The Tragically Hip type Music

It was a bittersweet end for The Tragically Hip’s Man Machine Poem tour, as terminally ill lead singer, Gord Downie, earned high praise from a sold-out crowd (including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) as the band performed its final set on Saturday night.

The band’s 15-stop farewell tour came to an end in the Canadian city of Kingston, where Downie, 52, who revealed in May he’d been diagnosed with brain cancer, took the stage for the last time.

Downie could be seen wiping tears from his eyes in the middle of the set, screaming “No!” into the microphone as fans watched.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called Downie the nation’s unofficial “poet laureate” in a touching post on their website, while Trudeau took to Twitter with some touching words for the musician.

“On behalf of Canadians, I thank Gord Downie and the Hip for their decades of service to Canadian music,” he wrote. “Forever in our hearts and playlists.”

Trudeau added: “The whole country is here in Kingston tonight! To say thanks, to say goodbye, to celebrate Canada’s band.”

The Tragically Hip formed in the 1980s, rising to prominence with rock and blues-tinged songs that, over their multiple decades in the spotlight, contributed to 14 albums. While the band never notched an album in the top half of the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, The Tragically Hip found success across Canada, scoring nine No. 1 albums and six top 10 songs (including “Ahead by a Century,” which reached the peak position in 1996) in their home country.

Man Machine Poem, the band’s most recent album, came out in June.