![]() Gord Sinclair and Rob Baker’s band was called Rick and the Rodents. Gord Downie was in a KCVI band called the Slinks. “We came into Kingston and, all of sudden, hockey was out and music became everything. When the boys were teens, the Downies moved into Kingston to a house on King Street West and Gord’s life changed. He and Gord shared a bedroom when they were growing up in Amherstview, with a toboggan hill outside their back door and a frozen swamp for playing hockey. No one has had a better seat for that story than Mike Downie himself. And in telling their story, it’s also telling the story of this country and why this band meant so much to so many Canadians.” “This is the full telling of the Tragically Hip. ![]() “A documentary about the Hip’s definitive story has never been done,” Mike Downie says. Though many films have been made of the Tragically Hip’s concerts and tours, no one has ever told the full story. “And we follow that career path all the way through until the very end, past that last concert and up to today and the various legacy projects.” “We are telling the story of the five members of the band, right from the beginning, and their Kingston roots when they were performing as a couple of different high school bands that slowly morphed into what becomes the Tragically Hip,” Mike Downie says. It’s a nice feeling to be back on campus. Funny how the years go by and, going back there, it seems not much has changed. The series will air on Amazon Prime in the fall of 2024. He’s making a four-part documentary about the Hip – from Gord’s childhood and high school years at Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute (KCVI), through to the Hip’s national and international stardom and the searing final concert at Kingston’s K-Rock Centre (now Leon’s Centre) in August 2016, 14 months before Gord Downie’s death from brain cancer at age 53. Nearly 40 years later, Mike Downie still wants people to see his kid brother’s band. They were just a bunch of guys playing at a Queen’s pub, but I was already a devotee. My brother’s band is playing and they’re great,” says Mike Downie, a documentary filmmaker and Gord’s older brother. “I meet people today and they say to me, ‘I remember you telling me, “Meet me at Alfie’s. Gord Downie, Artsci’87, and fellow Queen’s students Gord Sinclair, Artsci’86, LLD’16, and Rob Baker, BFA’86, LLD’16, along with two other Kingstonians, Paul Langlois, LLD’16, and Johnny Fay, LLD’16, were the soundtrack of your university years.Įven after success took the band to Toronto and eventually around the world, there was never any doubt that the Tragically Hip was a Canadian band. Maybe you saw them at the Clark Hall Pub, or soaked in sweat from a packed dance floor on a Saturday night at the Manor. ![]() If you were in Kingston anytime from the mid-1980s to the early ’90s, there was only one “Queen’s band” and that was Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip. They never wore kilts, didn’t play at football games, and if ever they marched, it was most assuredly to the beat of their own drummer.
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