Knowing The Hip, knowing their music, is like an inter-generational secret handshake known only to Canadians and Americans from the border states. We are a culture momentarily obsessed with death, “medically assisted” death and the right to what’s called a good death. And there’s Gord Downie and The Hip, showing us what that really means: To die with your boots on, doing what you love with the people you love for as long as possible. In the six-degrees-of-separation way that is the mark of the genuinely still-pretty-small country, I’ve almost/sort of crossed paths with Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip a half-dozen times. There’s something about Downie and The Hip — the lyrics of their songs/anthems, the way they sound — that make me feel my country in my bones.

Source: National Post May 27, 2016 16:48 UTC