot. His radio play hasn’t been this big in decades and he just successfully introduced himself to a generation of Canucks who thought he was already dead.

Update:  Some added information from a friend of the “Ottawa tweeter” at ThreeSeven.ca

However, it appears that the mainstream media jumped on it. Within half an hour of tweeting, Fleminski received a phone call from a reporter from CanWest (1. holy sleuth work, and 2. boundaries much, media?) asking for the source. She replied honestly: Ronnie Hawkins. The media then called Hawkins who confirmed the story. Believing they had a confirmed story, the media then ran with it.