Downie gets a hero’s farewell
Victoria embraces singer, iconic Canadian band as emotional concert launches final tour
VICTORIA — What will Canada do without Gord Downie?
That was the question hanging in the air at Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre on Friday night, as 8,300 fans came to celebrate The Tragically Hip one last time on Vancouver Island.
“F--- cancer,” read a fan’s T-shirt outside the arena: A middle finger to the disease that will take Downie away from us and relegate the Hip to the history books.
There was sadness and anger but ultimately a great sense of joy in the kickoff concert for the band’s Man Machine Poem Tour.
The arena was filled with memories as everyone told their favourite Hip stories and talked about the first time they heard the band.
“Too many to count” was a common answer, either referring to favourite songs or the number of times people had seen the band in concert.
Since 1984 the band has been Canada’s own rock messengers, never destined to make it big anywhere else. Downie’s lyrics were madman poetry dipped in Canadiana.
It only made sense to us because the songs were about us, the places we’re from — from Bobcaygeon to Lake Memphremagog to Mistaken Point, Nfld. — and the people that shaped our land — from Jacques Cartier to Bill Barilko.
So we were ready. Ready to lose ourselves in Downie, in guitarists Robbie Baker and Paul Langlois, in bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay.
The roar of the crowd was deafening as Downie and the band stepped on stage at exactly 8:30 p.m., Downie dressed in a shiny pink suit and with feathers in his hat, Mardi Gras-style. (Costume changes later on would turn the suit silver, then gold.)
“When it starts to fall apart, it really falls apart,” Downie sang right away on a disarming Boots Or Hearts before the band, huddled together in the middle of the stage as if playing a tiny bar in Sarnia, ripped straight into New Orleans Is Sinking. Everyone hollered the lyrics at the top of their lungs.
All the emotions came flooding in at once: Grins mingled with tears, shivers down your spine with arms outstretched.
Downie was giving everything he had. On Blow At High Dough, Baker’s slide solo roared, high and mighty, on Machine it was Downie’s turn to wail, “I’m a real machine.”
Downie broke into a rare spoken word bit during a portion dedicated to 1998’s Phantom Power. At the end of crowd favourite Poets, he repeated, “You don’t have to worry.”
He then mimicked reeling in a fish with his microphone at the end of a starry Bobcaygeon. Many were hugging, plenty were crying.
Downie didn’t say much to the crowd, preferring to let the lyrics and music do the work.
When he did speak, it was a dedication.
“Here’s one for my good old dad,” he said before The Lonely End of the Rink.
A monster Little Bones during a part dedicated to classic album Road Apple had the crowd chanting, “Gordie! Gordie!”
In the end, Downie stood alone in the spotlight, white top and gold pants, a feather in his cap and an entire room screaming for him.
A hero’s farewell.