“We were sent to change the history of rock’n’roll”
In Kingston, Ontario’s Market Square they climbed the rooftops. Hundreds of figures, taking to the parapets for a view of the cinema screen relaying the live feed, while 27,000 people gathered in the square below. From sea to icy sea, Canada stopped to listen – the streets of Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal throbbed to the sound of the show, with bars and cafés hanging bedsheets outside to project the national CBC TV feed, and every window on every block thrown open to flood the cities with music. Eleven million people – a third of the Canadian population – watched on TV, and in screening venues from Toronto to Bobcaygeon they gathered in their thousands, dancing, singing, many clutching loved ones close or struggling to hold back tears.
“It’s a night for celebration,” one emotional fan told the news cameras. “It’s a night to unfortunately say goodbye. And at the same time remember who we are as Canadians.”
“It was,” Blue Rodeo guitarist Colin Cripps said in Michael Barclay’s book The Never-Ending Present, capturing the moment, “a communal experience of religious proportions”.
Like a royal wedding, sporting triumph or national day of mourning, August 20, 2016 was the night Canada united. And for the 6,700 people – including prime minister Justin Trudeau – singing inside Kingston’s K-Rock Centre, at the final gig by the city’s proudest sons and definitive Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip, it was to be a moving farewell. ‘,’ sang Gord Downie, smiling wryly in a white top hat as he took one last trip around the songs that had soundtracked so many lives, forged so many
