LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL AGAIN … LIKE THEY DID THAT HIP SUMMER OF 2016

TARA COLLUM | Contributing columnist

Why didn’t we learn more about the 1918 Great Influenza pandemic that killed 50 million people?

We hoped, somehow, it wouldn’t happen again. We collectively blocked out the trauma or were ashamed by what we had done or hadn’t done.

While the joy of reunions with loved ones is tempered by anger at those who refuse to help protect one another from the contagious disease — as it tears around the world in a fourth exhausting wave — let’s remember the good times. Let’s not forget that feeling of optimism, of all we will do and do differently when COVID is finally behind us.

Years ago, the Tragically Hip played Casino Rama. I couldn’t make it, but figured that if they were playing casinos there would be many more chances to see them.

I ended up seeing them next for the last time five years ago on their final tour in 2016.

The band travelled across Canada in one last series of concerts, so that Gord Downie who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer could say goodbye.

Thanks to the Ontario government it’s almost impossible to buy tickets for anything. Since 2015, ticket scalping, long illegal is now apparently A-OK.

Want to see a playoff game or a hit Broadway play or your favourite band?

Long gone are the days when you could camp out at the ticket box office for good seats. Now it’s a losing battle against bots that buy up all the ticket blocks that appear instantly on resell sites like Stub Hub for hundreds or thousands of dollars more than face value. After a public outcry, tepid rules were put in place, but even those modest reforms, including a limit on inflating ticket prices by higher than 50 per cent of their original price, were scrapped by the Ford government.

It took me three attempts to get Hip tickets, using every screen I had: laptop, tablet, my cellphone and my land-line to secure tickets from Ticket Master in a newly-opened and reconfigured section of seats behind and looking down on the Air Canada Centre stage in Toronto.

It was a concert I had to see in person and couldn’t miss. But at the same time I wasn’t willing to be extorted to get a seat.

Downie was perhaps shortening his life by undertaking such a strenuous tour; and it was wrong for ticket scalpers to exploit such a rare and meaningful event.

Unifying moments do not come along too often in Canada. When they do they are even more special because they are moments we can keep to ourselves because no one else understands them.

Like Terry Fox’s run. Or watching Team Canada win gold at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010. (It was the only hockey game I’d ever seen before or since.)

That hockey game and the Tragically Hip’s last concert are the two most watched televised events in Canadian history.

For those who couldn’t get in to the last Hip show, the final concert in Kingston was broadcast live on TV, radio and the internet.

I watched it on a giant screen at the CNE.

I had seen the Hip years ago for the first time in the early 2000s, at the Molson Amphitheatre.

In the song, Bobcaygeon there is a line: “That night in Toronto…,” and I remember how I teared up being in Toronto as he sang that lyric.

Again, in Toronto my eyes welled up when the ACC crowd all sang that line with him.

Downie’s outfits are iconic. The glistening pink and electric blue suits, the feather in his hat, the Jaws t-shirt…. Those looks weren’t his typical regalia; he usually performed in a sports coat, a collared shirt, or a tie. He mugged for the crowd. But for the rare interviews he sat for he would be serious, soft spoken and as cerebral as his lyrics suggested.

There was one moment during that tour when he paused on stage — turning to look at every section of the crowd to silently thank us as we cheered.

How rare was that moment in history when the audience and the artist both knew the man on stage was dying?

The Hip documentary Long Time Running illuminated just how difficult the shows were for him. From the neck scarf to keep him warm in the stadiums to the many onstage monitors to help him remember the words to his famous songs.

Like everything, not everyone was a fan. But as a band member said in the documentary, the band’s career was like a hot air balloon. But they never crashed and burned. Instead the balloon landed safely while everyone got to watch and clap.

In the chaos, uncertainty and upheaval of these times, let’s remember our courage. And reflect on the things that unite us.

Let’s hope for a moment of reprieve when we can have our roaring 2020s.