Canadians have heard the tragic tale of the Tragically Hip so many times that it’s practically become part of the national canon: the arena rock band that’s too intelligent for its own good, never able to find favour with the Americans despite the best efforts of a nation of fans. It’s practically the Canadian crisis in microcosm: the United States’ biggest neighbour and ally, but also its most invisible. So it’s odd that some Americans have come to the Hip not through concerts they’ve played in the States, or their Saturday Night Live appearance in the mid-90s, but through another vaguely obscure Canadian artist.

Toronto director Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter is the story of how a small Canadian town comes to deal with the devastating crash of a school bus, killing nearly everyone onboard. A lawyer comes to town, intent on filing a class action lawsuit, and begins soliciting the parents of the kids killed in the crash. Among the survivors is a budding singer who was left a paraplegic by the accident. She’s played by Sarah Polley, a Canadian actor forever engraved in the Canadian consciousness through her roles on CBC dramas and various Canadian movies, but best known outside the country for her work on Hollywood films like Go and the recent Dawn of the Dead remake.

What most of us, Canadians included, didn’t know was that Polley is also a decent singer; several of her vocal performances ended up on the soundtrack, including this cover of the Tragically Hip’s “Courage (For Hugh MacLennan).” One reviewer, having come to the Tragically Hip by way of Egoyan and Polley, was slightly disappointed; she had found “poetry taken into the arena rock forum” in the Hip, words that evoke the sensation of seeing something familiar through a stranger’s eyes. To at least a couple of others, Polley’s languid, delicate take on “Courage”—not the charging guitar and the signature vocals of Gord Downie—is the definitive version. And it’s certainly good enough to qualify; set against the backdrop of The Sweet Hereafter’s wintery Canadian town and recalling the Celtic pedigree of Atlantic Canada in its arrangement, Polley and score composer Mychael Danna have created a song very different and yet equal to its predecessor.