Twenty years! So much has changed and stayed the same

The first column I wrote for these pages promised “explorations, investigations and reflections regarding the local cultural scene.”

“September is a good month for starting things,” it went on. “It is a time when all the comings and goings of summer come to an end, a time when we re-establish normal daily routines …” That was 20 years ago this week. It also happens to be 40 Septembers ago that I arrived in Waterloo Region to finish my BA at the University of Waterloo.

These are personal milestones, and it would be unbecoming to make a big deal of them in public. I will, however, take this opportunity to say how fortunate I’ve been to become part of this community, and what a privilege it has been to be part of your Saturday paper for all these years.

The association with the university began with a correspondence course the year before. I had no connection with anyone here, and had made no plans beyond the decision to attend in person. I particularly remember sleeping in my red Toyota parked off Seagram Drive the first few nights, and then finding a tiny, tiny room to live and work in.

The column began late in the summer of ’97 with a phone call from Wayne MacDonald, the publisher at the time. He liked a letter I’d written condemning, in no uncertain terms, the idea of changing the name of our symphony to the Ontario Symphony Orchestra.

The Ontario Symphony idea came from one of those major international accounting conglomerates. My argument was that “from every perspective” this was a bad idea:

“Orchestras are urban institutions. They symbolize civility … substance, stability. Almost all great orchestras are named after cites … An Ontario Orchestra suggests something provincial … The same would be true of an Alberta Symphony ... a New Brunswick Symphony or a New York State Symphony. But of all political entities, for reasons that should be obvious, today’s Ontario seems the least deserving of having a great orchestra named in its honour.”

It’s that last line that I particularly wanted to get out there. We were in the depths of the Mike Harris era. The Common Sense Revolution, in style and substance, incensed me in a way that nothing else ever had before or has since. And it was that outrage that led to the opportunity to write this column.

The first column of what, over two decades, adds up to about a thousand, was published on Saturday, Sept. 20, 1997.

This was the weekend of the second iteration of the Art Works! festival and a week after the fourth Festival of Neighbourhoods, both at Kitchener City Hall.

Art Works! was a product of Culture Plan I, a gift to the city from its visual art community. The event was a precursor to what is now CAFK+A — Contemporary Art Forum, Kitchener and Area.

CAFK+A, in turn, was an inspiration for the biennial Impact international theatre festival organized by MT Space, which returns for the fifth time starting this Tuesday evening, Sept. 26.

The Festival of Neighbourhoods emerged before the first culture plan. The Social Planning Council had been working on developing the idea of a “season of celebration” and a “festival day” focused on neighbourhoods in the wake of a sequence of downtown revitalization visioning exercises. I remember John MacDonald, citizen and architect, presenting the final concept to city council.

The Planning Council, now known as the Social Development Centre Waterloo Region, has worked with the city to present this program ever since. They’re inviting everyone to join them at the 2017 Celebration at Kitchener City Hall on Nov. 19 from 1 to 3 p.m.

Things have changed dramatically over the years. But what strikes me, reading over that first column, is how much continuity there has been.