TORONTO - A 'standing-O' at the end of last night's barn-burning Rankin Family Reunion show was to be expected. But a standing-hello?

Indeed, many of the full-house at Massey Hall last night were in the mood to get on their feet from the moment Cape Breton's favourite sons and daughters took the stage for the first of a two-nighter, with Jimmy Rankin giving a muscular country take to Roving Gypsy Boy.

They were on their feet en masse when Raylene Rankin hit that glass-shattering high note to end the empowerment anthem We Rise Again. And they were on their feet and stomping them when Jimmy became seemingly possessed of the Devil himself as he launched into the Ceilidh-on-fire Mull River Shuffle to end the pre-encore set.

How could the love affair between a much-loved Celtic-country band that hasn't toured in eight years and its fans possibly get more torrid? Well, you'd have had to have been in the basement lounge of Massey after the show as the Rankins showed up to get mobbed, sign autographs and hawk CDs. This, my friends, is Canadian showbiz at its richest and most down-to-earth, with sweet-voiced fortysomething sisters dressed like they shop at the same mall you do, and ready to show the kids how they stepdance back home.

Tempering the love-in, of course, is the tragedy that has underlined the Rankins' hiatus -- the death of key member John Morris in a car crash seven years ago and the recent death of original Rankin singer Geraldine of a brain aneurysm.

The lost siblings were paid touching tribute mid-set with a few words by Raylene, following which she walked off with Jimmy and sisters Cookie and Heather, and a solo piano performance of Memories Of Bishop MacDonald was performed.

And then, as if in a passing of the torch, John Morris' daughter Molly was brought onstage to play one of her own alt.country songs. She then picked up a fiddle and made a case for heredity, dueting with band-fiddler Howie MacDonald on two numbers, including a scorching Cape Breton hoedown. In a giddily emotional moment, she also step-danced with aunts Heather and Raylene in the encore Mairi's Wedding.

(The torch-passing didn't begin and end with Molly. Opener Dawn Langstroth, who played a couple of her own tunes, is the daughter of Anne Murray, though she wasn't introduced that way. Nonetheless, her look and, at times, her voice betrayed the bloodlines.)

Though they have a new album out for the occasion (and Jimmy has an EP of solo numbers), it was the oldies from the long-ago '90s that had the Rankins audience screaming. Among them: Orangedale Whistle, the country rocker Movin' On, Fisherman's Song (for which Heather had the crowd sing the chorus a cappella), North Country, and their biggest hit Fare Thee Well Love.

To be at a concert this energized and emotional is to be reminded what live performance should be about. Losing the Rankins was a loss to our musical identity. Rediscovering them is a revelation.