Walkabout The World - A Disney Podcast - Canada Walkabout Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald With Hosts Josh Pete And Jay

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Hello Travelers! Enjoy this short bonus episode for a walkabout the Canada pavilion as hosts Josh, Pete, and Jay honor the 50th anniversary of the last voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Great Lakes freighter that sank on this day, November 10, in 1975. The event was immortalized in song by Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, of which an instrumental version can be heard in the music loop at the Canada Pavilion in Epcot. You'll hear the full song after an introduction by the hosts and a short walkabout through the pavilion. Walkabout the World is now on TikTok! Come follow our visual companion to the audio podcast at Walkabout.the.world.pod on TikTok   Visit us at walkabouttheworld.com - find links to all the things - attraction episodes, Insta accounts of all the hosts, and even how to buy your own Walkabout shirt!   Look us up at @WalkaboutWDW on Instagram and drop us a note to say hi.   You can also drop us at line at [e-mail]. Say hi, tell us how you found us, and give us some suggestions on things you'd love to hear. Please consider giving us a rating and review wherever you listen - it really helps!

Well, hello, travelers, and welcome back to Walk About the World. Welcome to a special bonus edition of Walkabout. Again, we don't like to date ourselves except for on special occasions, and this is just something that we felt would be appropriate, given the anniversary of something that happened, and the tie that it has to our beloved Epcot, specifically the Canada Pavilion. If you've listened to us for a while, you'll know,

that we have a, what would you call it, Pete? What kind of a love for this? I don't know how to put it, like an affinity for Canada and the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. We're here because it is the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. If you don't know about the Edmund Fitzgerald, well, you've had 50 years to learn about it, so shame on you. November 10th, 1975. 7 p.m. Jay's here too. So we're here just kind of taking in the Canada Pavilion

because one of the songs in the Canada Loop is the song by the great Canadian folk songwriter. The one and only. Gordon Lightfoot. So if you're familiar with the song, the song tells a tale. of, mostly factual tale. Yeah, the facts that they know about.

They obviously don't know a whole lot about everything they know the route. They know who was on the ship. They just don't know kind of what happened to the ship. You know, why it was in peril and what happened. So there are some things that he took liberties with, such as the destination. of the ship. Correct. Going to Detroit, not to Cleveland,

but Detroit doesn't really flow. Flew well. Cleveland had a bit more of a musical tone to it. Now, I'm a Florida boy. I've been down here 30-something years, so I consider myself a Florida boy. But my co-hosts here, Jay and Pete, both grew up in the Midwest

in Chicago area. So they kind of grew up with that Lake Superior, I don't know, lore? More Great Lakes, Lore. The whole Great Lakes, area. We grew up on Lake Michigan,

obviously, you know, a large lake. But Lake Superior being the biggest of the lakes, the lake that all the other great lakes could fit inside of. Lake Superior. And I did get to spend four years on Lake Superior

at Northern Michigan University. So I got to spend a lot of time on the oardocks up there. And the anniversary was a big deal because almost all of the tankers celebrated by doing hornblasts or what they call barks to kind of commemorate the loss of the end of Fitzgerald. 29. All the crew perished in that horrible, horrible tragedy. Probably within minutes. Yeah, even though we don't know all the details. It's still something that you think about.

become almost legend. I mean, it's, there's, I mean, there's hundreds of thousands over the years of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. But this one was memorialized by the song. And so it's the one that everybody knows. It's the one that everybody at least knows of, even us Florida people. So we just wanted to kind of take some time to remember the crew and to remember the, uh, the Edmund Fitzgerald on, on this.

this day of the 50th anniversary, and we're going to take in just a quick little walkabout of the Canada Pavilion, and we will end with the song itself, as heard here at Epcot in the Canada Pavilion. But we'd be remissed if we didn't mention that we also honor Gordon Lightfoot, the singer-songwriter who is not with us anymore. And if it weren't for Lightfoot, the honest truth is this story probably would have been lost to time. And it became so important that every year at the Mariners Chapel, they ring the bell there

29 times, but in 2023, when he died, they added one extra ring for him, because without that song that he wrote, we probably wouldn't even know or be remembering the Edmund Fitzgerald at all. So he became a big part of the lore because of that. And that is why his songs are here in the Canada Pavilion. And that is why this one in particular, we are celebrating today. So let's take a little walk. I'm not going to, we're not going to talk. We've done our talking.

Right, boys? Talked quite a bit. We've talked. Now you know what this bonus episode's all about, so we're just going to take in some of the beauty of the Canada Pavilion at Epcot. We're going to listen to the audio, eh? Sorry, sorry. Sorry, sorry about that.

Sorry. We're going to enjoy our moose heads and our Ottawa apples. which is fantastic, by the way. Right. First time we've tried it. Great little whiskey and soda. Yeah. So we're going to enjoy our moose head Canadian beer as we walk around the Canada Pavilion,

and we hope you enjoy the rest of this bonus episode of Walkabout, and we will see you on the next episode, hopefully next week. So I will also say, is this one of the sweetest smells at Epcot when you walk by the... Maple popcorn, for sure. It's so good. It really is. Aside from getting stuck in your teeth, it's one of the best treats. It's worth the dental pain.

Yeah, let's face it, popcorn in general is just a dental nightmare. So it might as well enjoy it. All right, so we're starting here at the entrance to the Canada Pavilion, where the northwest mercantile and the trading posts are, and we are going to continue up the stairs and past the hotel. the hotel past the waterfalls we'll hear some waterfalls

and then end in the peaceful serenity of the butcher gardens as you exit the movie Canada far and wide so without further ado let's walk about