What Was It Like to Have Gord Downie as Your Neighbour? His Neighbour Speaks.
The Gord Downie stories just keep coming. This originally appeared in the online edition of Globe and Mail and comes via FYIMusicNews.ca. It’s too good not to share.
We moved in next door to Gord Downie and his family in 2011. It was our first house. We were newlyweds. Barbara was pregnant with Roman and I had just started my own business. It was a new and exciting chapter in our lives.
I met Gord on move-in day. He was outside, locked in mortal combat with his Thule rack, trying to secure it to his minivan (“The Black Potato,” he called it). He wiped his hands on the handkerchief that was perpetually hanging out of his back pocket and came and shook my hand.
“Hiya. I’m Gord.”
“No kidding,” I thought.
Our friendship grew in the oddest ways. Around garbage. I’d receive an e-mail: “Hi Brendan – it’s Gord from next door [no kidding]. We’re headed to the country for the summer. Can you take our garbage to the curb on Thursday? Have a great first summer together. These are magical times.”
Another e-mail: “One more time, my Green Bin is tucked inside my Grey Bin. This Thursday could you slide my Blue Bin and Green Bin to the curb with yours?
Thanks for your help with this, Sir. I’m grateful
Summer on!”
It was usually e-mails about garbage. And yard work. And then, slowly, over the years, e-mails about Truffaut, Cockburn, Herzog, Neil Young, Jean-Pierre Melville, Gordon Lightfoot.
