Gordon Edgar Downie CM (February 6, 1964 – October 17, 2017) was a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, musician, writer, poet, and activist.

[1] Downie released eight solo albums, three posthumously: Coke Machine Glow (2001), Battle of the Nudes (2003), The Grand Bounce (2010), And the Conquering Sun (2014), Secret Path (2016), Introduce Yerself (2017), Away Is Mine (2020), and Lustre Parfait (2023).

He was the son of Lorna (Neal) and Edgar Charles Downie, a travelling salesman, later a real estate broker and developer.

[6] In 1984, at age 20, Downie formed the Tragically Hip with Rodents members Rob Baker and Gord Sinclair, another younger Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute alumnus, Johnny Fay, and saxophonist Davis Manning.

[8] Downie became known for his showmanship in live Hip performances, incorporating mid-song spoken-word rants, zany gestures and movements, and especially on their final Man Machine Poem Tour, his bold wardrobe.

His most famous Canadian collaborations are with Richard Terfry (better known as Buck 65), Dallas Green of City and Colour and Alexisonfire, the Sadies and Fucked Up.

Downie also appears in the Trailer Park Boys movie The Big Dirty, in which he and Alex Lifeson play a pair of police officers.

More recently, he and other members of the band appeared in the episode of Trailer Park Boys entitled "Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys", in which he is harassed while eating a bologna sandwich at a singles dance.

[22] With Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, Downie helped work on a cause to prevent a cement company from burning tires for fuel.

Author Joseph Boyden, who invited them, said their motivation was to "initiate a guerrilla act of love for a people who are so thoroughly underrepresented but now, somehow, overexposed for only their shortcomings.

A guerrilla act of love to show the rest of the country what strength and artistry, grace and humour the Cree possess."

[29] Chanie Wenjack was a young Indigenous boy who died trying to escape a residential school,[31] who became the central character of Downie's Secret Path project.

Bellegarde also bestowed on Downie an honorary aboriginal name, Wicapi Omani, which is Lakota for "man who walks among the stars".

[35] Downie, along with his Tragically Hip bandmates, was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada on June 19, 2017, for "their contribution to Canadian music and for their support of various social and environmental causes".

[38][39] Doctors at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre confirmed the same day that it was a glioblastoma, which had responded favourably to radiation and chemotherapy treatment but was not curable.

[41] The tour was profiled in the 2017 documentary film Long Time Running, directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier.

In a tribute to Downie at the Juno Awards ceremony, Sarah Harmer, Dallas Green and Kevin Hearn performed a medley of the album's title track with the Tragically Hip song "Bobcaygeon".

Thank you everyone for all the respect, admiration and love you have given Gord throughout the years – those tender offerings touched his heart and he takes them with him now as he walks among the stars.Upon hearing the news, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a tribute statement on his official website.

Several prominent Canadians, including actors Ryan Reynolds and Seth Rogen; Toronto mayor John Tory; singers k.d.

lang and Neil Young; rapper Drake; and the rock group Rush, remembered Downie on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

[70] Residents of the Ontario village of Bobcaygeon, which Downie had written about in the song of the same name, held a candlelight vigil for him the night after his death;[71] a large public gathering also took place at Springer Market Square in the band's hometown of Kingston.

[citation needed] In Kingston, Mayor Bryan Paterson issued a statement, laid a wreath in Springer Market Square near City Hall, and signed a condolence banner.

[75] Several stations, including CHEZ-FM in Ottawa, CFRQ-FM in Halifax,[73] CJRQ-FM in Sudbury,[75] CJQQ-FM in Timmins, CKEZ-FM in New Glasgow and CIKR-FM in the Tragically Hip's hometown of Kingston[76] dropped their regular names to temporarily rebrand themselves as "Gord FM".

[79] In the wake of Downie's death, CTV rescheduled the planned broadcast premiere of Long Time Running, a documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier about the Man Machine Poem Tour of 2016, from November 12 to October 20.

[81] In 2018, two recordings by Downie, "The East Wind" and "At the Quinte Hotel", were released on the compilation album The Al Purdy Songbook.

In June 2020, the Tragically Hip and manager Jake Gold announced that they were undertaking an "archaeological dig" to select music and memorabilia from the band's archives for future release.

[83] In August, Downie's Twitter account was reactivated, and began posting a series of teaser photographs of handwritten song lyrics, accompanied by numbers that appeared to be a calendar countdown to the date of October 15.