A commemorative celebration of a distinctly Canadian band…
By Michele Yeo
“Was there ever more authentic Canadian artist?”
So asks Will Arnett about The Tragically Hip in a new four-part documentary series profiling the group the BBC once dubbed “the most Canadian band in the world” and their prolific 30-year career. “There’s a lot of music that I love, but none of it spoke to my experience growing up as a Canadian,” continues the Toronto-born actor.
The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, now streaming on Prime Video after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, is told through modern day interviews with surviving band members, past interviews with late singer Gord Downie, input from Canadian luminaries like Arnett, Dan Aykroyd, Geddy Lee, Jay Baruchel, Bruce McCulloch, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as well as through a veritable treasure trove of archival footage documenting the band’s humble beginnings as high school buddies in Kingston, Ontario all the way to their history-making final show in that same hometown.
Whether you were a fan of The Hip or not, there is no denying their music is intrinsically woven into the fabric of our nation. That said, No Dress Rehearsal is exclusively for the fans, a love letter to the people for whom The Hip provided the soundtrack to a significant portion of their lives. And what a love letter it is.
Told chronologically, filmmaker, and brother to Gord, Mike Downie charts the band’s dive bar beginning and their scrappy small town origin story. “Everywhere we go, we say we’re from Kingston,” says Gord Downie in an older interview, “and we praise its Kingston-ness.” The band would remain loyal to their hometown in the years to come despite their massive success. “Kingston is the town that built The Hip” contributes actor and fellow Kingstonian Dan Aykroyd. The band would evoke their hometown on their debut album, 1989’s Up To Here where they reference a real life prison break at Millhaven Institution in the song 38 Years Old. It would not be the last time the band was influenced by Canadian stories – from the well-known like the wrongful conviction of David Milgaard which inspired the song Wheat Kings or the story of Toronto Maples Leafs legend Bill Barilko on Fifty-Mission Cap, to the more obscure like referencing 19th century artist Tom Thomson on the song Three Pistols or paraphrasing author Hugh MacLennan’s 1959 novel The Watch That Ends the Night on the 1992 hit single Courage.
“Gord Downie was spectacular at telling our stories.” says the band’s former manager Allan Gregg. “There are things to tell about Canada that are interesting and exciting, and beautiful and different and compelling and you want to know and you should know.” Jay Baruchel agrees saying, “we’re one of the only wealthy countries in the world where you grow up seeing someone else’s culture on TV and in the movie theatres all the time and in the music as well,” he says, “and here was someone talking about my world.” His references to all things Canadiana would eventually earn Gord Downie status as the country’s unofficial poet laureate. “Gord Downie had the poetry and lyricism of a brilliant, brilliant writer,” says Dan Aykroyd, “and he was the perfect frontman for this powerhouse all-Canadian band.”
While No Dress Rehearsal is certainly a celebration of The Hip and all their accomplishments, it doesn’t sugarcoat or shy away from the band’s struggles both external (their well-documented struggle to achieve the same fame South of the border) and internal including Gord appointing himself as chief lyric writer for the band, the difficulty of keeping the group together when they started having their own families, and the near band-ending arguments that came while making the 2009 album, We Are the Same which the band has since come to call We Are Not the Same.
Of course, the documentary gets most emotional when it delves into Gord Downie’s 2016 diagnosis of glioblastoma, an aggressive and incurable form of brain cancer that rocked the bandmates, and many Canadians, to their core. “No one saw that coming, including him,” says guitarist Paul Langlois. “I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it.” Langlois would go on to accompany Downie to the majority of his radiation treatments, something fellow band member Gord Sinclair calls “the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Love is a beautiful thing.”
As shocked as the band was at Downie’s diagnosis, they were equally stunned when the frontman announced he wanted to tour his beloved country one final time. The guys didn’t think it could be done but wanted to indulge their dying friend. The bandmates realised they would be proven wrong on the Man Machine Poem tour’s opening night in Victoria, BC. “When he stepped up to that mic, the doubt vanished, the fear vanished,” says Sinclair. The sold out tour famously concluded on August 20th, 2016 in the city that gave birth to the band. “To come back to Kingston to end it where it began…we wrote an end to our own story even if, in part, by accident.” says guitarist Rob Baker. Nearly 12 million Canadians watched on television through their tears including Jay Baruchel, “it wasn’t something we had to do,” he says, “it was something we needed to and we wanted to at the same time.” The outpouring of support wasn’t lost on the band. “People came out and they showed their appreciation. They gave Gord their love,” says Baker, “and it helped him. and we’re eternally grateful.” Gord Downie died just over a year later in October of 2017 at the age of 53.
While the doc series is the definitive tribute to a beloved band whose success spanned more than three decades, it’s as much a testament to the unbreakable bonds of lifelong friendship and brotherly love as it is to the music of The Hip. If you get through the fourth and final episode without shedding at least one tear, well, you’re built differently than me. As Gord Downie once sang, “either it’ll move me, or it’ll move right through me. Fully, completely.” The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal moved me. Fully and completely.
