Canadian musical legends the Tragically Hip performed their final concert in their hometown of Kingston ten-years-ago today. Tickets were obviously scare and thousands gathered in the Limestone City’s Springer Market Square behind City Hall to watch the concert on large screens and pay their own tributes to this special group of musicians and Kingstonians. Theirs’ had been a remarkable journey and their music in so many ways told Canada’s story in song after song. The band’s lead singer, Gord Downie, had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer only months early but still summoned the strength to front the band on one final tour. He passed into history at age 53 fourteen months later.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.