Vancouver fans gather for screening of Tragically Hip's final show

In Vancouver’s historic Gastown, the Woodwards Atrium was packed with hundreds of fans who came together for a free screening of CBC’s special broadcast, The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration.

Fans sang, danced and posted up in a beer garden across from a 20-foot LED screen showing a live broadcast of singer Gord Downie, guitarists Paul Langlois and Rob Baker, bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay as they met under the spotlight for the last time.

The Canadian Cancer Society was there collecting donations to fund research into brain cancer. Downie was diagnosed with a terminal form of the disease earlier this year.

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Jake Warken of Vancouver (centre) is surrounded by friends at a screening of CBC’s special broadcast, The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration, at the Woodwards Atrium in Vancouver on Aug. 20.

Vancouver resident Jake Warken turned up at the screening with a crew of good friends. Sporting an “In Gord We Trust” T-shirt – printed by a charity raising money for Sunnybrook Foundation’s Gord Downie Fund for Cancer Research – Warken said he felt melancholy.

He said he grew up in the Prairies listening to his parents party to The Hip. To him, the band’s music has been “an anthem of good times and people coming together”.

He caught The Hip live in July – about his 20th time seeing them perform – and dealt with most of the heartache then. Saturday, he steeled himself to celebrate Downie and company among fellow fans of “all demographics,” he said.

“I love this band. It’s going to be very hard,” Warken said.

North Vancouver resident Jeff Levitt set up lawn chairs to view the broadcast with his wife and their two children.

For Levitt, it was “very important” to attend. The Ontario native grew up listening to The Hip in high school and holds on to warm memories of catching the band’s outdoor performances in Barrie.

“It’s kind of sad, obviously, that this might be the last time we get to see them in concert,” he said.

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Bryan and Kari Woo of Richmond attend a screening of CBC’s special broadcast, The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration, at the Woodwards Atrium in Vancouver.

She introduced family in California to The Hip’s music and made it a fixture on her travel playlist.

In 1995, she was one of just a couple hundred diehard fans who caught the band’s surprise fundraiser show at the now-defunct Railway Club in Vancouver.

“I know it’s cliche to say, but when they talk about ‘the soundtrack of your life?’ That’s The Hip for me,” Woo said.

neagland@postmedia.com
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