Michael Barclay - The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip

T h e

N E V E R

E N D I N G

P R E S E N T

t h e S t o r y o f

G o r d

D o w n i e

a n d t h e

T R A G I C A L L Y

H I P

Michael

Barclay

Copyright Michael Barclay, 2018

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The never-ending present : the story of Gord

Downie and the Tragically Hip / Michael Barclay.

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The publication of The Never-Ending Present has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,793 individual artists and 1,076 organizations in 232 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

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Dedicated to all the parents, spouses, siblings, children, teachersand loved ones who enable creative people to do the work theyhave to do. We are all richer for having you in our lives.

Half of this book is a chronological history of the Tragically Hips career, which ended in 2017 with the death of Gord Downie. Those chapters are written in the past tense.

The other half, appearing between the chronological chapters, extrapolates on various themes throughout the bands 32-year career, quoting the bands peers and other observers speaking in 201617. Those chapters are situated in the present tense.

The Secret Path chapter, about the work Gord Downie considered to be the most important of his life, spans the years 201217, overlapping with four other chapters set in that time frame.

All chapters are written in a way that they can be read in isolation: you are invited to dip into The Never-Ending Present in whatever order you like.

OVERHEARD BACKSTAGE AT a Tragically Hip show in the 2000s: Dontyou go write a book about us!

In the 2012 film Bobcaygeon, an uberfan named Wesley gestures to an empty spot on his bookshelfstacked mostly with tomes about the Rolling Stonesand says, The Hip have to make a book. There is no book on the Tragically Hip, other than Gord Downies poetry. I need to put a book in that spot. Thats where its got to go. Wesley, here is your book.

The main reason why there has been no book about the Tragically Hip is because the band didnt want one. A book ossifies its subject matter, providing a punctuation marknamely a periodthat implies whatever comes after its publication is less important than what preceded it. The Hip never viewed their career this way. They were always about the next album, the next tour. Dont look back, Bob Dylan would say. Do your impression of the never-ending present, Gord Downie would say.

It is probably a good thing that little is written about writers and artists in Canada while they are alive, wrote novelist Hugh MacLennan in 1954, eulogizing his late wife, Dorothy Duncan, a writer. This peculiar 1

Canadian attitude is fundamentally healthy, for it leaves them free to do their work and to tell and paint the truth as they see it. But it is a bad thing for the country that they are almost never written about at all, not even after they are dead, for it is only through its creative ones that a nation acquires a personality and the right to stand in history.

The members of the Tragically Hip are intensely private people who prefer to control their own narrative. They always hated talking to the press. They did not like most things written about them, or even covers of their songs. Downie in particular didnt like revealing what was behind the curtain, or even taking a peek for himself; during a 2012 CBC Radio interview, he dismissed the wildly popular autobiography of one of his rocknroll heroes, Keith Richards, for blowing the mystique. They read their reviews; they held some grudges. They were invited to participate in this project; they declined. Understandable: 2017 was an intensely emotional time for everyone in the Hip camp, although guitarist Rob Baker did give several interviews during that calendar year. Anyone can write whatever they want to write, he told the Toronto Sun on October 17, 2017.

Thats fine with me. Its just not our story as we would tell it. I have no interest in a chronological history of the band or talking about who influenced us and what our influence on others might be. Its irrelevant...

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Two months later, the band declined a request to review a fact-checking document for this book.

The few times the Hip allowed themselves to be documented in film

1992s Full Fledged Vanity, 1993s Heksenketel, 2012s Bobcaygeonfeatured precious little live footage and next to no valuable interviews. Heksenketel spent more time talking to the bands bus driver and the stage crew than it did the band members themselves. Bobcaygeon was primarily a documentary about some of the Hips biggest fans, not the story of the Hip. Thankfully, 2005s That Night in Toronto was a valuable live document, and 2017s brilliant LongTime Running showed the band members at their most forthcoming and vulnerable. None of those films told the story fully and completely.

The story of the Tragically Hip does not belong only to the band. As was abundantly evident in the summer of 2016, the story of the Tragically Hip is the story of Canadian music: the people who make it, the people who make it happen, and the fans who celebrate it every day. Maybe its even the story of Canadian culture itself, from Northrop Frye to Drake, from Jacques Cartier to Justin Trudeau, and everything in between.