Aug. 28, 2016

By: Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

You are never too old to learn ...

And last week we learned that Paul Langlois, a guitarist with the Tragically Hip, is the son of Adrien (Tic) Langlois, the legendary high school coach at Kingston Collegaite. How long did Tic coach? Well, he coached the senior Blues when I was moved from pulling guard to right tackle in 1965 (or was in 1966) on the junior team by coach Bob Ing ... something about a lack of speed.

Equipped with this “fresh news” I called Tic to extend congrats and left a message. It was four days before the final Tragically Hip concert of their Man Machine Poem tour at the K-Rock Centre. This wasn't a baseball story, but it was a major-league story of five national resources packed together to make an all-Canadian, all-time band.

And then I headed off to Moncton to join grandsons Xavier, six, Xander and their parents for Xander’s first birthday party celebrations.

Returning home I found a message from Tic on the phone “nice to hear from you, if you are calling about Hip tickets ... sorry you are a little late. I can’t help.”

Tic still had a sense of humor. 

Like when I was playing junior football in the 1960s and asked if I could be called up to the seniors for the playoffs, which was against the rules. He replied “not with a 30 in Spanish.” Tic may have known the X’s and the O’s ... but he did not know my marks. I had a 31 in Spanish and I have the report card to prove it.

But back to The Hip’s final concert ... 

Thousands were moved by lead singer Gord Downie’s lyrics. What did Tic think? 

“I was feeling kind of verklempt,” said the father, who like many Canadians coast to coast and around the world were choked with emotion. They entertained their original fans who now bring their children. 

“They didn’t say it was the last tour, they could still carry on who knows? The outpouring of love from the crowd was special. What is still amazing to me is how most of the fans know all the words.”

When the final song ended father Tic and mom Terry finally got to chance to speak to their son. What did Tic say? “I told him I really enjoyed that. And I congratulated him.

“We really haven’t had a chance to debrief. They had a party that night and then Paul headed for his cottage. He said he was going to sleep for 10 days.”

Terry and Tic’s daughter Michèle works for Downtown Kingston and some people were concerned about having that many people downtown watching giant LED screens in the same market square where Sir John A. Macdonald used to win debates against a representative from the hated Whig party. . 

“I was told that the (market) crowd was very well behaved,” said Langlois. The city expected an influx of 25,000 fans: 6,000 in the arena, the rest at market square and side streets as well as campus house parties. And 11.7 million people watched the CBC’s broadcast and livestreaming of The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration. They watched from coast to coast, south of the border and in London, UK.

Langlois has seen the band hundreds and hundreds of times in Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Syracuse, N.Y.-when Sam Roberts was their opening act- and Kingston to name a few locales. Where are they most loved?

“Kingston?” Tic was asked.

“I think that they are loved all across Canada,” he said. 

Lead singer Downie sang for three hours despite a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. He was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an invasive brain tumour, in his front left temporal lobe in December after he had a seizure in Kingston.

“Gord is very quiet,” said Langlois, an excellent judge of character having coached football for 26 seasons. “He is very intelligent, introspective, quite friendly and quite concerned about everyone else. He surprises you the things he asks.”

The Hip -- guitarist Rob Baker, bassist Gord Sinclair, drummer Johnny Fay, front man Downie and Langlois, rhythm guitar and harmonies -- all attended classes at KCVI, Canada’s oldest high school where Tic Langlois taught and I attended class. No really I did. Even Grade 11 Spanish. 

“Gord Sinclair and Rob Baker were the class of 1981, like our daughter Michèle, Gord Downie and Paul were two years younger and Johnny Fay was a couple of years younger,” said Tic. “They were all so athletic. Gord Sinclair and Rob Baker played junior football, my son played senior as a defensive half. Paul didn’t come out until Grade 13 ... he didn’t want people saying that the only reason he was on the team was because his father was the coach. Gord Downie played senior basketball for coach Hans Garsch.”

At school Langlois was known by co-worker and students as “Tic” or “Mr. Langlois.” One year teaching a girls Grade 9 class he noticed a difference. They wouldn’t call him Tic or Mr. Langlois. They would say, “That’s Paul’s dad.”  

Tic told the Kingston Whig-Standard, Canada’s oldest newspaper, he recalls “teaching them all in high school and not ever imagining this is what they’d be doing. And so I think of them as teenagers and not The Tragically Hip.”

After playing for the KCVI Blues some migrated across the street to the Queen’s University campus. 

The Hip formed in 1983 consisting of Gord Sinclair, Rob Baker, Gord Downie, Johnny Fay, saxophonist Davis Manning and in 1984. When Manning left two years later, Langlois replaced him.

At Queen’s they dominated at Alfie’s the pub named Alfie Pierce, son of a runaway American slave who settled in Kingston and became a trainer in the 1890s. From those early beginnings they played in front of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. 

* * *

The night after The Hip concert I ran into a young man wearing a Tragically Hip t-shirt on the streets on Moncton. It read last concert and it read Kingston.

Were you there last night?

Yes.

How was it?

Indescribable. Did u watch?

Yes on CBC ... Excellent, they did a real good job. No ads. Where are you from?

Moncton, we had tickets for the Ottawa show and decided to go to the finale. Where are you from?

Kingston.

I’M FROM MONCTON AND I WAS IN KINGSTON, YOU’RE FROM KINGSTON AND YOU WERE IN MONCTON? WHAT COULD BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE HIP’s FINAL FAREWELL?

My grandson’s first birthday.

You got me. 

* * *

The first time Tic Langlois saw the Hip was at the Lakeview Manor in the Portsmouth area of Kingston, “either 1985 or 1986” before his son had joined.

