Latest news with #SarahHarmer
Hamilton Spectator
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Award-winning musicians to do TVO Today Live Q&A event in Hamilton
TVO Today Live's next stop is Hamilton. On Saturday, May 10, locals have the chance to be in the audience of the live-taped series on democracy and music, featuring a question-and-answer segment with local musicians. TVO's Steve Paikin will host Burlington's Sarah Harmer, and Tom Wilson and Cadence Weapon of Hamilton, at The Music Hall. All are award-winning artists. Singer-songwriter Harmer is the 2024 Juno humanitarian award winner, rocker Wilson is the 2024 CMW Allan Slaight Humanitarian Spirit Award winner and a five-time Juno Award winner, and hip hop artist Weapon is the 2021 Polaris Music Prize winner. Doors open at 6:30 p.m and attendance is free. Attendees will be entered in a prize draw to win books and TVO merchandise. The Music Hall is located at 24 Main St. W. Starting at 7 p.m., the musicians will answer questions from Paikin and the audience about how they relate politics to their music and explore their influence in the world. For more information and to register, visit and search for 'TVO Today Live.' This is the first TVO Today Live to be held in Hamilton. The show is an event series on the future of democracy, with previous episodes touching on the state of democracy in Ontario, U.S. President Donald Trump's previous term and social media's impact on politics. The show has been taped in cities such as Toronto, Ottawa and Kitchener. The first episode was shot in June 2022 at Toronto's MaRS Discovery District. Cheyenne Bholla is a reporter at The Hamilton Spectator. cbholla@
CBC
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Burlington to give musician Sarah Harmer key to the city as her fight against quarry expansion continues
As singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer prepares to receive the symbolic key to the City of Burlington – in large part for her leadership in a fight against quarry expansion on Mount Nemo – the fate of that quarry is currently in the hands of the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT). Harmer will be honoured by her hometown at a ceremony at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre on April 16 at 7 p.m. The honour follows her Humanitarian Award, which she received at the 2025 Juno Awards in March. The award "recognizes an outstanding Canadian artist or industry leader whose humanitarian contributions have positively enhanced the social fabric of Canada and/or whose impact can be felt worldwide." "In 2005, Harmer co-founded Protecting Escarpment Rural Land (PERL), to stop a massive crushed rock quarry on Mount Nemo, part of the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve," states the Junos' website. "In 2012, PERL played a key role at the Ontario Joint Board hearing, stopping Lafarge/Nelson Aggregates from destroying endangered species habitats, significant headwater wetlands, and safe and abundant drinking water." Harmer's parents own land in the vicinity of the quarry, which is adjacent to the Mount Nemo Conservation Area, and she grew up there. The quarry, owned by Nelson Aggregates, is located on the Niagara Escarpment in rural north Burlington, on 2 Sideroad between Cedar Springs Road and Guelph Line. The proposal currently before the OLT is the company's second attempt in the last 20 years to expand its footprint. The OLT hearing started March 4 and is scheduled for 60 hearing days. On Thursday, day 22 of the hearing, Harmer was one of dozens of observers watching the proceedings. The hearing will present testimony from experts supporting both Nelson Aggregates, the company looking to expand, local municipalities and the local advocates fighting against the expansion. Harmer, who wrote the song Escarpment Blues based on this situation, says she got involved in the issue through her mom, and is passionate about protecting the natural world. "We put a meeting together in 2005 and have been focused for many years on protecting the well water, endangered species, clean air, and all the things we need to survive," she told CBC Radio's Here and Now in late March. Endangered salamander lives in the area near quarry The company first applied to expand in 2004 and was eventually denied by Ontario's Consolidated Hearings Board (Joint Board) in 2012 on the basis that "Nelson had not made sufficient provision for the protection of these unique ecologic and environmentally sensitive areas" and would encroach on habitat for the Jefferson salamander, an endangered species that resides in the area. In May 2020, it submitted a new application to expand. The new proposal would expand the quarry into a field south of the existing site and into the Burlington Springs Golf and Country Club to the west. In addition to the salamander habitat, local residents have concerns about rock blasting occurring