Something On: Tragically Hip’s questioning of Canadianness
by Erin MacLeod
The Ice Storm, an event that needed nothing more than capitalization for years after it occurred in 1998, changed the space in Eastern Ontario and Quebec. Montreal, specifically, became a unique place. Bridges were closed and, of course, the power was off. One could walk in the middle of the snow-filled streets downtown with little chance of running into any vehicle of any sort. But there were all sorts of people walking around, taking in the otherworldly atmosphere. It was as if the city could be seen from a whole different perspective.
It feels almost silly to say because it seems so obvious, but ice was everywhere. Apparently the Tragically Hip were stuck in a studio at the time, recording what might perhaps be the definitive Ice Storm song (and perhaps one of the most significant Tragically Hip songs), “Something On”. Directly referencing the post-storm landscape, Gord Downie describes how “the ice is covering the trees / And one of them is interconnecting / With my Chevrolet Caprice.” The effect of the ice was broken electrical towers and snapped power lines; the power had been turned off but something else had been turned on. Perhaps, as per the album title Phantom Power, there was some other type of ghostly influence. The “space tautened” during those days. There was a tension between supposed normalcy and what happens when that normalcy is disrupted.
There’s something about “Something On” that captures the type of Canadianness that literature professors talk about. Survival, identity, mapping, nordicity. All words that are supposed to describe that which drove the writing of poets like Earl Birney and Robert Kroetsch. They, and other famous Canadian poets, have been seen as documenters of landscape, survivors of the cold northern weather. But there’s a whole world beneath these wintry metaphors and concepts.
Hailing from Kingston, originally chosen as the capital of the then province of Canada before the 1867 birthdate of the country that exists presently, there’s always been sense that the Tragically Hip represent something essentially Canadian. Even their appearance on Saturday Night Live, introduced to the audience by Canuck comedy luminary Dan Akroyd, himself sporting a Maple Leafs jersey, was viewed as some sort of triumph of Canadianness.
The Tragically Hip are a rock band. They are a rock band of white dudes. Their lyrics name-check bits and pieces of Canadian geography, history, popular culture, hockey. But they can only possibly represent a particular Canada and Canadian identity.
And even with this Great White North personae, “Something On”, in its discussion of the aftermath of ice storm, seems to acknowledge that Canadian identity is not easy. What looks like Canadian identity hides history, culture, experience and oppression. But when the electricity is out, the façade is lifted, and people see things differently.
The image of the train in “Something On” — the train that school children are told “opened the west” is but a settler image of the nation. The west was already opened — it was already home to many people. “Kill the dream of possible vacations,” sings Downie, “with the sweep of a mapping pioneer”. Pioneering, for those forced to read Susana Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush, is portrayed as a laudable mission, but, for Downie, the impetus of the pioneer to map — and do so sweepingly — kills possibilities.
And then Downie jumps from the Eastern Canadian space of the Ice Storm to a monorail — perhaps referencing the original single-railed plans for the Vancouver Sky Train, thereby taking on a wider scope of the Canadian landscape. “Something On” speaks of the “alienation” of this Canada. Those who rely on what can only be called colonial narratives are left “standing at the station”, because, of course, “the train’s long gone.” When there’s “nothing on”, it’s possible to consider what’s underneath the something. The narratives of Canadianness have been placed on top of other narratives. Canada is a home on Native land. This, Downie sings, “makes me feel just rotten”.
The final verse speaks to the listener, the listener who, at the beginning of the song is accused of possessing an imagination that gives birth to ideas — ideas that are meant to draw others: like, “a video for new recruits.” But this idea, is that which is placed on top, that which covers up things we cannot see unless something is turned off. “Something On” asks listeners to consider possibilities. To question narratives. The Tragically Hip’s so-called Canadianness is indeed white Canadianness, but Gord Downie pushes through positionality — in, admittedly, often obtuse lyrics — to express the need to see things from alternative perspectives. The ice certainly covered the trees in the Ice Storm, but it also uncovered. Through the shimmering ice, what was there could be seen, exposed, differently.
This was originally published on Buzzfeed Community as part of a collection of pieces discussing the Tragically Hip.
