Tough economic times scuttle project to mark Canada’s 150th birthday

Organizers of the “Canada 150 Give Back” campaign announced Monday that economic circumstances have obliged them to pull the plug on the planned national bash.

Thestar.com
Jan. 20, 2016
By Jim Coyle

Those loveable movie nitwits Wayne and Garth - who thought any time was an excellent party time - would be crushed.

Organizers of the “Canada 150 Give Back” campaign, an effort by corporate and political leaders to inspire Canadians to celebrate the country’s 150th{+ }birthday in 2017, announced Monday that economic circumstances have obliged them to pull the plug on the planned national bash.

“Today’s economic uncertainty makes our vision unattainable,” they said in a note to subscribers. “To protect our supporters from any financial or reputational risk, we have decided to end the movement.”

There’s no small embarrassment in having to bail out on an effort purported to express gratitude for the nation’s bounty. The average Canadian, moreover, will likely find little comfort in seeing some from among the country’s elite - corporate CEOs, heads of unions, big-name former politicians — cowed by the economic chill.

“The goal here was to build an epic, unprecedented movement, and there was a lot of interest,” said Phil von Finckenstein of Maple Leaf Strategies, the firm that dreamed up the idea.

“But unfortunately economics intervened.”

Von Finckenstein told the Star on Tuesday that “people’s budgets were being constrained everywhere, people were getting laid off. You don’t then turn around and finance an innovative celebration of the country’s birthday, as much as you might love it.”

Former Quebec premier Jean Charest, one of a number of “ambassadors to the movement,” said when it was announced a year ago that the intention was to have communities organize projects that wouldn’t otherwise get done.

Organizers were hoping to replicate the sort of patriotic feeling that swept Canada in the Centennial celebration of 1967, but with citizen-led rather than government-promoted programs. For ’67, among the many works commissioned was the “Centennial Anthem,” but no musical tribute matched Bobby Gimby’s infectious “Ca-Na-Da.”

The idea, von Finckenstein said, was to encourage former U.S. president John “Kennedy’s maxim, “Don’t ask what the country can do for you, do something for the country” kind of idea.

“We were going to do that by partnering with corporate Canada to spearhead it and sort of get the message out. But, really, success was (ordinary Canadians) giving back in their own way, whether it was cleaning a park or donating to a charity.”

Several signature projects were taking shape, he said, and organizers had volunteered countless hours across the country.

“Absolutely, it’s disappointing” to scrap it now. “We were at it for two years ... We came to a point where we had to make some serious investments in terms of growing this, infrastructure-wise ... That’s when we decided it’s probably not the right time.”

Disappointed as organizers are, having kicked off the campaign by saying “giving back is part of our national genetic code,” von Finckenstein doesn’t expect Canada’s sesquicentennial to be a grim event that passes largely uncelebrated.

“We got to know a lot of great, amazing Canadians and a lot of cool stuff that’s underway,” he said, adding that the federal government should also mount “a pretty good program.”

And it’s a rare sad tale that doesn’t have at least a sliver of silver lining.

The good news for Canada 150 Give Back/Redonner was how popular its stylized moose logo became.

“The moose was a huge hit,” von Finckenstein said. “A couple of people called me yesterday saying, ‘Hey, can I buy your moose?’ ”

“I said, ‘Look, we’re probably going to just tool down.’ ”