The Haliburton County Folk Society helped raise more than $2,000 for County food banks with an online concert fundraiser June 6.
Locals Gord Kidd, Shawn Chamberlin and Thom Lambert performed from the Dominion Hotel, live-streamed via Facebook as part of a concert series. Artists’ fees and donations for the show all went to the County’s three food banks.
Society member Don Gage said it was successful other than a couple of technical hiccups.
“A number of our local musicians, of course, don’t make a living from music, they do it as a hobby,” Gage said. “Instead of helping the musicians, help the community instead. That’s what we decided to do.”
Central Food Network chair Carol Greenwood said the support is much appreciated. She said food banks are bracing themselves for a difficult winter when they expect a spike in demand for their services as food prices increase due to pandemic-caused production issues. Haliburtonians will also be struggling with depleted savings and a decline in summer employment, she said.
“We’re expecting all of Haliburton to be in extreme crisis through the winter, so food banks now are already forward planning in terms of what we’re going to do,” Greenwood said. “So, we’re not taken by the same surprise as we did when COVID
hit us.”
Kidd said he was honoured to be invited to perform and was happy with how it went despite the unusual circumstances.
“Just felt like I was doing a normal show with a good friend,” Kidd said. “I felt very comfortable.”
Gage said the society is one of the few organizations across the country who has still been organizing live concerts, with most other live-streamed shows being purely artist-driven. They have another concert planned for June 20 and though they would normally not do much during the busy summer, they are considering more with local concert series getting cancelled.
“We’ve been very happy with it,” Gage said. “The support has been great from the community, the donations, the tips that come through for the artists have been very good … Gives people a bit of a night out, see some of these folks without leaving their home.”
