Last Saturday, on September 26th, members of the LyricFind team attended the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame's 2026 induction ceremony at Massey Hall in Toronto, where The Tragically Hip, Feist, Loverboy's Mike Reno and Paul Dean, and Roch Voisine were formally inducted for their contributions to Canadian songwriting. Presented by Amazon Music and hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos and Marie-Mai, the evening brought together performers, family, and songwriting peers for a night built around the songs themselves and the people who wrote them.
Nowhere was that clearer than in the tribute to The Tragically Hip. Jay Baruchel inducted the band, and Rob Baker, Gord Sinclair, and Paul Langlois accepted on its behalf, paying tribute to their late bandmate Gord Downie, who died in 2017. Baker read a message attributed to Downie describing himself standing "wide-eyed and enthralled" before the songwriters’ cabal, a line that turned a formal induction into an intimate conversation with an absent friend.
A purple feathered hat, a nod to Downie's final tour, hung from a microphone stand throughout the tribute. Cree singer-songwriters Tia Wood and Sebastian Gaskin covered "Bobcaygeon," one of the band's most beloved songs, and when Allison Russell took the stage for her take on "Wheat Kings," she closed by singing directly to the hat: "We will always love you, Gord."
Grammy-winning Toronto producer Boi-1da also made a special appearance to introduce City and Colour and Ruby Waters, who performed their version of "Ahead by a Century" from What If It All Goes Right?, the Canada Soccer album he executive produced ahead of this summer's World Cup.
Our Lady Peace closed the night with "Locked in the Trunk of a Car," and frontman Raine Maida asked the crowd to raise their phone lights for Downie, a room full of people holding up light for a lyric that has outlasted the man who wrote it.
Feist's induction leaned into a different kind of honesty. Charlotte Cornfield opened the tribute with "How Come You Never Go There," and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy followed with "The Park." Then Finneas, who inducted her, called Feist "so many of your favourite artists' favourite artist" before closing with his rendition of "My Moon My Man." Feist's own acceptance speech was brief and unguarded. She said that talking is harder for her than singing, and that songwriting has always been how she locates herself in her own life. Three artists, three songs, and it made the case for her catalogue better than any introduction could: the same songwriter, heard through several other voices, and still unmistakably hers.
Loverboy’s Paul Dean and Mike Reno, along with Roch Voisine, made two very different arguments for the same point. Amanda Marshall opened the night with "Turn Me Loose," Todd Kerns took on “The Kid Is Hot Tonite,” and TALK's high-energy "Working for the Weekend" reminded the room that a well-built hook can survive over four decades and still earn a standing ovation. Jim Vallance, a longtime collaborator of Loverboy, handled their induction.
Voisine, inducted by Olympic gold medalists Laura Stacey and Marie-Philip Poulin, spoke about writing songs just for himself, before later learning that university students had studied to them for years. He closed his segment with a surprise duet of “I’ll Always Be There” with Isabelle Boulay and a full choir, sung in French, in a room that didn't need the language to feel it.
For a company built around making lyrics accessible to fans everywhere, what stood out most was how often the ceremony itself turned into a conversation about the words themselves: what they mean to the people who wrote them, what they end up meaning to everyone else, and how long they keep meaning it. Four very different songwriting careers were honored in one room, and the thread connecting all of them was the line that stuck.
Congratulations to The Tragically Hip, Feist, Mike Reno and Paul Dean, and Roch Voisine on a well-earned place in the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
See you at the next one,
The LyricFind Team
Written by: Kayla Higgins, Copywriter & Content Coordinator