(Full disclosure here: I used to frequent the Manor where there is a rumor that they served really cheap draft beer. Yet, it was only because owner Steve Amey used to give my father cash to buy uniforms and baseballs for the team he managed, the Kingston Lakeview Indians. After father’s team won for the OBA senior title in 1967 -- first time since 1932 for a Kingston team, Amey continued sponsorship and the team was renamed the Kingston Lakeview Centennials. And Steve used to support the teachers softball league although all we ever saw was the KCVI teachers having a spot of tea.)

One of the Hip’s earliest videos “Small Town Bringdown” was filmed at the Manor with scenes from the Portsmouth area.

Obviously, I wasn’t there that night but the crowd looked like it used to in the late 1960s whenGrant Smith and the Power would come to town. 

When did the father who like all parents worry about the path their children chose, realize “hey, these guys are really good, really, really good?”

Tic said “after their second album. That’s when I knew that they were going to do for the rest of their lives.” 

With their background and their education, Tic thought that they have other choices and “that “might not stick to it.”

He recalls the days when the five band members would stuff all their equipment in one van and head out across the country -- more than once. 

Paul and his wife Joanne have two daughters, Emma who attends Dalhousie University and Sophie. Both daughters were at the show and had their picture taken with Prime Minister Trudeau. 

Paul has released two solo albums: Not Guilty in 2013 through his own independent record label, Ching Music and Fix This Head in 2011.

Langlois taught high school 31 years starting at Hamilton Cathedral High, Ottawa Tech and then KCVI for 26 years. He coached the senior Blues for 25 years winning the County of Frontenac Secondary School title in 1968 and 1976. The 1976 team will have a reunion Sept. 17 as the Golden Gaels host the University of Western Ontario Mustangs in the opener of the revitalized Richardson Stadium. 

The best players Tic Langlois ever coached? He selected quarterback Bobby Wright who went on to play for Queen’s and linebacker Paul Hazlett, who played for Queen’s from 1976-1980 and won the Vanier Cup in 1978.  

“When Doug Hargreaves was coaching we had quite a few KCVI players go on to play for Queen’s,” said Langlois.

Sad news though for KCVI alums as the school will only be open for a couple of more years. The school which opened in 1792 and saw the likes of Sir John A, author Robertson Davies, Donald S. Cherry, Olympic medallists Simon Whitfield and Rob Gibson, Robert Mundell, nobel laureate and “father of the Euro” and the Hip. Queen Elizabeth High closed in June and with a new $35 million school construction beginning.

Tic Langlois has seen a replay of the concert opening and closing from Rio de Janiero with CBC’s Ron MacLean.

* * *

Besides Kingston, The Hip was watched from coast to coast ... at

_ City Square in Corner Brook and Jean Lake Band Stand in Wabush, Newfoundland and Labrador.

_ The Astor Theatre, Liverpool and Marigold Cultural Centre, Truro Nova Scotia.

_ The Moncton Capitol Theatre, Moncton and Quispamsis Arts & Culture Park, Quispamsis New Brunswick.

_ Victoria Park, Charlottetown and Green’s Shore, Summerside, Prince Edward Island

_ The Monkland Avenue Flavors of Monkland Festival in Montreal and the GWRCA Social Club in Kuujjuarapik in Quebec.

_ Kawartha Works Community Co­operative on Bolton Street in Bobcaygeon, Canatara Park, Sarnia, Port Theatre, Cornwall and the Danforth Music Hal in Ontario.

_ William Glesby, Portage la Prairie, Stardust Drive­-in Morden and The Cube Stage at Old Market Square in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

_ The PA Brewing Company in Prince Albert and the Capitol Music Club in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

_ The Mackenzie Conference Centre in Drayton Valley, Anzac Recreation Centre in Fort McMurray and The Last Straw Ale House, in Calgary Alberta.

_ The Persephone Brewing Co. in Gibsons, The Wine & Art Piano Bar in Kelowna and The Yates Street Taphouse in Victoria, BC.

_ Somba K’e Civic Plaza in Yellowknife and The Deck at High Country Inn, in Whitehorse in the Northwest Territories.

_ Meehan’s Buckhead Public House in Atlanta to the Strand Theatre in Plattsburgh, NY and Riviera Theatre in Tonawanda, NY. 

* * *

My music tastes have roamed all around: from James Brown, the hardest working man in show business, to The Stylistics, to Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, to Stevie Wonder, to Willie Nelson and finally settling on George Strait for about 25 years.

Besides missing that fact that the man playing the tight guitar was Tic Langlois’ son, I never really appreciated their whole catalogue until this summer. We do remember Hip music being big in 2004 at an Olympic warm-up tourney in Italy and the next week inside the Athletes Village at the Athens Olympics. 

Outfielder Jeff Guiel told us how he was playing for Triple-A Salt Lake Stingers in 2003. Guiel’s walk-up song was “New Orleans is Sinking” in a game against the Sacramento RiverCats. A few weeks later Salt Lake was in Sacramento. “You Canadian?” Guiel nodded yes to the Sacramento player.

“So, am I, I’m Mike Kusiewicz,” said the Ottawa-Nepean Canadians grad, starting a friendship between an outfielder from BC and a lefty from Ontario, who took The Hip music to Panama and Greece and elsewhere.

Picking a favorite song when you are so close to the band as Tic Langlois is, must be like answering “so which child you like best.?”

“Very difficult to say, I’ve had some in mind all week, I’ve been singing them all week,” said Langlois.

We know what he means.

Methinks I’ll go hit replay on the Bobcaygeon vid for about the 200th time since the weekend.

"I left your house this morning
About a quarter after nine
Could have been the Willie Nelson
Could have been the wine ..."