National Post (National Edition)
All connected to The Hip
In the six-degrees-of-separation way that is the mark of the genuinely still-pretty-small country, I've almost/sort of crossed paths with Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip a half-dozen times.
I saw them in concert but once, way back when. It was at Massey Hall in downtown Toronto, maybe in the ' 80s or '90s, and my ex was still schooling me on music, though because he's a lovely guy, I don't think he saw it that way.
Some time later, I'm pretty sure I put Downie — I love the crazy as-if-electrified way he moves on stage and the way he just seems to throw clothes on, sweaters like your grandma knits and pants right out of the hamper, like he doesn't give a rat's, even when it's a posh suit — on the list of sexy men I used to put together every Valentine's Day when I worked at the Toronto Sun.
Then, a few years ago, when I was temporarily living in Kingston, Ont., to cover a long murder trial, my corner store was also at some point Downie's.
Though I never saw him, it made me feel better connected to the man and band who so connect Canadians to one another.
These are no real connections to the man or the band, of course, I recognize that, though I'd argue they're more meaningful than friending someone on Facebook.
But the thing is, there's something about Downie and The Hip — the lyrics of their songs/ anthems, the way they sound — that make me feel my country in my bones as surely if my feet were planted in the cold waters of a northern lake or I was sticking my tongue on a pole to see if this time it'll stick (it always does) or baking on the concrete slab of a city pool on a sweaty Toronto summer's day.
I love their music, know most of the words to most of the songs and shout them out in my wretched voice, love the way it pounds in the blood.
But it always makes me a little verklempt too, like my heart's in my throat and I'm overcome with love.
The only other singer who has the same effect on me is Neil Young, another Canuck. I'm not alone, of course. I know a guy, 25 years younger, who is a firefighter, and who spends his precious holiday time with his kids and wife and extended family at their cottage, ending most every day by his account by blasting The Hip around the camp fire. We actually talk about the band like that, too, almost every summer, which is ridiculous. (Of course, his family is like the fire department version of Blue Bloods, freaking generations of service, ridiculously close, and, in my imagination at least, a brawling happy bunch.)
My goddaughter, who is even younger, and her friends all love the band. I have little doubt her baby girl, Harper (not named after the former PM, but born about the time he got his ass whupped in the last election, which meant I didn't go around disclosing her name for a while), will love them too. Knowing The Hip, knowing their music, is like an inter-generational secret handshake known only to Canadians and Americans from the border states.
Everyone was talking and thinking of Downie this week, of course, when the band announced first that he has terminal brain cancer and second, that The Hip is doing an 11-date tour across Canada this summer.
In the modern manner, that was followed by stories on the type of tumour Downie has (glioblastoma) and the treatment he's had (surgery, chemo and radiation), interviews with his doctor (who was as good docs are blunt, yet cheerful, and who predicts no difficulty with the summer tour) and confident, if almost maudlin, pronouncements that the tour will be emotional, with Downie getting lots of special love from the fans.
Downie must have known all this would unfold just as it did, which makes how he handled things remarkably gutsy.
It's one thing to face your own mortality in private, and prepare the people you love, quite another to announce it, knowing that for a short while after at least (nothing lasts more than a short while now), the papers and social media would be full of news about glioblastoma and its prognosis and all that.
But then, in the words of one of the greatest Hip songs, Ahead By A Century, “No dress rehearsal, this is our life.”
This is Gord Downie's life. Good Kingston boys, The Hip have been together for three decades. This is what they do and who they are, and that at least from the outside looking in it may be the best job in the world — to make music, loud and poetic rock 'n' roll, before thousands of people who are paying serious attention — doesn't take away from that.
It's funny. We are a culture momentarily obsessed with death, “medically assisted” death and the right to what's called a good death. And there's Gord Downie and The Hip, showing us what that really means: To die with your boots on, doing what you love with the people you love for as long as possible.
nationalpost.com EVEN OUR HISTORY, AS WE TEACH IT TO OURSELVES AND OUR CHILDREN, DOES NOTHING TO MAKE US FEEL A UNITED PEOPLE. — ROBERT FULFORD