Tragically Hip concert to be aired on Assiniboine Park's big screen
Winnipeggers are invited to Assiniboine Park to watch a live broadcast of the final concert in the Tragically Hip's summer tour, planned despite lead singer Gord Downie's diagnosis with terminal brain cancer.
The Hip return to their hometown of Kingston, Ont., on Aug. 20 for the final show of their Man Machine Poem tour.
The public is invited to gather at Assiniboine Park for CBC's special broadcast, The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration, beginning at 7:30 p.m. CT. The show will be projected on a 27-foot-wide LED screen set up on the Lyric Stage.
"This concert will be a national celebration, and we can't think of a better way to watch Canada's favourite band than in the Assiniboine Park with thousands of Manitoba Hip fans," Kevin Hunter, director of marketing and community engagement with Assiniboine Park Conservancy, stated in a news release.
"The spirit of Assiniboine Park is about coming together to create memorable experiences with family, friends and community. Creating an event around this concert just feels like a natural fit for us."
The Man Machine Poem tour follows the announcement in May that Downie, the lead singer and lyricist of the iconic Canadian rock band, has terminal brain cancer.
Tickets for the tour sold out in seconds, then popped up at inflated prices on resale sites such as StubHub.
The demand to see the band on what many are saying is its final tour prompted CBC to announce last month that it had reached a deal with the Hip to broadcast the last show.
Frustrated fans had started floating the idea of a CBC broadcast in online petitions and open letters addressed to management, but Emma Bédard, a spokeswoman for the CBC, said the public broadcaster was already looking at ways to air the concert before the requests started coming in.
The Kingston concert will be broadcast and streamed — commercial free — on CBC Television, CBC Radio One, CBC Radio 2, cbcmusic.ca and CBC's YouTube channels.
- Online: cbcmusic.ca/thehip
- YouTube channel: youtube.com/cbcmusic
- Online: facebook.com/cbcmusic
- Twitter: twitter.com/cbcmusic