I NEVER post mid-week, but this week, I have to. Gord Downie, lead singer of the iconic Canadian band The Tragically Hip, is dead.  I am gutted. I suppose it was silly to believe that he would survive the type of brain cancer that he had, but I’m at heart an optimist, despite my consistent obsession with worst case scenarios. I’ve spent a good portion of this evening singing snatches of his songs, and crying. I may be a little drunk right now. Here is what I wrote a few months ago, at the Canada-wide broadcast of the Hip’s final tour:

Saturday Night: The Tragically Hip

Last night was the final show of The Tragically Hip’s final concert tour. The lead singer, Gord Downie, has incurable brain cancer, and rather than fade away, he’s going out in fine Canadian style by bringing the country together. You might have seen the memes about Canada being closed for the night because our national broadcaster, the CBC, was showing the concert live across the nation for those who couldn’t get tickets to be there in person. Free. No commercial breaks. 3 hours of song. So that we could all embrace the band whose music was the soundtrack to so many of our lives. Hundreds of thousands of people watching all at the same time, some at huge parties with massive screens, some at home with the people they love, watching a man give everything he had left to the nation HE loves. It was inspiring and heartbreaking all at the same time. It seems incredibly unfair that Gord Downie, man, machine, poem, will soon be lost to us, just when we need him most. And when the time comes, we’ll miss him fully and completely. Just wait and you’ll see.

Here’s the link to one of my favourite Hip songs—Nautical Disaster.

Gord Downie was the best of us. I have no more words.