closer to their homes and closer to two nearby pipelines, as well as the environmental impact of extra truck traffic and the potential for the operation to affect the quantity and quality of the groundwater that feeds their wells. The City of Burlington has expressed similar concerns. Its council unanimously passed a sharply worded motion last year requesting the province deny Nelson's proposal. The proponents for the project have vowed to protect natural heritage and groundwater, and said the good from the quarry would outweigh the bad. In an 2021 interview with CBC Hamilton, spokesperson Kevin Powers said the material to be extracted from the quarry, known as dolostone, is in short supply and is needed to build roads and bridges. "It is the highest-strength limestone you can get in Ontario… Where we would like to dig is one of the few areas in Ontario that is licensed and set aside for the extraction of this resource." 40 witnesses will speak over 60 days The OLT hearing is expected to wrap up in mid-June, says Gord Pinard, a member of Conserving our Rural Ecosystems, one of the advocacy groups that has standing in the proceedings. The group has the hearing schedule and a link to the online proceedings on its website. Pinard says about 40 witnesses are expected in the next several weeks. Thursday's proceedings focused on the work done by Dr. Bev Wicks, an ecologist contracted by the quarry to support its proposal. "She is covering one of the very significant topics," said Pinard. Thursday's cross examination related to the quality of the data Wicks based her assumptions on, and revealed that some was obtained by trespassing and was withdrawn by a previous witness. Pinard said he's hoping to get as many eyes on the proceeding as possible. "Our concerns [are] about water quality, and air quality, and safety of the community with blasting and trucking, and the natural environment, including provincially significant wetlands, woodlands and endangered species," he said.
CBC
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
'It's a joint acceptance,' Sarah Harmer says of receiving the 2025 Junos Humanitarian Award
Social Sharing When Sarah Harmer found out she'd be receiving the Humanitarian Award at the 2025 Junos, she said she felt both "very flattered and honoured" — and a bit conflicted. "It's something I think of [for] Desmond Tutu or something," she said from her home outside Kingston. "It's hard to think of yourself as worthy of that, maybe?" How to watch the 2025 Juno Awards But over the past nearly three decades, the Juno-winning singer-songwriter, who started her career leading '90s alt-rock band Weeping Tile, has become as well known for her activism as her incisive, heart-on-sleeve songwriting. Harmer grew up around Mount Nemo, which is also the name of the region's conservation area on the Niagara Escarpment in Burlington, Ont. "Mount Nemo, it's part of a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve," Harmer explained. "It's got incredible biodiversity, and it's the top of the headwater. So it's this source water area for so many people downstream." In 2004, Nelson Aggregate applied to expand its Burlington quarry by 200 acres, which could compromise Harmer's childhood stomping grounds. In response, she co-founded the non-profit Protecting Escarpment Rural Land (PERL) to centralize local response and protest, and wrote Escarpment Blues, with its vivid opening verse: If they blow a hole in my backyard, Everyone is gonna run away, And the creeks won't flow to the great lake below, Will the water in the wells still be okay? WATCH: Sarah Harmer plays Escarpment Blues live: The song shares a name with a concert film that Harmer released in 2006, which documented her I Love the Escarpment tour to promote PERL and her fight against Nelson Aggregate. It would take six more years for the company's proposal to be denied, and another seven years — taking everyone to 2019 — for the company to put together a different proposal with the same intent: expansion. Harmer has only put out two albums since 2005's I Am a Mountain, which featured the song Escarpment Blues: 2010's Oh Little Fire and 2020's Are You Gone. While a lot of that in-between time was spent simply living her life, as she said in a 2020 interview with CBC Music, for Harmer that can often mean simultaneously fighting for something. Between the two years-long fights for the Niagara Escarpment, Harmer has campaigned alongside David Suzuki against the federal government's plan to buy fighter jets; partnered with Suzuki, Stephen Lewis, the late Gordon Lightfoot and more to call for urgent change in how plant and animal species at risk are protected in Ontario; and participated in Students on Ice, a program that leads educational trips to the Arctic and Antarctic for international university and high-school students. ("I benefited so much from that," said Harmer, that she never considered