Personnel
"Wheat Kings" is a non-single track from The Tragically Hip's Fully Completely album. It tells the story of David Milgaard, a Winnipeg teenager who was wrongfully convicted for the 1969 rape and murder of a nursing assistant in Saskatoon, and was not exonerated until 16 April 1992, after having spent 23 years in prison.
"Wheat Kings" was voted the best Tragically Hip song in a CBC poll conducted during the Man Machine Poem tour in the summer of 2016. It ranked #3 (behind Joni's "Both Sides Now" and Neil's "Helpless") in the CBC's 2014 list of 100 Best Canadian Songs Ever, #6 in the Mar*Star's 2011 poll, and #87 in Bob Mersereau's 2010 The Top 100 Canadian Singles, which suggests it must have been released on a single at some time, though I've found no evidence of this.
The line about the "pictures of our parents' prime ministers" always reminds me of the condo that Brad Mehlenbacher and I rented during our work term in Ottawa – the hallway had several signed photographs of past prime ministers, given, I expect, to the former civil servant who owned the place.
| Hometown: | Kingston |
| Canadian Content: | Generally, it tells the story of the wrongly-convicted David Milgaard. Specifically, it refers to "Paris of the prairies," "Wheat Kings," "pictures of our parents' prime ministers," "late-breaking story on the CBC" and so on. |
| Release Date: | 6 October 1992 (album) |
| Composer: | The Tragically Hip (Bobby Baker, Gordon Downie, Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois, Gord Sinclair) |
| Album: | Fully Completely |
| Style: | Alternative rock |
| Mar*Star 125: | did not exist |
| Mar*Star 150: | 13 |
Click below for:
Click on the heading below to toggle more information.
Personnel
