On Wednesday night, Musicians For Water – a coalition of artists including Serena Ryder, Metric’s Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw, and Art of Time stalwart Sarah Harmer – put on an intimate, one-night-only fundraising show at Toronto’s ultra-hip Mister Wolf venue (567 Queen Street West).
The benefit, raising money for the Headwaters Community Coalition, shone a spotlight on environmental preservation efforts in the Great Lakes headlands area. The Coalition is an interesting group. A case study in community organizing, they played a major part in blocking the 2012 “Mega Quarry” project, which would have seen a U.S.-owned limestone operation constructed across prime farmland in Melancthon Township, near Orangeville, Ontario.
Now, more than a decade later, the Coalition is organizing again to oppose a new quarry application in the same area. According to the Coalition, the proposed quarry will blast below the water table, risking serious impacts on everyone downstream. The Headwater Region, which is the source of countless rivers and three Great Lakes, has long been a source of environmental concern for Ontarians. As the Coalition says, “What happens at the Headwaters matters to all of us.”
On Wednesday night, the Coalition’s leadership was on hand, with moving speeches from Jeanette McFarlane and Leigh Himel about their concerns over the proposed quarry.
For the Can-rock aficionados in the room, Wednesday’s concert represented an exceptional opportunity to experience some of Canada’s best musicians in an intimate space. Metric frontwoman Emily Haines, accompanied by her multi-instrumentalist co-founder Jimmy Shaw, put on an impressive set of songs, classic and new, while Serena Ryder had us “Weak in the Knees” with her singer-songwriter stylings. The ever-cool Sarah Harmer, still going strong twenty-five years after her breakout album You Were Here (a Time Magazine “top debut” in the year 2000), and a famously outspoken environmental activist in her own right, spoke and sang passionately about this cause.
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For more on the Headwaters Community Coalition and to donate, click here.
