Mourning and joy

Six years on from the February 22 earthquake has often been picked as a mid-way mark of the recovery.

The peak of the rebuild spend has been in the past year and – despite the protracted frustrations over key projects such as the Christ Church Cathedral and the convention centre – our new city is starting to emerge.

But the pace of the rebuild and the concrete and glass edifices that are its product are but abstractions and boxes. What counts is the people who will breathe life into the rebuild and, we hope, make Christchurch more vibrant than it ever was before.

That two large events bringing 50,000 people into the heart of the city have coincided with the sixth anniversary of the earthquake has been a wonderful stroke of serendipity.

Bruce Springsteen’s first concert in Christchurch at AMI Stadium on Tuesday and the one-day cricket international between the Black Caps and the Proteas at Hagley Oval yesterday have showed that Christchurch can host big events with aplomb.

The Boss’s three-hour communion of rock with his 30,000 faithful fans appeared to go very smoothly. Unlike the only other large international rock concert at AMI, 2015’s Foo Fighters concert, queues were manageable, traffic heavy but not newsworthy, and the city can be proud of how the event went.

It was, said Darren Burden, the boss of venue manager Vbase, ‘‘a huge win for Christchurch’’. He also said it made Vbase keen to bring more big shows to the city.

Springsteen is legendary for his ability to connect with his audiences and as he dedicated My City of Ruins to both the victims of February 22 and the emergency workers who battled the Port Hills fires, he struck a tone that seemed right for the times.

We will always be shaped by the tectonic forces that ruined our city but six years on, we no longer need to be defined only by loss and mourning. Dancing, music and joy, whether prompted by a favourite song in an Addington stadium or by a successful ‘‘howzat?’’ at Hagley Oval, are also part of the rich mosaic of a city’s life.

The unveiling of the riverside earthquake memorial has given us a locus for that loss and mourning. Although its long wall engraved with the names of the 185 people who died in the quake is not the only expression of that grief, it also says that those emotions are part of the city’s architecture, and part of us all as Cantabrians.

The unveiling brought many of the families of those 185 victims to the city, and was said to be the largest gathering of them, with more than 600 family members at a private preview of the memorial on Tuesday night, including some who had never been to Christchurch before.

If the Canterbury wind wafted in strains of Springsteen at the same time, then perhaps they will leave knowing Christchurch not only as the city that claimed their loved ones, but also as a city that nurtured and entertained their loved ones.

And for the rest of us, maybe it was an intimation that Christchurch is on its way to being a bolder, brighter, better city that serves the same functions for us.