![]() ![]() And sometimes, even a few of those things are true.īut too often, America seems far too eager to abandon them. These are the same ideals that countless surveys show Canadians and Americans share equally, if not in the same order: multiculturalism, civil rights, a fair justice system, democracy, equal opportunity, or a general sense of welfare for all. The United States is those things, and many others as well. “It’s a beautiful country, it’s a big country, and it’s a free country, and it’s a place where you get to decide what the country is.” That’s how Downie once described Canada. Gord has spent his creative life exploring this, and what it means to a country whose very nature includes a perennial search for its own identity. Without knowing it perhaps, we all invest meaning in the geography of our personal and civic experience. Man Machine, Henhouse, In Violet Light, and Phantom Power seemed to get the most spins.īut running also gives you time to not think, to be blank and open to the suggestions of whatever is stimulating you at that breathless moment the sounds in your ears, or the slow-moving landscape under your pounding feet.Īnd as I forged a personal intimacy with the music for the first time, the depth of Downie’s complicated relationship with his country became clear in a way it might not have been without the hours I spent running. As I passed sweaty summer evenings trotting along corn-shaded farm roads trying to mentally process what my country was doing to itself, the Hip increasingly served as the soundtrack. It’s cliché that running gives you time to think, but it does. Then this past summer, three seemingly unrelated things happened: for the first time in a decade I started running again, America began the long spiral toward choosing a dangerously unqualified narcissist as president, and-in the wake of Gord Downie’s shocking health announcement-I rediscovered the music of the Hip. And while I could enjoy them as simply being a great, poetic rock band, I never really got a handle on what Keelor meant. What The Band accomplished by holding up a mirror to American identity, it seems the Hip were doing for their own country. I followed the Tragically Hip more closely after that but never dove in deep. I nodded, but not being Canadian, I guess I just didn’t know the code. ![]() But more than that, they see what it means to be Canadian in the Tragically Hip and in his performance. They don’t get that it’s not a put on: he really he is this sort of hoser shaman acting out the dichotomies of Canadian-ness.”Ĭanadians, he explained, see themselves in Downie. Most Americans see this guy onstage and they cannot understand it, so they reject it. ![]() “Never assume it translates just because it’s in the same language,” Keelor explained. It seems it had something to do with Canadian identity being different than that of America. I was writing one of those stories where the bemused American scribe tries to wrap his head around why Blue Rodeo couldn’t find the success down here that seemed easy for Rush or (if we must go there) Alanis or the Barenaked Ladies. Years ago, I sat with Greg Keelor in an empty New York basement bar, listening as he explained why Canadian culture doesn’t automatically resonate with Americans. ![]()
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