The Ongoing History of New Music, episode 996: Gord Downie, Canada’s rock poet

It was Tuesday, May 24, 2016. You know how when you land the flight attendant says “It’s now permissible to use transmitting and receiving functions your portable devices” while you’re taxiing to the gate?

I’d just landed on a 14-hour flight from Hong Kong and as soon as I flicked my phone out of airplane mode, it blew up. Emails and texts all about one thing: The Tragically hip had just announced that their singer, Gord Downie, had brain cancer.

At first, this didn’t make sense. Had the jet lag kicked in already? Was this some kind of internet hoax? I mean, this was Gord. He was practically a Canadian superhero. Nothing like this was supposed to happen to him…

But it was true. The emails and texts kept popping up. Dozens, hundreds of them. And we all know how the next 18 months played out.

When Gord left us in October 2017, it was really rough. The best tweet i saw that day was “Canada closed: death in the family.” The country spent the next week trying to explain to the rest of the world how a singer of a rock band had brought an entire nation to tears—even the prime minister. Where else in the world does something like that happen?

The answer is you that you must be a special kind of person: artist, writer, thinker, activist, and poet. This is the story of Gord Downie, Canada’s own rock poet.

Songs heard on this show:

• Tragically Hip, Poets
• Tragically Hip, Smalltown Bringdown (Live)
• Tragically Hip, Courage
• Tragically Hip, Fifty Mission Cap
• Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles, The East Wind
• Gord Downie, Nothing But Heartache in Your Social Life
• Gord Downie, Goodnight Attawapiskat
• Gord Downie, The Stranger

The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:

• 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7pm
• Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 9pm
• Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6pm.
• 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11pm
• FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8pm
• Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 11pm
• Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8am and 8pm
• The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 8am and 9pm
• The Fox/Vancouver – Sunday at 11pm
• Surge 105/Halifax – Sunday at 7pm
• WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm