When I heard the news last week, I was filled with a mix of sadness and anxiety. Sadness for the death of a Canadian icon that we all knew was coming, and a nervous energy for the hours and days ahead.
My day job is with CBC Music, and I knew that all gears would immediately be shifted to properly eulogizing the crackling force of positive energy that was Gord Downie.
When I eventually put it all into words on the radio, I cried. It was too much open emotion for a guy with 20 years of radio experience, but that was the mood of the day.
Growing up as a West Coast kid in the 1990s, I never considered myself a Tragically Hip fan. When they were blowing up in the east, I looked down my nose at what I considered to be overproduced hoser-rock. I didn鈥檛 hear the lyrics and I didn鈥檛 understand the hype.
I was in a 麻豆传媒映画garage-punk band at the time and thought the Hip were the antithesis of what we did. Little did I know that one of the Hip鈥檚 earliest influences was the same as mine: the mid-80s Montreal garage rock sensations the Gruesomes.
But when it came to the bigger, breakthrough Canadian bands, I found myself relating far more to western successes like Spirit of the West and 54-40.
All that changed when I landed my first hosting job at the CBC. It was a late night music show and I had four hours to fill every Saturday and Sunday nights. In 2001, I received a CD called Coke Machine Glow. It was Gord Downie鈥檚 first solo record. 惭补肠濒别补苍鈥檚 writer and Hip biographer Michael Barclay wrote that there was 鈥渘o left turn in Downie鈥檚 career greater鈥� than that album.
I guess I like left turns, because when I put the CD into the deck, I loved what I heard. Stripped away from the Hip鈥檚 loud guitars and pounding drums of their radio hits was Gord鈥檚 fragile voice and incredible lyrics. For the first time, I finally got Downie.
From there, I became a fan of his and, in turn, a Johnny-Canuck-come-lately fan of the Tragically Hip. Years after they were hits, I discovered for myself brilliant gems by the Hip like 鈥淲heat Kings,鈥� 鈥淏obcaygeon鈥� and 鈥淎head By A Century,鈥� songs that sang our Canadian stories back to us.
Arguably, the most important story Gord Downie sang back to us was within the last year of his life, after his terminal brain cancer diagnosis. That鈥檚 when he released another solo record, entitled Secret Path, which was also became a book and a film.
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It told the story of 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack, an Indigenous youth who ran away from a residential school in northern Ontario in 1966. He died alone on the railway tracks from exposure and starvation, trying to fulfill one of our most basic urges: He wanted to go home.
Downie鈥檚 passionate exposure of this 50-year-old story has conceivably done more to open up the conversation towards reconciliation than many attempts from our governments and bureaucracy. It鈥檚 a story that should be permanently added to the Canadian school curriculum, because Downie鈥檚 goal in the final stages of his life was to bring together our two solitudes: the Indigenous people of this country, and the rest of us.
Downie said it best when he was honoured in December at the Assembly of First Nations: 鈥淭o become a country, to truly call ourselves Canada, it means we must become one. We must walk down a path of reconciliation from now on. Together and forever.鈥�
Let鈥檚 hope that, even beyond the music, Gord Downie鈥檚 spirit of togetherness and empathy is his true lasting legacy for a better Canada.听
