Don’t Fade On Me

“The soundtrack to your life” may be a cliché, but to the extent that we all have one, mine seemed to be slipping away in 2017.  Check out Rolling Stone’s People We Lost This Year.

Chuck Berry, Tom Petty, Malcolm Young, Gord Downie, Greg Allman, Walter Becker, Fats Domino, J. Geils …  sheesh!  That’s a partial list of cultural icons relegated to our memories.

Back up your hard drives, people.  We need to keep this stuff alive.

Armed With Will And Determination

And grace, too.

Canadians are a funny bunch.   We’re too busy looking over our shoulder to be able to wave the flag.  Our anxiety over what we might (or might not) be often blocks our pride in who we are.

But boy, when we grab something and decide it’s Canadian, we do not let go.  Musically, the best example is The Tragically Hip.  Whatever it means to be a Canadian, this band was it – and we knew it.

Who cares if The Hip were never huge outside Canada?  They were ours, dammit.  They sang songs about us, and we sang ‘em right back.

We may be grieving for the loss of Gord Downie, but their gift to Canada will endure forever, because they have given us another undeniable marker in our national identity.  The Tragically Hip were as Canadian as a hockey stick.