Although winded at times during his most recent tour, Downie seemed to delight in whipping out a white handkerchief and dancing across the stage in a metallic suit and feathered fedora. He cited the short story master Raymond Carver and poet Wallace Stevens as influences, and in 2001 he released a book of poetry, “Coke Machine Glow,” alongside a well-received solo album of the same name.Īlongside his inclination toward poetry was an apparently undiminished love for performance. In recent years, Downie maintained that he was less a rock star than a poet – or, to be more precise, “a goalie/poet or a hotel guest/poet or a father/poet,” as he told the Toronto Globe and Mail in 2001. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available. He and his wife, Laura Leigh Usher, had four children. Ceiling,” about the nighttime flooding of an outdoor ice rink.
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Reviewing the Hip’s 1996 record “Trouble at the Henhouse,” the Canadian magazine Maclean’s singled out the singer’s “rabid imagination, which seems full of strange imagery snatched from a vivid nightmare” in tracks such as “700 Ft. He was adept at fitting obscure or unusual Canadian names into the Hip’s music, rhyming French explorer Jacques Cartier with “right this way” and the small Ontario town of Bobcaygeon with “constellation.” “‘Cause if you are, then there’s no way that you’re gonna last’”ĭownie continued incorporating Canadiana into subsequent albums, crafting songs that were by turns playful and surreal. “They add, ‘You can’t be fond of living in the past “A nation whispers, ‘We always knew that he’d go free’ On the record’s next track, the acoustic ballad “Wheat Kings,” Downie lamented the wrongful imprisonment of David Milgaard, who months before the album’s release had been freed from prison after serving 23 years for a Saskatchewan murder he didn’t commit. The hard-driving “Fifty-Mission Cap” coupled the seemingly unrelated image of a hat given to elite Allied pilots during World War II with the story of Toronto hockey player Bill Barilko, who scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal for the Maple Leafs in 1951, disappeared on a fishing trip soon after and, in 1962, was found dead from a plane crash that occured during the trip. The album featured two of the band’s most enduring songs. In a departure from the Hip’s previous records, many of the album’s songs featured Canadian lyrics and themes – inspired, he said, by the use of Canadian imagery in the 1991 Rheostatics song “Saskatchewan.” With the album “Fully Completely” (1992), Downie seemed to more fully find his voice as a songwriter. The group’s debut album, “Up to Here” (1989), sold well in Canada, aided by the popular blues-rock anthems “Blow at High Dough” and “New Orleans Is Sinking.” Two years later, “Road Apples” topped the Canadian charts. Downie played the role of ringmaster, dancing across the stage and improvising monologues in the middle of songs. The Hip, which also included guitarist Paul Langlois and drummer Johnny Fay, built a following through its energetic live performances. The Tragically Hip – named after a sketch in “Elephant Parts,” a 1981 collection of comedy and music videos by former Monkees member Michael Nesmith – was formed as a cover band while all three attended Queen’s University in Kingston. While in high school, Downie sang in a punk group before falling in with his blues-loving classmates Sinclair and guitarist Rob Baker. His father sold real estate with Downie’s godfather, Harry Sinden, a semipro hockey player who later coached the Boston Bruins to a Stanley Cup. Gordon Edgar Downie was born in Amherstview, Ontario, a Kingston suburb, on Feb.
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