Doing what we can

–Tom Cochrane

To the Editor,
Friends from Vancouver were staying with us over the holidays and we all watched the morning news on the 28th in a collective state of shock as the latest footage from Asia came rolling across the TV screen.
“This is looking worse everyday,” I said to Kathy, “We’ve got to do something.
At that moment the phone rang and it was a friend from World Vision asking if I was watching. “Can you get me contacts for a telethon?” he asked. “No I’ll help you put on a show of some kind,” I told him, “But it’s got to be a coalition of NGOs.” World Vision’s president Dave Toycen agreed to that request without hesitation. I called Denise Donlon, former CEO of Sony music, who was in the process of writing a cheque to her charity of choice and thinking the same thoughts as us.”Let me make some calls,” she said. She was in.
I called Alex Lifeson from Rush next. He called back within the hour to say, “I’m in.” Alex later told me he’d been sitting with his grand child on his lap when someone told a story on the news about their child being ripped from their arms in the torrent of water never to be seen again. This cut Alex like a knife to the bone. When I called Jim Cuddy from Blue Rodeo he’d been thinking the same thoughts. He said, “I’ll talk to the boys but I’m sure we’ll be in.” So it went - so many people thinking the same thoughts and having the same feelings. Within a couple of days a coalition had been formed of World Vision, Unicef and the Red Cross. By the time the show was announced with the CBC, there were eight CIDA-accredited agencies working together.
MP, Ruby Dhalla and Senator Jerry Grafstein had been looking for a way to get people together to respond to the crisis since the 27th and joined us. They were invaluable in negotiations with the CBC, CIDA and the agencies.
Everybody we talked to had been thinking and feeling the same things. There is a collective consciousness - a thread running through, not just Canada, but the whole world–over this catastrophe and we all respond in our own ways. This is the way our little corner of the Canadian music–and now celebrity community–has chosen to respond. With this TV show, we’ll try to make sense of the tragedy in Asia, though we never will. Through some kind of action or gesture of good will we hope to make a difference however small. With the public’s help we can make a difference. We can lead as artists, musicians, athletes and celebrities of all kinds. We should lead, and should define a culture by our actions, regardless of any cynicism presented by the media. We follow our hearts and consciences and try to do the right thing and this is it.
I think of an experience some years ago in war torn Mozambique in a village called Marrua, that echoes Alex’s experience with his grandchild, but in a different context. I was in a feeding tent, standing over a mother and a child, and the mother died right there, right then, and her daughter looked up at me. I saw my daughter Evanne in her face, and she looked at me like I could read her mind. Her expression said it all. “How could you let my mother die?” she seemed to say, “How could you let this happen?”
The critics might say we are acting like pseudo Bob Geldofs, but who cares? I can deal with that. But I can’t deal with my guilt if I stand around and do nothing. This is the right thing to do.
–Tom Cochrane