INDEPTH: SARS BENEFIT CONCERT
Toronto Rocked
CBC News Online | July 30, 2003
Close to 450,000 people spent the day at a Toronto airfield as the Rolling Stones headlined the country's largest-ever rock concert, all to help the city shake off the effects of the SARS outbreak.
The crowd roared in delight as the Rolling Stones took to the stage. Wearing a hot pink coat, frontman Mick Jagger energetically bounded across the stage as the band launched into Start Me Up, followed by Brown Sugar.
"This is the biggest party in Toronto's history, right?" Jagger shouted to the crowd. "You're here. We're here. Toronto is back and it's booming."
Full story
» Toronto Rocks Photogallery: view exclusive concert photographs.
» Photo Log: images posted as the day unfolded.
The concert, unofficially being referred to as either SARS-stock, or SARSapalooza, was initially conceived as a way to tell the world that Toronto is a safe place to come.
Nobody wants that to happen more than the thousands of hotel and tourism workers who have been laid off as their industry slowed down after the SARS outbreak and the WHO travel advisory that followed.
So as many as 180 hotel workers are volunteering to flip burgers and turn sausages at the concert, raising money for their colleagues and for health care workers also affected.
Rod Seiling, president of the Toronto Hotels Association said on Wednesday the losses to the industry would be in the hundreds of millions. Recovery, he said, �could take a long time.�
Organizers have no idea how much money will be raised, but it will be funneled into the two funds set up by Molson, which will split all the money raised between them.
Hotel workers manning the tills early in the day said sales were slow, but morale was high.
One predicted an upturn in business �when Justin Timberlake goes on.�
Coincidentally, the event is also a chance to tell the world that Canadian beef is safe to eat, despite the single case of mad cow disease detected in Alberta earlier this year.
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