Winnipeg indie-punks 1971 recently shared some news that devastated their entire camp. In a heartfelt and emotional eulogy post, they announced that their band member Cameron Cranston passed away.
We are offering our condolences to 1971 and Cranston’s friends and family – rest in peace, Cameron.
You can read the band’s statement below.
The band’s last release was a single called, Hearts Filled With Hurt And Hated, which was released in August 2016.
“…February 24, 2017
Last week, Monday February 13th at 5:30pm, our best friend died at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Center. He was 25 years old.
There was no greater companion than him and there never will be. No one enjoyed doing what we did more and no one was more grateful. Every day we spent touring he was the first one to get up in the morning and the last one to go to bed at night. He would put his arms around us and tell us “hey, thank you for sharing this time with me” with the brightest grin.
When we became friends as teenagers Cam had never been further east from Kenora than Thunder Bay and no further west than Winnipeg. And he never thought he would.
As we moved forward with this band and saw more and more of the landscape, and as small dreams became realities, new equally humble dreams arose. He told us after swimming in the Pacific one day in Vancouver it was his dream if we could swim in each ocean. Last summer we spent an entire day at the beach swimming in the Atlantic just outside of Halifax. We’re grateful we got to experience that, but the story wasn’t supposed end here. There were too many more places to see and things to do together.
We took a break after tour for a couple months and just started preparing and rehearsing to record our first album: 14 songs we’ve written over the past couple years. It was another dream of his to simply put out vinyl and we were about to have it. The largest project we were about to jump in to.
He was just beginning to set sail on a new spiritual journey, getting in touch with his Cree heritage and had been having conversations with an elder and began practising his true religion. It was so important to him. He was about to graduate university with a bachelor of arts in political science. He never thought he’d make it to university in the first place. He was so fricking smart and he cared so much about the world and cared so much for the underdogs, the proletariats, and wanted to make the change he wanted to see in the world. He was writing more of his own songs too and sharing them with people and was so proud of them. We were so proud of him. We’d never seen Cran happier than in the past year.
Every time we got home from a tour or a show he would say in his sly, nonchalant, but earnest way “That was fun, lets do it again sometime”. We could only laugh and think ‘well of course we’re going to be doing it again.’ Who would have thought…
We were the luckiest people to have him and now that he is gone nothing is going to be the same ever again.
We love you Crannie. We’re going to miss you more than anything.
-Garrett, Jory, Tanner.
The funeral was held this past Thursday, February 23rd, 2017 in Kenora, Ontario….”