Earthquakes, far and near

(February 11) - I just got back from the Help for Haiti show, and it was a tremendous event. Too bad it takes a disaster to bring all those musicians onto the same stage on the same night. Sam Turton, Ajay Heble and Rev. Paul Clarkson deserve a lot of credit for putting it all together in such a short time. When they went fishing for performers, they cast their nets straight into the deep end of Guelph’s talent pool.

They reached as far as Elora to bring in Kevin Breit. There was a time in my life when I thought that Roy Buchanan and Jeff Beck had taken the Fender guitar as far as a mere mortal could carry one. Then along came Breit. He’s a magician. I’m not in the business of flogging River Run tickets, but he is there again soon for the closing concert in the Borealis series. If you’ve never seen him, you owe it to yourself to do so.

He may work magic with a guitar, but we also heard the sorcery of the University of Guelph choirs. They worked magic with their voices. I was in awe at one piece that carried us down to the heart of the Amazon River. The blended sounds of the birds and animals transfixed me. Marta McCarthy has put together a jewel that deserves wider recognition.

The concert raised over $21,000 for the Canadian Red Cross. The relief work gets every penny raised. Like the very professional people they are, the performers graciously thanked those of us in the audience for our generosity. I want to take the chance now to thank them for theirs.

Had it not been for them, there wouldn’t have been anything for us to buy a ticket to.

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Speaking of earthquakes, one just ripped across the fault line separating the city from the county. No one was seriously injured, other than some cuts and bruises to the body politic. Some joint committees were turned to rubble. Now the question is whether or not they can be rebuilt.

I hope they can be. It will be a shame if the damage is permanent. The worst of the tremors were caused by an arbitration decision that gave the city the short end of the fairness stick. The city tried to save us millions of dollars a year and should get full marks for the attempt.

The relationship between the city and the county has been on a downhill slide since the dark days of the Mike Harris Conservative government. It was he who downloaded a bundle of social services to meet the greater goal of lower taxes. As is the case with all tax cuts, it was a matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The cost is still there, and it is still you and I who pay it.

The burden of providing social services to all who need it, whether they live in Guelph or Garafraxa, was given to the county. Guelph citizens pay our share to the city through property taxes. The city passes it on to the county through a formula that was the basis of the arbitration.

If it did nothing else, the case revealed flaws in the way things are done. These must be fixed.

Politicians on both sides of the municipal boundary need to sort things out sooner rather than later.