Episode Details

August 14, 2016. The last night The Tragically Hip ever played Toronto, and three fans who were in the building take jD back inside - ten years to the day.

Sunday, August 14, 2016. The Air Canada Centre, the last night of a three-night stand, and the last time The Tragically Hip ever played Toronto. Nobody in the building knew that for certain. Everybody in the building knew it anyway.

Ten years to the day, jD steers into uncharted waters (they never do third ones) with three fans who were there: Dave from Thornhill, Jeff from Buffalo, and Jeff from Belleville.

The news first, because the news is always first. Jeff from Buffalo came in from a morning run, read the email, and handed his wife the phone because he could not say the words. Dave was getting into his car at Yonge and Eglinton when his whole body sank (and one friend in the group chat skipped the first paragraph and celebrated the new tour - leave it to friends). Jeff from Belleville read it in the front foyer, flashed hot, and told his kids the only thing he could get out: Gord Downie is not doing well.

Then the tickets. Jeff from Buffalo broke the algorithm by asking for one seat at a time - it kept offering him another, and two shutouts became four tickets. Dave had Kingston floors on his screen for five full minutes before the error message took them away. Jeff from Belleville stared down the spinning wheel of death for half an hour, then went to plan B. Plan B was this show. So there's that.

The day itself: the recording booth outside the ACC that both Jeffs walked past and still regret, a stranger in the beer line who covered the round - "pay it forward, man" - and got the two people behind them too, and Dave breaking his own no-listening-on-show-day rule, blasting The Hip the whole drive down from camp in Haliburton before standing under the marquee, staring at the boys.

Then the set list. 'Blow at High Dough' out of the gate, hitting everybody in the face exactly the way it should. 'Opiated', which Dave still can't quite believe he got. Four songs from "Now For Plan A", the rare record of the night. 'The Last of the Unplucked Gems' filling the room while Gord changed - reflection time, Dave calls it. The 'that night in Toronto' line in 'Bobcaygeon' that Gord missed and the whole building carried. And 'Daredevil' into 'Grace, Too' to close - the close-up on the big screen, everything pouring out of him, down to the last bead of sweat.

Jeff from Buffalo kept notes from that week, and he read them back. Nervous on the QEW. No crying at the show. And one line that says it all: there's no way he's sick, because nobody sick could be that defiant. The whole evening was a magic spell, and it held right up until the house lights came on. Then it broke.

There's a detour into the silver suit (hello, good evening folks, we are the Silver Poets) - armor, magician's misdirection, or just Gord radiating light in a purple hat, depending on which panelist you ask. Jeff from Belleville admits the outfits looked a little cringy in the photos beforehand. Then Gord strutted out. Case closed.

And the thread runs where it always runs - to August 20th. A living room outside Buffalo with the kids and Pearl Jam dedications rolling in. The back of the floor at the Danforth Music Hall. And for Dave, a mystery ticket a few weeks later that turned out to be "Secret Path" at Roy Thomson Hall - which he now teaches to his grade 7 and 8 students every January, when it's cold and grey outside and Chanie Wenjack was about their age.

The landing belongs to Jeff from Buffalo, though: a compromised man put on a show like that, and the rest of us have our health. We all have something terminal. Live like it.

THE PANEL

• Dave from Thornhill - a teacher who got one night away from camp in Haliburton and spent it at the last Toronto Hip show, watched Kingston floors dissolve into an error screen, and turned a mystery ticket in