The Canadian Dream and the Tragically Hip – Part 3

The Canadian Dream and the Tragically Hip – Part 3
by Richard LeDue

Gord Downie passed away in 2017, and his passing was felt hardest in Canada. It's important to remember that some acts and artists transcend what they do. Gord Downie was one of them. Outside of Canada, he was viewed as a somewhat obscure rocker with fans in the northern United States and Canada. He was much more though. In Canada, he was our unofficial poet laureate, while other times, he was just considered one of the greatest front men of all time in Canadian music. What he did to earn these honours is something we all strive to do. However, few of us ever truly achieve such a level of success. Few of us ever make a connection with the audience like Downie. He sung about Canada, using imagery that was Canadian in a world where television and most mainstream media, such as YouTube or Facebook, is flooded with references to America. Whenever you hear someone singing about something that you can connect to, that is truly special, and to do that for an entire country is definitely worthy of a word like “dream.”

When we talk of a national dream, it's impossible not to include the arts, such as music. Music exists because without it we lose a piece of our soul. Music says things that regular language struggles with, and music says things we're afraid to admit out loud. If humanity ever abandons music, it will certainly be a dark day. One of the saddest things I've seen in recent years are “reality” shows and televised music competitions. These stress being a great singer, but really downplays the artistry involved. Any competent songwriter, knows there's many elements to being a competent musician. There's a reason Gord Downie was often referred to as a poet, and it was because he and his band mates worked on their own songs. I believe after the first album, Gord Downie refused to record any songs that he did not have a hand in writing. To me that's a mark of an artist, more so than a singer.

With all these talent shows emphasizing the need to sing well instead of any artistry, we, the listeners, lose out on something. An example of this would be the Tragically Hip's last album to date. The last Tragically Hip album was released in 2021. It was called “Saskadelphia,”  and was a collection of unreleased songs from the “Road Apples” album, which was released in 1991. It was almost like listening to a ghost to hear Gord Downie singing again, and then there's the awesome talent of Paul Langlois, Rob Baker, Gord Sinclair, and Johnny Fay. In a way, Saskadelphia proved the concept of immortality that people associate with the arts. Hearing a healthy Gord Downie singing again was one of my highlights for the pandemic. And I'm not trying to knock the last tour, but at that point, Downie was quite sick and you could see that within his performance. He had moments when he was struggling, which lent to the organic experience of that concert, but is also saddening when rewatched after his passing.

Accepting a death like Gord Downie's is never easy. Whereas the American dream is often built on the idea of financial or commercial success, the Canadian dream has a more mystical element to it. That the songs on Saskadelphia do something ghostly is tapping into that Canadian dream. As simple as it is to say, part of the Canadian dream is an acknowledgement of ourselves. It’s easy living in North America to conceptualize identity in terms of Americana. If you watch a lot of television, many stations are American and this leads to a lot of American content and perspective being communicated. It becomes too easy to think that is the norm, even in Canada. We do have the CBC, but what’s one station versus 100 American stations? Then there's the question of bias, political and otherwise, that taints what the CBC does. Sure, there’s other Canadian stations, but most of those stations carry American shows. This saturation of American content is part of what made The Tragically Hip special. The Canadian content in their songs made not only the music special, but elevated being Canadian. There aren’t too many bands that are going to sing about athletes like Bill Barilko, or a place like Thompson, Manitoba, like the Tragically Hip do in “Thompson Girl.”

After living in Manitoba for years it actually made the song, “Thompson Girl,” very special to me when I discovered it. It was never a single, so I am ashamed to say I overlooked it when it was released in 1998. To hear Gord Downie singing about Thompson, which is a city I’ve actually visited and have spent time in is special feeling. This type of connection cannot be made artificially, or weighed in terms of commercial success. This type of connection is an authentic part of the Canadian dream. Making connections that Canadians are able to connect the dots when it comes to their geography and history is a kind of common identity that can't be measured in money.  

The Canadian dream, like any dream, is ethereal. It’s always something we’re chasing, but we’re never going to actually touch. The same is often true of many goals that we have in life. Sometimes chasing what we want is more important than getting what we want. Sometimes a chase is what we need. Reaching our goals sometimes ruin us. This is part of the reason why a band like The Tragically Hip fascinates me. They illuminate the Canadian dream, but also never really give it to us in a straight answer. They show us glimpses of the Canadian dream we have to interpret (as I have done in these articles, meaning I also don't believe my words provide a definitive answer either), so we can keep on chasing. It’s important to remember that any country has some type of national identity, and for Canada, the Tragically Hip helped shape this through cultivating the Canadian dream.