Number 7 in NEWS 1130’s Top 10 of 2016

TORONTO, ON. (NEWS 1130) – It felt like millions of Canadians took a punch in the gut all at once.

On May 24th we learned the lead singer of The Tragically Hip, Gord Downie, was battling brain cancer. Word first went out in a media release early that morning before Dr. James Perry, the head of neurology at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto elaborated on Downie’s diagnosis at a news conference.

“Gord has a primary brain tumour. This is one that started within the brain itself, it’s not cancer that has spread from another part of the body. And these primary brain tumours are infiltrative by nature, so they’re impossible to remove completely by surgery, they frequently recur and they require other therapies such as radiation and chemotherapy treatment. They range in how aggressive they are from some that are fairly slow-growing to others that are very aggressive and incurable. And it’s my difficult duty to tell you today that Gord Downie’s brain tumour is incurable.”

Despite the devastating diagnosis, Downie and his bandmates announced plans to hit the road in the summer for a series of 11 shows to support their latest album, ‘Man Machine Poem.’

No one explicitly called it a “final” or “farewell” tour, but the concerts definitely had that vibe with many Canadians treating it as a chance to say so-long, especially the last one in the Hip’s hometown of Kingston, Ontario.

Life-long Hip fan Rick Lee from NEWS 1130‘s sister station 96.9 JACK FM saw four of those shows, plus the final one that was watched by 11.7 million people. He says it was a shared cultural event unlike anything we’ve seen in this country before.

“Other than the Olympics — maybe — and other than Canada’s 150th that we’re about to experience, but other than that, I don’t think we’ll ever see something like this again. Basically I went in not believing that this was the final tour for Gord, like it was more just seeing him and the band because he’s such a poetic leader I think and he’s like a diplomat for our country. When I interviewed him in the past he actually wrote me a note saying, ‘happier days,’ so that I really believed in him, and you can totally see it with his solo project right now too, that he’s just still persevering.”

That solo project is called Secret Path and it was unveiled in September, with the goal of raising awareness about Canada’s historical treatment of native populations and the tragedy of the residential school system. It tells the story of Chanie Wenjack, who died in October of 1966 while trying to walk the more than 600 kilometres home from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School.

And Downie’s dedication to the cause is obvious. “This is the best thing I’ve ever done, and by best I just mean it helps my heart a little bit… this is what I want to do… nothing else really matters to me.”

His selflessness even in the face of his own personal struggle earned him a very special honour this month… when he was given a Lakota spirit name at the Assembly of First Nations that translates roughly to “man who walks among the stars.”

He was also named one of Canada’s newsmakers of the year by our friends at Maclean’s Magazine, and they’ve also put together a complete Gord Downie archive you can find here.