‘I wish it could have gone forever’: Gord Sinclair remembers the Tragically Hip’s final tour

Gord Sinclair can still picture the Tragically Hip in a rehearsal room, five musicians tossing ideas back and forth until a song emerged that none could have written alone.

Ten years after the iconic Kingston, Ont. band played its final concert, he still wonders what they might have created next.

“I wish we were still doing it,” Sinclair says. “I’d be curious what we were coming up with.”

But the bassist can’t imagine the Tragically Hip returning to the road without frontman Gord Downie, who died in 2017 after suffering from a rare and incurable form of brain cancer.

“I would never say never,” Sinclair says in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“But it was profoundly sad to lose Gord. I think it would be profoundly sad to go on the road without him and his voice.”

The question has come up before. Downie himself encouraged his bandmates to continue without him, Sinclair says, but the remaining members never seriously considered replacing him.

“It just wouldn’t feel right,” he says.

Sinclair points to Rush as an example of another Canadian band finding a way to perform its catalogue after the death of a central member. He recently saw the band in Toronto, with drummer Anika Nilles taking the throne once occupied by Neil Peart.

“They haven’t replaced Neil Peart,” Sinclair says. “They’ve just got Anika in the drummer’s chair and she’s fantastic. She brings her own thing to the show.”

He wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the Hip could someday find a similar path.

“But I just couldn’t ever imagine us doing it without him,” he says. “It would just be a drag. The waiting around for the show without him around would be depressing.”

For now, the band’s music is doing the travelling.

On Friday, the Tragically Hip releases “Live July 22 – August 20, 2016,” a collection of recordings from the 15-date Man Machine Poem tour that ended with their final show in Kingston, Ont., exactly 10 years ago Thursday.

Roughly one-third of Canada’s population tuned in for that concert, dubbed “The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration.” To mark the occasion, CBC will rebroadcast the band’s farewell performance nationwide on Saturday.

For Sinclair, revisiting the recordings has been an emotional exercise — and one he initially couldn’t bring himself to undertake.

The band had recorded virtually every show on the final tour, and longtime sound engineer Mark Vreeken and music exec Bruce Dickinson, who originally signed the Hip to MCA, began combing through the tapes to find the strongest performances.

Sinclair initially tried to listen along.

“I couldn’t do it,” he says. “It was too much for me, emotionally.”

Dickinson ultimately curated the album, pulling performances from across the country.

What struck Sinclair most was how little the finished recordings sound like a farewell.

“You wouldn’t know that Gord was sick,” he says. “It was just another tour that just unfortunately happened to be our last.”

That was no small feat.

Downie was seriously ill and dealing with the effects of surgery that impaired his short-term memory.

“I was worried about his health,” says Sinclair. “The nature of his illness was there was always a possibility of him having a seizure, which I didn’t want to happen to him in front of a bunch of people.”

But Downie remained fully, completely committed to the tour.

“He was such a pro,” Sinclair says. “He was such a great guy and such a great performer, and this last tour meant so much to him.”

During the shows, Downie sometimes struggled to recall lyrics. But audiences began singing along so loudly that their voices could help trigger the words.

“It was a beautiful thing to be part of,” Sinclair says.

By the time the tour reached its final stops, he adds, the band was “firing on all cylinders.”

“It was great to finish up at home where we started, but I wish it could have gone forever.”

Since then, the closest the Hip have come to a reunion is a lockdown-era performance of “It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken” with Feist at the 2021 Juno Awards.

Still, their music continues to resonate. The band’s 2005 compilation album “Yer Favourites” just celebrated its 400th week on Billboard Canada’s Top 200 chart, sitting at No. 15.

Next month, the Hip will be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

For Sinclair, that honour carries particular significance because the band’s songwriting was collective.

The members initially brought individual ideas into the rehearsal room, but over time they learned to build songs together — a guitar riff from one member, a bridge from another, Downie’s lyrics and melodies layered on top.

“We were stronger together,” Sinclair says.

The celebration comes with an inevitable sadness.

“Obviously, the whole thing is bittersweet,” Sinclair says. “Half of what we do is lyrics and Gord was writing the lyrics for us.”

The Hip’s songs were famous for deep-diving into Canadian regional identity. Sinclair ultimately hopes newer bands are inspired to do the same.

“You’ve got kids that are coming up, writing out in Iqaluit or Victoria or St. John’s, they’re starting off from a different place, a different point of view,” he says.

“If they are able to learn how to express who they are and where they’re from, it makes the country that much better. Because we’re stronger together, and I use the band as a metaphor.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 20, 2026.