UPDATE August 20th:
As of Saturday night, August 20th (the night of the concert Canada will never forget), we counted 217 submissions of handwritten lyrics. Thank you to everyone who participated and showed so much love for Gord and The Tragically Hip. To have so many people connecting with Gord Downie’s lyrics and poetry was a beautiful tribute to him and his work.
With the generous pledge of Maker House Co. to match our donation, plus a little extra, we’ll be donating $500 to The Gord Downie Trust for Brain Cancer Research at Sunnybrook. Gord, you are a legend. Thank you for showing us all what courage truly is. UPDATE: Our friends at Magnolia Flowers in Gananoque have also very generously agreed to match our donation, so the amount donated was over $800! Individual donations can be made online by clicking here, so please consider making a donation to this very important cause.
Jump down to see some of the handwritten lyrics.
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Here’s the original post from August 16th, 2016.
This has nothing to do with paint or furniture.
This Thursday, August 18th, The Tragically Hip will be playing in Ottawa. It’s looking like this will be their last tour.
My vision is to have my shop window covered in Hip lyrics over the next 4 days. Five hundred lyrics actually.
I’m not what you’d call a super fan. Don’t ask me to recite every single Hip lyric off by heart. Don’t ask me how many concerts I’ve been to. Or if I know every bit of trivia about the band (if you are that person, you’re awesome, by the way).
But you can ask me how The Tragically Hip and Gord Downie have made happy moments in my life sweeter. How they made sad moments make a little more sense. How they’ve helped reveal many constellations in my life — one star at a time — through their work.
And I love the music, yes. But for me it’s about the words.
So words is what we want. A lot of words.
If you’re in Ottawa, please come into our shop to paint, write or post up a lyric. We’re at 1098-B Somerset Street West in Hintonburg. If you can’t make it in, please write down your lyric and take a picture of it. Tweet it to me at @MalenkaKatrina; Instagram or Facebook @MalenkaOriginals. Email at info@malenka.ca.
Why handwritten? To take a moment, sit down, reflect on what Gord Downie has given us.
For every lyric we get, we’ll donate $1 to the Gord Downie Trust for Brain Cancer Research, up to $500. And we’d love if a generous business — or several — would consider matching our donation.
Thank you to so many of you who have gotten involved already. Scroll down to see some one what we already have — and there are a lot more coming in all the time. But we still need more! Please take a few minutes and send us a lyric. It’s the least we can do to help give some #courageforgord.
Katrina x
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Thank you to everyone who sent in lyrics!
Below are a few, and we’ll be attempting to add them all up here.
The view from outside.
And from inside (doesn’t it kinda feel like being inside a big Canadian bear hug for Gord?)
And here’s many that were sent to us (we’ll try to get them all up!). The shop window has a bit of reflection with some…but it’s fitting, as reflecting is exactly the point.
That’s 6-year old Beatrice above, and her favourite song is What Blue.
The above is from Parker, who is 2 and a huge Tragically Hip fan.
