- The place of honour that Gord Downie plays in Canada’s national imagination has no parallel… New York Times, Oct 17, 2017
I was walking my dog in Stanley Park today. My Mom, fighting and beating Leukemia (and cancer for the 2nd time in 16 years), told me on the phone that Gord Downie had passed away. Argh. A role model, inspiration, humanitarian, cautious patriot, and influencer has passed. Gordo told the country last summer that this would happen. It wasn’t news I expected to hear so soon. How silly of me. Cancer has been messing with the plans of so many people I love this year. Why can’t it get Gord Downie too? Cancer seems to enjoy doing whatever the heck it wants. 28 years of Hip related memories have flooded my thoughts today. They’ve been crashing into, and crossing wires with the frustrating and sad thoughts of those close to me fighting cancer this year. Mom (Dad), Gillian (Boe), Bubbsy (Rylan), Marsh (Grant and Garth), and your families, to name just a few: my thoughts are with you today. Gord Downie has provided soundtracks for our roadtrips, playlists for pre-game rituals, and tunes for our camp fires. It’s held us bound and connected to our great country as we’ve travelled the world.
I’m a hockey playing, music loving, and patriotic Canadian. I’ve sat multiple times today, long after turning off the ignition in the car, glued to the CBC feeling introspective, sad, and nostalgic. Maybe long after I forget that I wrote this post, I’ll find it again. I’ll reflect on some great times in my life made just a little better by an awesome soundtrack. Maybe my kids are reading this when they are older, and get a tiny glimpse of a nation mourning for a man who brought so many of us together in ways we can’t explain to our non-Canadian friends. I think I write it to connect, acknowledge, and send love to friends, family, teams, schools, and communities that have impacted my overly lucky and fortunate life. Somehow we’ve managed to weave Hip lyrics and Gordo’s rants into our adventures, as if he was speaking directly to us. Today as I think of the Tragically Hip, memories rush back as if they happened yesterday. My memories are so vivid. The smell of the room, the feeling I had in my gut at that moment, the dreams of a bright future, my friends, my relationships. It’s as though I’ve time travelled.
Fighting for Dressing Room Airtime:
I spent years as a professional hockey player abroad. I fought day in and day out for Hip to get airtime on the dressing room stereos in many countries. With bewilderment in the early days, I watched non-Canadians race to eject the Hip, with which they clearly had no connection. To our dismay, and often disgust, they’d replace it with a heavy techno as foreign to our Canadian ears as the Hip seemed to theirs. As the years living and playing in Europe passed, I learned to accept defeat, and rely on Sony Discman headphones to fuel my appetite for a taste of home. Yet on many days I’d wait with the other Canadians on our team until our non-compatriots would leave the dressing room. We’d proudly sneak Day for Night, Road Apples, or Fully Completely back into the CD player. “How do they not get it? We HAVE to make them understand! It’s the Hip for God’s sake!” Perhaps the nostalgic desire to connect Gordo’s rants with my professional hockey experience contributed to my tendancy to leave the dressing room at a pace at which a snail would snicker. Hockey was fun, but hanging out in the room with teammates cranking the New Orleans is Sinking, Blow at High Dough, Locked in the Trunk of a Car, or Little Bones was where we made the lasting memories.
The Beginning:
Grade 9 Social Studies. Mr. Gord Johnston, it was 1991 in that green room off the library in the back of Carman Collegiate. You were so excited that you and Spitzy had discovered this band called the Tragically Hip, and as soon as we got a chance, we were to purchase their album Road Apples. Oh, to be in Grade 9 and feel like we had been let in on a great secret! A personal connection with an adult teacher through music! We felt like you’d handed us a key to a new world.
Gord Downie’s lyrics played an integral role in my formal education. My grade 12 poetry essay, a very big deal at the time, haunted me much of my grade 12 year. Then one day guitar wizard, rocker, and English 300 teacher, Mr Y, agreed to let me compare and contrast the symbolism, historical and Shakespearean references, and metaphors I’d gleaned from Scared, Cordelia, Fiddlers Green, and 100th Meridian. Mr. Y, to this day I share that experience with people as a way of expressing the impact that music has on young people. Thank you.
Wheat Kings was the 1st song I learned on guitar, and continues to be the #1 requested song when we pull it out at cabins and camp fires. Grant Kennedy taught me how to play it, and Mike McAuley accompanied me as I sang it for my Senior High Drama audition. Thank you boys, and Mrs Y, thank you for indulging us! My 4 year old son Ty enjoys watching me play, and will often pick up his mini to strum and hum along with his ‘music’ for 20-30 minutes. He has no idea yet, of the joy I felt in ’93 when I discovered that Wheat Kings lived in the classic G-C-D progression. “You mean I can learn THAT song?” I wondered, hacking my way through the hammers and pull offs in the 2 chord verse. Guitars, living room dance parties, and streaming concerts on Youtube have solidified their position in my young family’s rituals. Our two children, Ty and Aidan may one day trace their musical interest back to Wheat Kings, as I can to my father’s Boyne Flood renditions of songs from the Doobie Brothers, the Eagles, and the Guess Who.
