The Tragically Hip: Canada's Band

Serindipitous Canadiana

For Kev, for Colin, for the Pulse boys, for Canada

      FIRST: I am and always will be a Pearl Jam man first, but there are times I think it would be more appropriate if the Tragically Hip was my very favourite band.

      SECOND: I wasn’t going to see the Hip on their farewell tour. Intentionally not.

I’ve become aware that I’m awfully Canadian. Painfully, irreparably, pridefully (so, humbly), cynically, critically, wonderfully, adjectatively Canadian. Eh! I read Pierre Berton on purpose because he brings me joy, I support local breweries (really, really support) and think Bud and Bud Light are swill. Maple Walnut is one of my favourite flavours. On a recent road trip I painstakingly developed my family a 200-song playlist called the Great Canadian Sonsteby Road Trip. I’m obsessed with our history, culture, politics. Municipal, regional, historical. I effing loved Beachcombers. I take pride (not the correcting and patronizing type of pride, real, honest pride) in the fact that we are a nation forged by more sensible things than war and revolution. I love the Jays, the CFL (Riders!), the Raptors, and the Habs. Because I’m a hockey fan I can’t in good sensibility like the Leafs. They don’t play hockey.

I have three fish on my desk and they’re all named Gord. (Lightfoot, Downie, and Howe).

So the Hip would be the fit for my favourite band, because they are the most Canadian band. But maybe it’s best that I share them. As all good Canadians know, what’s good for one of us is good for all of us. Like health care, Canadians are equal before the Hip. Almost socialist (he said, admiring the word and the fact he typed it in Southern Alberta and didn’t combust into flames) eh? I love the Hip a lot along with the rest of you.

And the reason I wasn’t going to see the Hip on this farewell tour is because I’ve seen them several times, just recently on the Fully Completely 20^th anniversary tour (duuuuuude). But the main reason was they’re a happy and good band and I wasn’t sure I wanted to see them under unhappy circumstances. The idea of watching them while Gord Downie’s brain cancer hovers in the room, while it’s all tears and farewells, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of it. The pariah scalpers made it worse (let’s not forget them a-holes after this, right?) and I solidly sat back in my happy memories and full (-ish, this is Canada, and we have taxes that pay for roads and health care) wallet.

Then, two days before the second of the two Calgary shows I caved. I needed to be there for the Hip’s farewell tour. I needed to go with my best friend who is the biggest Hip fan (he’s the only one who can have them to himself). I was shaken by how emotional it was for me. Cathartic.

And because I went at short notice I had a ticket by myself in a good spot and I paid below face value for it. Suck it, scalpers. (I was able to go in with Kev, go home with Kev, and trade a couple of “I love you, man” texts with Kev during the show, so all good to being alone with 15,000 pals.)

So I went, and even though it was at the crappy Saddledome with it’s odd-gawful sound, it was one of the very best concerts I’ve been to. It reminded me why I like concerts. The crowd and its responses to Gordie, his bandmates and their pure love for the man. It was a wholesome group, a crew, a plural. The most Canadian of bands because it was a group centered around an individual but an individual and I know the grammar of this sucker abandoned us in about the second period but hayzoos! what a pure thing to see and here comes the final period: .

No onstage douchebaggery. No douchebaggery in the stands. People shouted “I love you Gordie!” and “Fuck cancer!” between songs. The last time I ever felt this joyful in a crowd of my peers was at my first Hip concert. Craven, 1995, Another Roadside Attraction. The night “Pigeon Camera” and “Grace, Too” shook my soul and have forever since.

This was like being in church with 15,000 very likeable and like-minded people. And good church. Celebration church. Yes, it was grim. No, Gordie couldn’t adlib and tell awesome stories like “Killer Whale Tank” (and do yourself a favour and get the live Calgary version of “Grace, Too” which is a bonus on Now for Plan A and shows a man in the throes of not being able to start a song for being lost in his own onstage storytelling) mid-song and that was sad. But it was beautiful as well, and when Gordie sang, “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you” at the end of “Scared,” mugging the camera for the screens—dude, even Tie Domi would’ve balled if his tear ducts hadn’t been punched shut by Bob Probert.

It hit us, deep in our Canadian hearts and our Canadian identities and in our Canadian us-ness.

After all, this is the Tragically Hip we’re talking here. The most Canadian band. The band with the clever Canadian lyrics, and a name that’s still pretty damn clever nearly (ONLY!) thirty years later. There were those who had trouble figuring them in the early days—Gordie’s tremolo an acquired taste—although nobody could fail to toe-tap at the meat and potatoes rock and roll of their first three albums. Fully Completely did it for me. But they grew, and even those who don’t love them respect them.

‘Cause they’re the Hip. Canada’s band.

