The Hip's last concert, 10 years later, with Gord Sinclair

“We wish we could have gone on,” Sinclair says. “We should have gone to Montreal. We should have gone to Quebec City. We should have gone to Halifax, Boston.”

But to be fair, there was no better place to end it than in Kingston, where their hometown crowd embraced them, as did fans across the country by extension. The story and its power galvanized the nation under one banner: The Hip.

They were the voice of a generation, the voice of a culture. Trace a line from Ian and Sylvia, to Gordon Lightfoot, and then on to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and you’ll find your way to the Tragically Hip, a Canadian band that told quintessentially Canadian stories. Witness Fireworks from 1998’s Phantom Power:

If there's a goal that everyone remembers.

It was back in old ’72.

We all squeezed the stick and we all pulled the trigger,

And all I remember is sitting beside you.

You said you didn't give a f**k about hockey

And I never saw someone say that before.

You held my hand and we walked home the long way.

You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr.

“The country has always punched above its weight in the performing arts,” Sinclair says. “It’s a tough country to tour. You either learn how to do it or you give it up and get a day job.”

As tough as that last tour was, fans made sure the band knew we were in it together. Sinclair says it’s the power of music. But fans knew it was more than that: we were about to lose our voice, and we needed to make sure they knew they would never be forgotten.

They’re in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. They’re on the Canadian Walk of Fame. They have the Order of Canada. And next month they’ll be inducted into the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. That means a lot to Sinclair who touts the band’s collaborative approach to songwriting. “A song we write is not really a song we write,” Downie once told MuchMusic’s Erica Ehm, “until every guy has put his stamp in it.” There was a freedom to their songwriting, Sinclair says. No one had to come into a session with a complete song. An idea was all it would take — a Sinclair bass line, a riff from Paul Langlois or Rob Baker, Johnny Fay’s rhythmic anchor, or a Downie lyric. The studio was the crucible where they brewed gold.

Sometimes it happened on stage; a jam session thrown into the middle of "New Orleans is Sinking", Sinclair explains, led to some of their other best-known songs: "Nautical Disaster" and "Grace, Too'. “Name a song in E,” he says, “and it would have started in the middle of 'New Orleans is Sinking'.”

They miss playing together, he says. “We liked to play with each other. And Gord was instrumental in the process. He was always pushing us forward.”

The Hip are not done yet. Yer Favourites, the band’s 37-track compilation, is on Billboard Canada’s Top 200. The live recording of the last concert, Live July 22-August 20, 2016, has just been released. And the tenth anniversary edition of The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration is going to be broadcast on Saturday with added documentary footage directed by Downie’s filmmaker brother, Mike.