Frontman Gord Downie has terminal brain cancer, which has made the tour an emotional one for the band and fans of the iconic Canadian band.
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The CBC’s broadcast and livestreaming of The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration concert reached 11.7 million people on Saturday night, according to preliminary audience figures.
Known in Canada as simply “The Hip”, the band is on what is expected to be its final tour with Downie, 52, who announced his illness in May.
I will give you this one though, Canada.
“They are a quintessentially Canadian band who mean so much to Canadians, even for those who aren’t huge fans”, Kingston’s Mayor Bryan Paterson said of the group, via the Washington Post.
It wasn’t long after the Tragically Hip started to play their hit single “Bobcaygeon” on Saturday night in Kingston, Ont., that a roar went up a couple of hundred kilometres away.
Downie, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in December, 2015, has been on the road for the past month on the band’s final tour.
And when singer Gord Downie sang the lyrics “It was in Bobcaygeon, I saw the constellations, reveal themselves one star at a time”, the crowd really went wild.
On Saturday, the Prime Minister’s official photographer tweeted a photo of himself and Gord embracing before the show.
“I hope it placed even more pressure on the Prime Minister to make good on the promises and the kind words that he has said about indigenous people, and about that being the most important relationship to fix”. “And what’s going on up there ain’t good”. “He has the pulse of the nation and he knows what is going on and the injustice of Indigenous people of Canada …”
Since that first show, Strong has seen the Hip live in concert six or seven times. More musicians, including the Hip, began singing about Canada. “Forever in our hearts and playlists”, the PM wrote.
The final show in the Tragically Hip’s Man Machine Poem tour in Kingston was broadcast live by the CBC. “Indigenous “sovereigntists” aren’t supposed to admit the things they love about Canada, but there are a few things for me”.
The Hip then segued into songs from their latest album, Man Machine Poem, before running through their previous records.
The show ended with fan favourite Ahead By A Century.
Downie gestured as if he was sketching a portrait of the teary audience as the band played the song’s final notes.
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News of Downie’s dying prompted an outpouring of shock and support. “I don’t think so”, he said.