So let’s get morbid, shall we? Tell me that you, like me, didn’t pray to the cancer gods to choose another victim. Take Celine! Take Bryan! Take Anne! Hell, Lightfoot’s had a good run, take him! Take Jann--no wait, she's an awesome singer and funny in a world needing laughter. Take Paul Brandt! He actually sucks life from this country. Big Sugar’s reunion appears to be a flop, take that Gordie. Imagine the blues he could write in heaven! Blues? Even Colin James, man! Bieber, Bieber, a thousand times BIEBER!

Leave us Gordie! You’ve taken Howe, leave us Downie. How many of that most Canadian of names do you need?

Incidentally, don’t you think it will be awesome if there’s a rush of babies named Gordon over the next coupla years? Seriously, mebbe we need to have us another boy . . .

 Two days after I saw the Hip I saw Blue Rodeo. They played “Bobcaygeon” and dedicated it to their friend. On Canada Day my band played our every Hip cover in a glorious medley recognizing that the Hip were the reason we are a band, the glue, the bridge that Pearl Jam, Alabama, Van Halen, and U2 couldn’t be. Our band’s band. I figure it’s the duty of every Canadian band from here on out to carry the torch, a little light of Hip flame. Drake better learn himself some “Hundredth Meridian.”

This tour and this loss, this tragedy, this Kingston show on August 20^th, these are all national experiences. That’s why our broadcaster is carrying a rock concert. That’s why every community in this country has an event for that night. This is ours. It’s going to be hard. So, in my most humble and Canadian of ways, I’d like to end with the fine and oh so Canadian words (“deke” in a love song, fella) of the boys themselves:

I hear your voice cross a frozen lake
A voice from the end of a leaf
Saying, “You won’t die of a thousand fakes
Or be beaten by the sweetest of dekes”

                                                                               (“The Lonely End of the Rink”)

Faking Me

              For thirteen consecutive summers I’ve been faking it. For three weeks every July since 2004 I’ve been posing as a drama teacher, exploring art and its meanings, and tolerating Christianity and homeschooling. Well, at least not saying anything about them. I’ve taught performing arts at this summer school since before I was married, before I was a father, since I could still say emphatically that I was young, and it has become a major part of my life. For several years I did not know how to let it go. Family needs and my own growth have called for me to end my time at in in 2016, when even in 2015 I had openly wondered how I could quit it at all.          

              As a means of catharsis I’m going to talk through that most were holding me in, and without dwelling on the personal reasons I have left, will speak further on one aspect I’m mostly happy to leave behind.

1)      Art. As I said, this was a performing arts school in a camp environment. The days were long, with classes and then rehearsals extending into the very late and sometimes wee hours. Three solid weeks. The down times—usually between classes or late at night—I buried myself in my own art. Writing, reading, studying. I felt like I was always operating on a higher plain of cognition. For years I was concerned that I couldn’t abandon this because my art would suffer. However, I’ve grown as an artist, matured, blossomed. I am confident every day that I wake up as an artist and lay my head down as one, no matter what happens between. I no longer need the prop, though I am grateful for its place in my growth.

2)      Going back to the well. You can live as artfully as you want but if the demands of career and family mean you can’t give time to your art, just what sort of an artist are you? And when you’re only scratching out a few minutes per day (week?) for your art it become frustrating. You need the selfish binging once in a while. Staying out of town at this Summer School allowed me to do that. I know how to make time for myself—not three weeks, certainly, but time—my wife knows I need it, we’re both fine when I take it. And when I do, it’s just for me all day. No school in the mean time.

3)      Friendship. The staff at this school have all been involved for a long time. They’re some of my best, most respected friends. The junior staff are every one of them former students of mine. I always marvel at how respected I am there, how much authority my word carries, how much people internalize my words and ideas and advice. I don’t know anywhere that I am that unquestioningly loved. For the longest time this was the one I worried I could never replace. Then I got to think about my full-time best friends. They do love me, but they also question me. And this grows me. Friendship means you can be yourself, but if it’s only a sycophantic relationship for your own ego, it doesn’t grow you. Friendship should grow you as a person, evolve you, challenge you. And as much as I love these former people, because the friendships were such short bursts of our lives, it could only be ratifying. Another sort of return to the well.

4)      Jesus. I am not a Christian, and this is a Christian school. Part of it is supporting a Passion Play. The majority of the students are from actively Christian families, and many of those from wide-eyed fundamentalists. Many of the students are regularly homeschooled, a form of education I’ve always been very against. Very little of what I’m doing at this school—other than the art itself—lines up with my views of education. I am happy to leave that aspect behind, of biting my tongue and pretending to be—or maybe better put, of allowing myself to be thought without disagreeing openly—something I’m not. I’ve gained a lot of tolerance for religious diversity over the years, but haven’t gained any for those who are not. I remain the Good Samaritan amongst Philistines.

Thirteen summers is a third of my life. It’s a pretty big deal for me to finally be walking away. But it’s time, long since. I’m better for having it, and better for leaving when I’m on top.