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This article stands as a petition to support the construction of a community concert hall on Elgin Street in Ottawa.
A dull roar wafts out of the sports stadium and mingles with the traffic sounds: white noise. Is that all Ottawa is willing to support as culture for its citizens?
The Ottawa Chamber Music Society, champions of a proposed community concert hall on Elgin Street, have until February 28th to answer "no" to that question by raising $7 million from a major private sponsor. But in a wealthy high-tech and governmental centre, that shouldn’t be too hard, should it?
Sadly, yes. Obtaining government funding for this project has been a herculean task, and the search for a corporate sponsor has been ongoing for several years. On November 28, City Hall nearly pulled the plug on its previously promised $5.5 million because the project had failed to obtain a major corporate sponsor. A white knight of sorts, Ottawa-Orleans MP Royal Galipeau, dramatically saved the day just before city council's vote by announcing an $8 million contribution from the federal government. He did not mention that this missing federal contribution had, in fact, been a major impediment to the previous search for a corporate sponsor.
Now that funds from municipal, provincial and federal governments will cover $20 million of the $38 million estimated to build the concert hall, there is hope. But the federal offer is conditional on the project obtaining a $7 million gift from a major “naming sponsor” within three months, and the project will need to raise an additional $6 million from other sources to cover all expenses. In pursuing these goals the project champions face the same strange combination of factors that has kept such a concert hall from being built for the last 70 years.
There sometimes seems to be a conspiracy, on the part of every level of government, to keep the city bland. While backers of the concert hall concentrate hard on the "how" of raising $16 million from private sector sources in the next three months, it seems important to take a minute to ask "why" there aren’t more private sponsors eager to lend their names to the arts in Ottawa - and why so much money from private sources has to be raised in the first place.
It used to be easier: the substantial "development charges" collected by municipalities in Ontario (to ensure that new developments enriched their environments as well as their backers’ pockets) could be used for any sort of civic project, including cultural facilities such as the proposed concert hall. But in 1987, a business lobby successfully convinced the province to make "cultural or entertainment facilities, including museums, theatres, and art galleries" ineligible for this funding. This was the second time in Ottawa's history that culture was shoved aside to make way for other priorities.
In the late ‘40s, the arts were starting to bloom in Ottawa thanks to enthusiastic cultural leaders and modest municipal funding for the arts. But in 1952 the province issued a decree that its moneys could fund only one 'citizen activity.' Culture was in direct competition with sports: it was Godzilla versus Bambi. A well-organized sports and recreation lobby, led mostly by men, easily overpowered the cultural lobby, led mostly by women. Sports obtained about 99.9% of the funding from the new Ottawa Department of Public Recreation, culture obtained 0.1%.
As for patronage of the arts: some might think that the creation of the National Arts Centre, the National Art Gallery and the National Library in the 1960s would have revived Ottawa's sagging arts scene. Quite the opposite. These national showcases marginalized Ottawa's own artists, relegating them to church basements, hockey arenas, and school gyms. Any media, corporate sponsors or volunteers who had powered the local art scene were inevitably drawn to the big glossy new institutions.
Think about it, and you might share my observation: here in Ottawa, there are lots of people who paint or sing or play music or write. They're sitting in the next cubicle over (or the seat next to you on the bus), doing their day-job and pursuing their passion on the side. How many professional -- as in full-time-- film-makers, creative writers, painters, actors or singers have you met in Ottawa? Obviously, there are some. But whereas in a city like Toronto you stumble over them everywhere, here in Ottawa they are few and far between. 
When I moved here, I assumed that was just how it was and it couldn't be any different: it was a government town, too small and conservative to support a vibrant arts community. But consider the history of Ottawa: in the 1850s, businessmen built impressive theatres and dance halls to entice both entertainers and the public travelling on the first railway. By the 1920s, the city was a major stopover in the North American and European entertainment circuit.
You may be shocked to hear that at that windswept crest of Elgin Street, where there is nothing now but the gaunt War Memorial, there used to be a 1733-seat playhouse. The Russell Theatre was torn down in 1928, under orders of Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who presumably felt that people were having way too much fun just across from Parliament Hill. He had the suitably lugubrious War Monument erected in its place.
For those of you who are starting to think that political power does not look kindly upon the effervescence of culture, consider this: in the 1970s, a flourishing commercial and counter-cultural arts scene emerged in the Byward Market and on Elgin Street. Taking advantage of the flight to the suburbs to snap up prime downtown spaces, a whole flurry of theatre, dance, music and visual arts groups flourished in these areas. But in 1975, the National Capital Commission, which owned many of these buildings, decided to alter the management goal of these properties from cost recovery to commercial profit. Overnight, the NCC jacked rents from $200 to $2,000 per month - a kind of anti-subsidy to the arts. The cultural community was devastated.
It's a well-known phenomenon everywhere that arts groups go into a shabby area, give it verve and profile with their work, and then get expropriated by landlords who cash in the cachet that these artists have created. Here in Ottawa, the National Capital Commission was that landlord.
So maybe the NCC should be that sought-after corporate sponsor for the proposed concert hall? Maybe they should, belatedly, make up for the carnage they wrought on an already weakened cultural community. Or maybe the Ottawa Senators, flush with a success built on disproportionate sports funding, should offer back some of their profits to the culture that lost out?
Someone, something, should step forward to ensure the building of this concert hall, the idea of which has been gestating since the wrecking balls struck down the old Russell Theatre in 1928. It could be the first of many steps towards the support of real, authentic, local art, whose subtle gradations of colour nourish the soul and keep the empty White Noise at bay.
To support plans for a community concert hall, please visit the Ottawa Chamber Music Society : http://www.chamberfest.com/english/concerthall/index.html
I support the construction of a community concert hall on Elgin Street in Ottawa, and will be very happy to see support from corporate or individual sources for this project. (Please sign the petition).
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