it work.) WATCH: The official video for Sarah Harmer's protest anthem, New Low: Mount Nemo 'is a cathedral' Right now, though, everything leads back to a quarry that mines for gravel. "I guess you can kind of get into anything, you know, when you start to [get involved] — like, gravel, wow," Harmer said, laughing. To fight Nelson Aggregate's second proposal, Harmer is now working with Reform Gravel Mining Coalition, an umbrella group that works with PERL and is demanding a moratorium on all new approvals for gravel mining in Ontario. I feel like it can't be in our generation that this ancient ecosystem gets obliterated any more. "The work has looked like a lot of Zoom meetings, a lot of finding experts in areas of hydrogeology, blasting, air quality, natural heritage, people who are biologists and do wetland evaluations," she said. "We have been spending years raising money so that we can pay for a legal team, like a lawyer and expert evidence." Harmer will take a short break from that work to take a train to the Junos in Vancouver to receive her Humanitarian Award — "I've flown a lot in my life and so I feel like my quota … I'm pretty topped up on that" — which will be presented by Suzuki, a "huge honour" for Harmer. But she'd also like to share the award: "It's a joint acceptance … I want to just recognize a lot of people that do the same kind of thing [as I do]. And dedicate so much of their time to it. Because it makes a huge difference. It really does." While that happens, the three-month hearing that began March 4 to determine whether Nelson Aggregate's application will be approved or not will continue. But Harmer is ready for the fight. "When you're hiking through, say the Mount Nemo Conservation Area, through the forests, it is a cathedral, you know, there is a spiritual reverence there that is hard to miss because it is so ancient," Harmer said. "There are trees clinging to the rock face that are 900,000 years old. It has such richness and history and just defies anything human made. It's just in its own realm. So I feel like it can't be in our generation that this ancient ecosystem gets obliterated any more."
CBC
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Boi-1da and Sarah Harmer to be celebrated at 2025 Juno Awards
The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) has announced two new names to be honoured at the 2025 Juno Awards: Boi-1da and Sarah Harmer. Grammy-winning Toronto producer Boi-1da will be receiving the International Achievement Award, which recognizes artists "who have attained exemplary success on the world stage," according to CARAS. Boi-1da has been crafting hits for nearly two decades, and produced tracks on Drake's first mixtape, 2006's Room for Improvement. He's since become one of the in-house producers on Drake's OVO label, and executive produced the rapper's acclaimed and Juno-winning 2015 mixtape, If You're Reading This, It's Too Late. Boi-1da has also worked with Jay-Z, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Nicki Minaj. "Being recognized with the International Achievement Award at the Junos is a huge honour," Boi-1da said via press release. "Canada has always been home, and its music scene shaped me into the producer I am today. To be able to take that foundation and contribute to music on a global scale means everything. I hope this inspires the next generation of Canadian artists and producers to dream big and know that the world is listening." WATCH | The official video for Drake's 'God's Plan,' co-produced by Boi-1da: Juno-winning singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer will receive the Humanitarian Award at the 2025 Junos for "using her voice to engage her audiences and peers in important environmental and human rights issues," according to CARAS. Harmer has long weaved environmental work into her musical legacy, reaching at least as far back as 2005's "Escarpment Blues," a song that kickstarted her years-long fight to protect the Niagara Escarpment, where she grew up. That same year Harmer launched a tour titled I Love the Escarpment, to promote the conservation group Protecting Escarpment Rural Land, which she co-founded. The tour was turned into a concert and documentary film that shares a name with the song. The singer has also been involved with pipeline protests and with community and environmental groups including Students on Ice and Reform Gravel Mining Coalition. WATCH | The video for Sarah Harmer's 'Escarpment Blues': "I truly appreciate this honour. I accept on behalf of all the people who volunteer their time to speak up to protect land, water and the web of life in their communities, and beyond," Harmer said via press release. "Musicians who use their platforms to amplify these struggles give a huge boost to the collective fight. Now more than ever we need to use our powers to build community and respect the natural world that underpins our lives."
