Thousands of fans – including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – are at the Rogers K-Rock Centre.
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Canadians are watching the final concert by their rock band The Tragically Hip, whose lead singer and songwriter Gord Downie has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
Despite being diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most aggressive cancerous brain tumor, in December, an energetic Downie was in fine form as he and his bandmates played an epic 30-song set loaded with hits and punctuated by three encores.
The crowd responded with a chant of “Gordie!”
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canadians gathered on August 20 to say farewell to the band The Tragically Hip and its lead singer Gord Downie, also known as the country’s unofficial poet laureate, who is sadly dying.
In downtown Kingston, Ontario, on Saturday, August 20, the nation said goodbye to the Tragically Hip, a group affectionately known as “Canada’s band”.
They opened with four songs from their 1992 breakthrough album Fully Completely: 50 Mission Cap, Courage, Wheat Kings and At the Hundredth Meridian. Prior to the start of the concert, the politician took to Twitter to pay tribute to Downie and his group, writing, “On behalf of Canadians, I thank Gord Downie and the Hip for their decades of service to Canadian music”.
Fans ate up every musical morsel, singing along to each track and throwing their hands in the air to emphasize all the right moments.
The Hip returned to the city where their storied musical journey began in the early 1980s. It was broadcast live, shown in public screenings at hockey areas and town squares, in restaurants and bars.
“Prime Minister Trudeau’s got me, his work with First Nations”.
“We’re a country that hasn’t really embraced its history just yet”, Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew, who helped produce The Hip’s last album, told The New York Times. With cameras cutting to Trudeau, who was in attendance, he continued: “He cares about the people way up North, that we were trained our entire lives to ignore, trained our entire lives to hear not a word of what’s going on up there … And what’s going on up there ain’t good”.
He added: “It’s maybe worse than it’s ever been, so it’s not on the improve”.
Downie took other breaks to show his lighter side.
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“A singer needs to keep his or her voice always warm”, he said, briefly undoing the sock to reveal its heel before tying it back onto his neck.
