MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Barely half a decade into their career, the Tragically Hip was already being referred to as “Canada’s house band.” Nearly twenty years later, in 2016, following the announcement of singer Gord Downie’s terminal cancer diagnosis, the band embarked on what would be their final cross-country tour. The affection and admiration expressed by their countrymen were unprecedented. Nearly a third of the country watched the tour’s final concert, broadcast on national television and viewed in bars, town squares, cottages, and campsites across the country. Canada—or at least a large part of it—saw in the Hip that night the very best of its national character on display. It is impossible to find an analogous situation. Not even in the case of a post-9/11 Bruce Springsteen (to whom Downie and the Hip were frequently compared) was so much of a country’s sense of self inexorably tied to a rock band. Despite receiving more press outside of Canada that summer than they had received to that point, few people south of the border took notice: all the more proof to Canadians that the Hip were “their” band. But the question remains, how did a rock band become the most consistent cultural expression of an entire country, especially a band that didn’t do so consciously? By carefully considering broad motifs contained in the band’s recorded work, this paper/presentation will seek to explain how singular characteristics within Canadian history, demography, politics, and geography created opportunity, space, and lore for the Hip to explore the meaning of what it is to be Canadian, as well as the role the band played in reshaping national identity itself.