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Fully completely

"Hello friends. We have some very tough news to share with you today, and we wish it wasn't so.
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"Hello friends. We have some very tough news to share with you today, and we wish it wasn't so."

And with that, the Tragically Hip, Canada's unofficial house band for the last three decades, informed the public on their website that their lead singer, Gord Downie, has terminal brain cancer.

Downie was diagnosed back in December, only a few months after the Hip brought their Fully and Completely tour to Prince George. "Since then, obviously, he's endured a lot of difficult times, and he has been fighting hard. In privacy along with his family, and through all of this, we've been standing by him," the band statement Tuesday read.

Whenever the shock, the anger and the disbelief subside after anyone is given such a diagnose, the reality sets in and decisions start getting made about what those final days should look like.

For the five members of the iconic Kingston, Ontario band, it's about being close, so that means hitting the road. They likely would have been heading out anyway, in support of a new studio album, Man Machine Poem, due next month, but this tour will be different.

"This feels like the right thing to do now, for Gord, and for all of us," the band wrote. "What we in The Hip receive, each time we play together, is a connection; with each other; with music and it's magic; and during the shows, a special connection with all of you, our incredible fans. So, we're going to dig deep, and try to make this our best tour yet."

In other words, this tour is about living while there's still living to be done, both for Downie and for this incredible band, in the spotlight, playing for the fans.

The Hip has been there for Canada for nearly 30 years, providing the soundtrack to the lives of millions of Canadians. For however long Downie and the Hip have left (it's as safe to say there will be no Hip without Downie as it is to say there is no Eagles now that Glenn Frey is gone), they'd like to keep playing those songs for those who can't imagine them not being an integral part of their lives.

Those songs.

Our online poll now asks what is "yer favourite" Hip song. Yer Favourites was their 2005 greatest-hits package and it had 37 songs on it. Not wanting to put 37 songs, we forced ourselves to five. We love our picks - New Orleans Is Sinking, Little Bones, Courage, Grace Too and Bobcaygeon - but we hate the list. It's so incomplete.

What about Blow At High Dough, 38 Years Old, Twist My Arm, Cordelia, Long Time Running, Locked In The Trunk Of A Car, Fifty-Mission Cap, Nautical Disaster, Gift Shop, Ahead By A Century, Poets, Fireworks, My Music At Work, Silver Jet and Vaccination Scar?

All of those Hip songs and so many others have become so embedded in Canadian culture because of that straight-forward, unpretentious rock coupled with quirky, unabashedly Canadian lyrics (or the video of The Darkest One, which featured the Trailer Park Boys stealing a motor and Don Cherry home-delivering buckets of fried chicken).

When the St. Louis Blues invited Canadians through an online video to adopt them for the rest of the Stanley Cup playoffs because they have the most Canadians of the four remaining teams, they did so with the Hip's Looking For A Place To Happen playing in the background. That's because only Canadians understand the lyric "Jacques Cartier, right this way" and chuckle knowingly.

One of the most famous of Downie's lyrics is about he'd like his funeral to go.

"If I die of vanity, promise me, promise me if they bury me some place I don't want to be, you'll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously away from the swollen city breeze, garbage bag trees, whispers of disease and the acts of enormity, and lower me slowly and sadly and properly, get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy."

Downie may get his wish as Cooder is 69 years old and healthy.

"We don't go to hell the memories of us do and if you go to hell I'll still remember you," Downie sings on Inevitability Of Death.

If that's the case, there's no doubt his ticket to hell is marked first class express.

Hopefully there will be a Prince George stop when the Hip announce their tour dates today, so Prince George and area fans can say goodbye and thank you for all those great songs and all the memories that come with hearing them.