One year ago, Gord Downie died. He was 53.

There isn’t anything I could write in this space that hasn’t been said by millions who were touched by Canada’s most mythical figure, the lead singer and soul of The Tragically Hip.

But I’ll try.

Downie was Canada’s Shakespeare, a frosty lager with notes of Springsteen, Jagger, Morrison and Mercury, an aftertaste of Maple Canadiana to boot. Never before, and never again, had a band ingrained themselves with a country’s identity like The Hip.

Him and the band were so Canadian, music pundits felt it hurt their standing on the international stage. They were selling out the nation’s National Hockey League arenas without trouble, but performances south of the border only managed to bring out hundreds, playing venues no bigger than Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern and its 500-person capacity (the bar was made famous in the song ‘Bobcaygeon‘ — “That night in Toronto, with its checkerboard floors”).

Beyond a dozen or so shows scattered through Europe, Gord and The Hip never strayed far from home. A cramped performance on Saturday Night Live in 1995 secured two things for the group’s remaining 21 years:

They would never “make it” in the United States They would cement their status as Canada’s house band.

Everyone has a Hip story. It could be a six-hour road-trip, playing albums front to back, just to see them perform in a hole-in-the-wall; serving as the soundtrack to countless cottage weekends from coast to coast to coast; making out in the backseat of your car to ‘It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken‘; listening to ‘Fifty Mission Cap‘ on the way to hockey.

I’ll share two.

The first time I saw them was in 2004 in London, Ontario. My parents planned on going together, but last minute my father was offered a seat with his buddies, opening a spot for yours truly.

At the time, the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League were in the midst of junior hockey’s greatest undefeated streak. Starting the season with 23 wins and one tie*, they played in Barrie that night, needing six more games without a loss to break the record.

*Remember ties? Yeah, me either.

A reminder: It’s 2004. There are no smart phones with push notifications. No one in the audience has any way of checking the score. You couldn’t write something so Canadian: The audience at a Tragically Hip concert worrying about the out-of-town scoreboard.

Between sets, Downie went back stage, emerging 30 seconds later, walking up to the stand and tapping the mic.

“Ahem,” clearing his throat. “Knights win 4-2.”

The entire building exploded, a pop comparable only when Stone Cold Steve Austin makes his way to the ring after the glass shatters. Seconds after making the nights of nearly ten-thousand Londoners, the band jumped right into ‘At the Hundredth Meridian‘, Gord screaming “ME DEBUNK AN AMERICAN MYTH?” into the microphone.

At 11, that night in London, I was a fan for life.

Twelve years later, I woke up to news that makes your heart sink: Gord Downie has terminal brain cancer.

Fuck. He’s going to die. Soon. My quintessential reaction to celebrities and famous people announcing an illness or the news of their death is one of “Ah, that’s too bad, I liked them.” I don’t know them personally; I didn’t go to your son’s bar mitzvah, and I never had to remember calling you on your birthday. Artists and athletes provide entertainment; their fields of work, having almost no impact on your day-to-day, offer an escape from life’s grip on your windpipe, suffocating you with mundanities like cracked eggs, printer ink and weather observations.

Gord was, and still is, so, so much more than that. He was one of us: A part of the experiment of our nation, facing the complexities of our 150+ year history head-on, never seeking asylum from the evils of Residential Schools and the tribulations of Canada’s Indigenous population. He wanted to better the country, teach its people about more than just hockey.

He knew the human condition. I don’t think there are song lyrics which are as symbiotic of the life experience as towards the end of ‘Courage (for Hugh MacLeannan)‘:

There’s no simple,

Explanation,

For anything important,

Any of us do.

And yeah the human,

Tragedy,

Consists in,

The necessity,

Of living with

The Consequences,

Under Pressure,

Under Pressure.

When the band announced Downie’s diagnosis, they said they would go on one final cross-country tour. One final goodbye.

I had a factory job that summer, wearing steel toe boots and working forty-hour weeks alongside middle-aged men with mortgages. I worked these labour jobs during my college summers to save money for school: This summer, I was putting away a chunk in a separate account titled HIP FUND. Every week, a fifth of my paycheque went to the fund.

I had missed on the initial ticket rush and could only buy off the secondary market. Inching closer to the London and Toronto shows in August, prices were rising; what was harder than actually buying the tickets was finding someone to go with.

I didn’t have too many friends who were ‘super-fans’ of the band, never mind willing to spent a ridiculous amount of money on a concert. Time was running out.

I was unable to attend the London show, forcing my hand to try to get into one of the three Toronto performances. After hours of Ticketmaster searches, and the eventual agreement from one of my childhood best friends, I snagged two tickets in the upper bowl, left of stage.

We were in.

I remember the day of the show, asking my boss at lunch if I could leave work an hour early. He asked why.

“We’re going to The Hip,” I told him.

His eyes raised and he glared at me, not in anger, but shock.

“You got tickets to the show?” he questioned.

I nodded, and his cold stare morphed into a grin, then a smile. The man I called boss for nearly three years gave me his first heartfelt smile.

“I’ve seen them 11 times,” he said. “I couldn’t go to one of these shows, I’d get too weepy.”

We stood there for what felt like an hour; he looked as if he was reminiscing, back to when he was my age, when his buddies piled in the car to go see a bunch of rag-tag musicians from Canada’s original capital play the gritty, bluesy rock that became a fixture on the country’s radio stations for decades.

He looked at his watch. “Get out of here,” he told me. “Go have fun.” He walked to his office, turned on the loudspeaker and announced to the plant:

“Hey everybody: Hunter is leaving early to go see The Hip!”

The factory roared, screams of “Fuck yeah!” and “Run, don’t walk!” echoed in the kilometre-wide workspace. Everyone came to high-five me, as if I had scored an overtime-winner for the Maple Leafs.

Within a half hour, we were on the road to Toronto.

Once we arrived, hell broke loose.

Going to our seats, a security guard blocked the section entrance, telling everyone the tickets were sold by accident as the seats in said section were being replaced. What the hell is going on? He instructed us to go to the front gate and see what we could do.

I tell you folks: I’ve never been a runner, and I never will be a runner, but in that moment, I was Usain Bolt. Sprinting through the formerly Air Canada Centre, I pumped my arms, heels kicking my own ass, sifting through the crowd like a blitzing linebacker.

We arrived at the front gate and explained the situation. A sweet, elderly woman asked for our seat numbers, then gave us two tickets, section GBOX4. Press box.

We sprinted to the elevator, went straight to the top, hearing the audience cheer as the band walked on. When we arrived at our seats, the opening notes of ‘Courage’ played: Showtime.

What happened next can only be described as the most surreal moment of my life.

Watching Gord slowly maneuver the stage, only breaking eye-contact with the audience to catch a glimpse of the lyrics on the screens in front of him, his memory deteriorating from his condition.

He gave us two hours. The opening set was twenty songs, highlighted by ‘Grace Too’, a moment where 20,000 human beings cried with our hero, his screams toward the end breaking every heart; we witnessed to a man who accepted mortality, relinquishing the pain he first felt nearly a year earlier when he got the news.

They performed an encore, then another, capping off the night with ‘Ahead by a Century’, not a dry eye around.

Finally, the most physically ill person in the building, Canada’s Shakespeare, ended with a few solemn words.

“It’s the night that disappears. It just disappears. And that’s okay.”

Then he walked off, exit stage left.