Saturday March 26th between 8:30pm and 9:30pm was Earth hour in Canada.

This is an annual event organized by the WWF, which for those over 40 has nothing to do with Andre the Giant or half nelsons, this is the moniker of the World Wildlife Fund, one of the pioneer organizations amongst a growing number of groups endeavouring to create a collective conscience towards protecting our ecology and environment.

In Barrie the event featured a rotunda of kiosks manned by various groups enthusiastically sympathetic to conservation along with an outdoor concert stage with local bands and event keynoters.

The main sponsor was Power Stream. This is the company who supplies the electrical power to homes and businesses in many parts of Ontario which to me is like McDonald's or Benson and Hedges sponsoring world fitness day and serving their corporate image more than the cause itself.

I am very much an environmentally conscious person yet I am much against the politicizing and monopolizing of environmentally healthy living. Much about yesterday’s event served only to reinforce that opinion for me unfortunately.

At least 8 hours prior to the event staged on a closed off portion of the street in front of city hall I had an appointment at a location directly adjacent to where the event was being held that night. A band was doing a sound check and I wondered for a second about the power consumption of the large banks of amplifiers, offset somewhat by what I am told was L.E.D. stage lighting. Posted at either end of the closed off portion of the street and as well to the north and south of the intersection were police in their cruisers, parked with engines running hours before the start of the event. 

I returned with a friend later in the evening just ahead of the 8:30pm event and noticed media vehicles from tv and radio parked towards the back of the crowd, again many with engines running. In the public parking lot to the left of the stage area was a row of 20 or so vehicles, many with people watching from the warmth of their idling cars and SUV's.

The crowd numbered no more than 100 people from what I could see, people of all ages who will equate electrical conservation with hypothermia and shivering in the dark for the rest of their days I'm sure.

Who ever picked the date for the annual earth hour in Canada might have spent too many of their formative years sampling wild mushrooms in Canada's west coast forests. Inviting people to stand in one place for two hours outdoors after a March sunset in Canada waiting for their and their children's extremities to be ravaged by frostbite is simply ridiculous.

Had Woodstock been held at this time of year there would be a few dozen people to recollect upon it. We have at least six death-from-exposure free months in Canada in which this event can and should be held. The turnout would be many times larger. 

I feel for the people who showed up and the many hearty souls who participated on and off stage, people whose hearts are all in the right place but are unfortunately at the mercy of decisions made by organizations that have grown too big to retain any grass roots sensibilities.

Suffice it to say; Green is not a company with a quota to meet and shareholders to appease.

Green is not a political movement who imprudently does more harm than good by making environmental awareness a sectarian cause in branding it as their own.

Green is not a trend, fad, fashion, brand, political platform, career move, society, product or status symbol though it is increasingly exploited as such and so long as it is, the better part of the underlying message will continue to be lost on the public at large and that is unfortunate.