The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame announced on April 28 that The Tragically Hip, Feist, Loverboy songwriters Mike Reno and Paul Dean, and Roch Voisine will be inducted at Massey Hall in Toronto on September 26, 2026. The ceremony, presented by Amazon Music, will be livestreamed on Twitch and, for the first time, on Prime Video across Canada.
The Hip’s inclusion arrives ten years after their final tour with Gord Downie, who died in 2017. Songs like Ahead by a Century, Bobcaygeon, and Wheat Kings have long since moved past the category of “beloved Canadian rock” into something harder to classify. The band has won 17 JUNO Awards and sold over 14 million albums worldwide. The remaining members acknowledged the absence plainly in their statement: “It is bittersweet that our bandmate, lyricist and dear friend, Gord Downie, will not be standing with us.”
Reno and Dean built Loverboy out of Calgary in 1979 and spent the early ’80s putting Working for the Weekend and Turn Me Loose onto radio playlists across North America. Fifteen million albums sold. Six JUNO Awards in a single year, a record at the time. The songs still show up in arenas and on classic rock stations without any apparent effort on anyone’s part.
Feist’s The Reminder went multi-platinum and produced 1234, which reached well beyond the music press after its appearance in an Apple ad in 2007. Metals won the Polaris Music Prize and was named Album of the Year by The New York Times. Fourteen JUNO wins, four Grammy nominations, over a billion streams. Her induction reflects a body of work that has moved steadily in its own direction regardless of what the industry was doing around it.
Voisine built his career across two languages and two continents. Hélène made him the first Canadian artist to reach number one in France, a distinction that opened European markets few English-Canadian acts had touched. He has since earned JUNO and Félix Awards and collaborated with writers including David Foster and Luc Plamondon.
Tickets go on sale April 29 at 10 a.m. ET through masseyhall.com. Performers and special guests for the evening have not yet been announced.
Photo Credit: Gordon Hawkins.
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