Live8 PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 02 July 2005 00:00
The humidity has lifted and the sky all day was clear blue and cloudless, a perfect day for the Live8 Concert held in Barrie and in other cities simultaneously around the world. Though car racing was the main event here at Burl's Creek, we watched the CTV presentation of Live8 all day on our outdoor TV and now while almost everyone is watching the races, I am still tuned in to the after-show. For any of you who are unaware of the significance of today's event, Bono of U2 and Bob Geldof, an Irish singer/songwriter and humanitarian, organised the first Live Aid concerts back in 1985, raising over $100 million to fight poverty in Africa. This series of concerts and venues was used to raise awareness to the severity of the problem and hopefully to influence the leaders of the most powerful countries on earth, to do something about it when they meet in Scotland later this week.

I believe that many of the problems that we face in the human world today are due in part to the serious imbalance of the world's riches. Granted we have poor people here in Canada and in the USA but they have a considerably better chance of living than the poor people in Africa, 50% of them orphaned and under the age of 16. At one point during the Live8 production, we watched a short film clip of some of the starving innocent children in Africa today and I could only weep with guilt and sorrow for their suffering. Here I am enjoying an idyllic life, eating in abundance whatever I want while a child dies every 3 seconds of starvation and disease in a third world country. Just by being born in a developed country gives us access to food, clothes, medicine and shelter while being born in Somalia or Mozambique or Ethiopia or one of any other poor country means the chances of growing old is a remote possibility. There is something seriously wrong with that picture and we need to do whatever we can to change it.

Remember folks, WE ARE ALL CONNECTED! Wouldn't it be the most fabulous thing if we can look back to this day and know that collectively, we were able to make world poverty, history? Wouldn't that be a wonderful legacy to pass onto our children and our children's children? Fellow Canadians, don't let this day pass before signing your name to the list urging Prime Minister Martin to take the appropriate action at the G8 summit this week. Anyone reading this can sign the petition for your country by clicking on the Live8 website found in the first paragraph on this webpage.