As a coming of age prairie boy whose father had once been a Wheat King, connecting the dots of this tragic story with the dots on the fret board set wheels in motion for a life dreaming of the stage. On living room couches and in back yard parties, Canadian hockey players like me have dreamt of sharing the stage, or trading places with the Hip. In the days before the internet, stories of the Hip joining pro hockey teams for practice seemed mythical, improbable, and unprovable. Telling teammates that you knew a player who’d skated with the Hip was like a badge of honour. A nod of approval into the fraternity of hockey players. “How can we get them to skate with us?” we’d ponder between sets of squats in the gym, or water breaks between drills in practice.
Ahead by a Century brings me right back to my first year of pro hockey in Lausanne Switzerland in 1998. I picture the twisted, mangled, and very climbable tree growing outside our living room window every single time I hear this song. “You are ahead by a century, and disappointing you is getting me down.” Too perfect for any Hallmark card I’ve ever seen. I’d quietly dream of a woman who’d make me feel that way. I have known a few who were contenders over the years, and finally stumbled upon one who makes me feel that way every day. Thank god I’ve managed to marry her. I seem to have a neural pathway in my brain with his lyric etched into it that helps me strive to be a great father and husband. I catch myself humming it on a weekly basis, over 20 years after first learning it.
Gord Downie: A Kind Soul
My brother Boe met his wife Gillian at a small venue Hip concert in Washington DC. Shows like that are the holy grail of every Hip fan. 2 Canadians at an American show met, fell in love, married, and have 2 adorable children. How perfect! Then Gillian got breast cancer. At their next Hip show a few years later, our cousin Rob set up a meeting for Boe and Gillian to meet Gord backstage after the show. Breast cancer had impacted Gord Downie’s family, and he graciously agreed to meet Boe and Gillian. They spoke at length about life with cancer, and the common challenges they face. This was a special moment for Boe and Gillian. I know they are as forever grateful that Gord took the time to meet, as they are for the role the Hip have played in their lives.
Today, October 17, 2017: Paying it Forward
I spent an hour with a grade 9 and 10 class in our Britannia Hockey Academy in Vancouver today. I paid forward what you, Mr Johnston, did for us in 1991 by introducing us to the Hip. We read and analysed lyrics and listened to songs relating to hockey. Fireworks, 50 Mission Cap, and Lonely End of the Rink gave fodder for many stories. The Summit Series, Bill Barilko and the Leafs, the Cold War, and imagery to which the kids could relate. They read of falling asleep in the car on the ride home from the rink. Timeless. The kids’ homework assignment is to go home this evening and talk to a Mom, Dad, guardian, or older sibling about the Tragically Hip, and how Gord Downie may have influenced their lives.
We spent the next hour on the ice with the senior group at the academy with the Hip pumping on the sound system. I caught myself on many occasions feeling like I was once again the teenaged player, not the coach. It felt like 1993. Like I was back playing for my high school team, the Carman Cougars. Like we’d snuck down to the rink at lunch to play some shinny. Nostalgic adolescence filled my veins. Besides my 40 year old body moving slower than it used to, I felt charged by a spark the Hip have given me as an athlete so many times over the years.
I Could Go On
I could go on for hours. Maybe this post should grow over time. A Tribute Post. But cathartically I’ve paid my respects by putting ‘pen to paper.’ As my kids grow older they can travel back to this day in Canadian history to see the way that words, music, and a loving human spirit can guide us. Imagine life without music. Imagine our lives as Canadians without the music of Mr Downie and the Tragically Hip.
Gord Downie I’m sad for your family. I’m sad for your kids. I’m angry that cancer took you, and takes so many, too soon. I’m angry that my Mom and brother’s wife Gillian are fighting cancer for the second time. I am angry that everyone I know has someone dear to them battling cancer. Today I can’t separate these misfortunes from the nostalgia I’ve felt for your music. Today it is all one story. However I know your music will continue to provide us with a soundtrack we will need moving forward. Sometimes we’ll crank the volume. Other times we’ll catch ourselves quietly humming your tunes. There will be a time and a place, as there has always been, for your music. One day we’ll need Fiddler’s Green. The next we might need Poets. Young songs will be there when we need them. Gord Downie, you and the Tragically Hip are in the hearts, minds, and souls of millions of Canadians. We’re proud that the rest of the world can’t see you the way we do. We’ll remember you, and cherish what you’ve given us.
