Ian Tyson, the Canadian folk music trailblazer, has died at the age of 89.
His manager says the Victoria native passed away at his ranch in southern Alberta after a series of ongoing health complications.
Tyson started out in the late 1950s, hitchhiking across Canada to Toronto, where he got swept up in the local folk movement in Yorkville.
That’s where he met Sylvia Fricker and they began a professional and personal relationship.
Tyson wrote what’s arguably considered one of the greatest Canadian songs, ”Four Strong Winds,” which he sang with his former wife, who called it ”kind of like a Canadian national anthem.”