A Cochrane service club is hosting a virtual Christmas concert to raise funds for a new facility that would create a space for truth and reconciliation in Cochrane.
“The recovery of thousands of Indigenous children’s gravesites shook the entire nation and our community,” the Rotary’s Cochrane Huron Carole website reads.
“These children have reminded us all of this shared history but it’s not in the past. Its impacts are here and now today, seen in the mental and physical health statistics, suicide rates and socioeconomic disparities for Indigenous peoples both on and off reserves.”
The Rotary’s hope is to build an Indigenous managed centre for Indigenous peoples, in collaboration with non-Indigenous allies.
“Being built with and walking beside the traditional keepers and stewards of this land, we hope to co-create the space and opportunity for Indigenous voice and activity to be lead, showcased, nurtured, developed… to light a path for us all forward,” reads the website.
In the name of fundraising and spreading Christmas cheer, the Cochrane Rotary Club is inviting residents to tune into beloved Canadian folk singer and actor Tom Jackson’s Huron Carole Special on Dec. 19 at 6:45 p.m.
The Huron Carole Special has toured the country for more than three decades, but, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, concertgoers will once again be couch-bound this year.
“Enjoy Christmas classics, road stories, fables, original music and dad jokes that can only be delivered by Tom Jackson,” the event page reads.
Jackson will be joined on your Zoom screen by band lead Tom McKillip and musicians Phil Hall, John Thiel, Keith Floen and drummer Joe McIntyre.
Joining this year is blues vocalist Samantha King.
Tickets for the online event start at $25 for one screen.
More details will be added to this story following tonight’s Rotary meeting.
