Canada Thanks Gord
It’s impossible to look back on 2016 without noting Donald Trump’s unlikely presidential election. In Canada, though, our most emotionally charged moments played out to the tunes of The Tragically Hip. In the wake of Gord Downie’s battle with terminal brain cancer, the Hip announced the band’s Man Machine Poem tour – a Canada-wide wave goodbye culminating with a show in the band’s hometown of Kingston, Ont., and one final opportunity to celebrate what many consider our national soundtrack. Downie epitomized the “courage” he famously crooned about, both on stage and later that year, when he released his multimedia project Secret Path, raising donations and awareness of the plight of Indigenous people in Canada, including our history of residential schools. The work Downie did is still showing results, with the Trudeau government recently announcing a new statutory holiday in remembrance of the survivors and victims of Canada’s residential school system.