By Angela Espinoza

n hour before the audience of Rogers Arena
A= a time machine; a man takes a seat

beside me. He is with his son, and this is the
first concert either of them has attended in seventeen
years. Two hours before, most of the concertgoers so
far are families. Eager parents dressed in tour shirts
from generations past grin stupidly while their teenage
boys stand idly by looking confused. Three years
before, my slow and steady father races downtown like
a maniac, as I’m sure he did the other six or so times
he saw Rush. I sit in the back seat whining about how
I could be home doing nothing. Later that evening,
my father, donning a shirt with the album cover for
Moving Pictures, turns to me and asks, “Wasn’t that
great?” Fifteen hours ago, I’m jumping and screaming
like this is the last show on Earth. After the first set,
Rush will perform the entire Moving Pictures album.

In the early 70s, at the age of eight, my father

immigrated to Canada with his family, just as military
dictatorship was taking over Chile. Upon settling
in British Columbia, he discovered a freedom and
education he would have never found back home (at
the time). While there’s still a place in his heart for

  

(Puke

 

Chile, he’s never stopped insisting that Canada is the
greatest country in the world. But behind his more
political and sophisticated reasons for loving Canada,
part of this love has been fuelled simply by the fact
that he is a Rush fan boy. Over the years, I’ve come to
the conclusion that both my father and Rush embody
everything it means to love music, to love freedom,
and best of all, to be Canadian.

On the night of July 31, all those in Rogers
Arena were presented with probably the best lead-in
to Canada Day anyone could ask for. In classic Rush
fashion, the show opened with a skit filmed prior,
where in an alternate dimension at ‘Gershon’s Haus of
Sausage’ , three goofy looking teenagers form the polka
band ‘Rash’ while the actual members of Rush portray
a stereotypical Jewish waiter (Geddy Lee), ‘Officer
O’Malley’ (Neil Peart), and an overweight, German
inventor (Alex Lifeson). After the inventor foolishly
presses a giant red button, Lee, Peart and Lifeson are
all tossed through various dimensions in time before
landing in 1980, appearing on stage to perform ‘Spirit
of the Radio’.

The first half of the performance was fairly calm,
not to say the boys weren’t giving it their all the entire
time. For each song in the set, an onscreen counter

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