Sunday, May 5th, 2019

Flashback to The GG’s

Back on May 5, 2012, Rush became laureates of The Governor General’s Performing Arts Award (affectionately nicknamed The GG’s), Canada’s highest honour in the performing arts.

It was a diverse and inspiring group that year, as Rush stood alongside Deepa Mehta, Des McAnuff, Mary Walsh, Paul-Andre Fortier, Denis Marleau, Erlaine Collins & Janina Fialkowska. Longtime pal Matt Stone had made the trip to Ottawa and unsurprisingly, delivered a highly entertaining induction speech for the band.

“More than anything, it made me proud of Canada—that an event like that could embrace the country’s artists across such a broad spectrum, from high-falutin’ artsy types to rock bums like us, and represent them with international luminaries like Matt Stone, Pete Townshend, and Salman Rushdie,” recalled Neil Peart. “There’s a quote by Bob Dylan I have repeated from time to time in interviews for years, ‘The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?”

You can read Neil’s poignant post about that induction (and subsequent, impromptu but legendary dinner party that followed…) here:

Where words fail, music speaks.

Photo George Pimental