With Blue Rodeo, I played the Juno Awards a few times, which is to say I spent several evenings inside a highly managed snow globe with a budget. Everything controlled. Everything rehearsed. This was clear to kids and teenagers watching on TV. It ran on cue cards and polite applause. Art with a leash, never felt natural. But there was one moment the whole thing cracked open.

I think it was 1989. Mary Margaret and Catherine O’Hara walked out to present an award. It was clear immediately they hadn’t read the memo or if they had, they ate it after. They did not care. It was incredible. Unlike the teleprompter faithful, they weren’t there to serve the machine but to amuse themselves. They said they were going to lead the audience in a version of the Irish national anthem. Or something like that. The details didn’t matter, the point was confusion. All of us were delighted and baffled.

The production crew, on the other hand, looked like a group of mimes given the prompt “despair”. If the Junos ostensibly were to celebrate brilliant talent from Canada – now it arrived. Two radical beauties amusing themselves, giggling and letting real life break out on live television.