By Jon Tattrie - The Weekly News
Thousands of Haligonians descended on the Metro Centre Monday night to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in relief money for Haiti.
Halifax for Haiti, organized by Brookes Diamond in just three weeks, was an all-star musical extravaganza featuring acts ranging from Matt Minglewood to Classified to Squid and the Nova Scotia Massed Choir. Even Bubbles from the Trailer Park Boys joined in, singing With a Little Help From My Friends, with a little help from his friends Ricky and Julian, along with the 8,000-strong crowd.
The event raised $135,000 on ticket sales, with a matching $135,000 from the Canadian government, plus thousands more tossed into donation buckets and added by corporations like Keiths, which gave $10 for every person to enter its pub. All of the money raised went to the Canadian Red Cross to help with its ongoing work in the earthquake-ravaged Caribbean country.
Gavin Giles of the Canadian Red Cross said the money is desperately needed. Red Cross workers are providing non-emergency medical care for 1,700 people a day and have set up a mobile surgical hospital on the grounds of a collapsed hospital in Port-au-Prince that has treated 200,000 people so far following the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
"Water is a huge issue so the Red Cross is now distributing about a million liters of bottled water daily and several hundred thousand meals," he said.
With a million people displaced, hundreds of thousands dead and the country's infrastructure in ruins, Haiti needs all the help it can get. Nation-wide, Canadians have given more than $100 million.
Trevor Gould from Drum! was on stage as the band that fuses Nova Scotia's four founding cultures opened and closed the show.
"I felt very honoured to be here," he said. "We've been keeping up with it through the news. It must be hard, so it's good to see the turnout here. Halifax and Nova Scotia should be very proud of the turnout. It's a great cause."
Earlier in the evening, the three stars of Trailer Park Boys took the stage to shake some extra cash out of the crowd. "A lot of you people, you know, you're all rich and fancy. You don't know what it's like to live in a car in the winter," said Ricky, a.k.a. Robb Wells. "We're here tonight to take some of your money so that I can have some booze and blankets."
When Julian (John Paul Tremblay) and Bubbles (Mike Smith) told him the money was in fact going to Haiti, Ricky declared he hated "Haitey MacDonald" from Moncton.
When things were cleared up, the trio held an onstage hotdog sale to raise a few hundred dollars for Haiti. One man even bought the barbecue for $50.
One of the biggest ovations of the evening went to the Nova Scotia Rhapsody Quintet, who lead a sing-along string version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Joel Plaskett closed the show, bringing all of the musicians back onstage for a lively version of Love This Town.
jon@jontattrie.ca
See Photos of the Week for Feb. 12 for more images from Halifax for Haiti.
