Banding Together: Singing Out for Disaster Relief

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Topic spans: 1950 - 2003

Banding Together: Singing Out for Disaster Relief

Floods, famine, fire and drought — when disaster strikes at home and around the world, Canadians are ready to help. For musicians and actors, helping often means organizing large relief concerts. These shows are great entertainment and have raised millions of dollars. But at times, critics have questioned the long-term benefit of these extravaganzas. CBC Archives looks back at Canada's disaster relief concerts from Manitoba's "Flood the Fund" in 1950 to B.C.'s "Fire on the Mountain" in 2003.

13 television clips

4 radio clips

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Brian, It has been a delightful journey with you over the years. Thank tou, and best wishes on your retirement from CBC.

A friendly hint from a recent retiree; stay busy!! I have found it to be a difficult time as a retiree after 40 some years working and travelling throughout the Northwest Territories, but I would not change a thing.

Kingest Regards
Tom Brown
Yellowknife, NWT.

Submitted by: Tom Brown, Yellowknife, NWT

Little did we know when attending Sir Charles Tupper School in Halifax that one of our classmates would become one of the best television reporters in the business

Submitted by: Alan Stern

Hello Brian,

I wish you well as you retire but you will be missed. Your honest and compassionate reporting always moved me. You have had a way of bringing stories that need to be heard. Good luck and all the best.

Submitted by: Margot Margot McLaughlin, North Vancouver, B.C.

I would like to know what happened to those children in the video.

Submitted by: Jabbran.M

Alerting the world to Ethiopian famine

Broadcast Date: Nov. 1, 1984

"Relief agencies here are swamped," says CBC reporter Brian Stewart. "They've never seen starvation on this scale." It's 1984 and Stewart is talking about Ethiopia. He's part of CBC-TV News team that travelled to the suffering African country to produce a documentary about its horrific famine. This heart-wrenching report about the starvation and civil war in Ethiopia is the first on the subject to be broadcast in North America, and it had to be smuggled out of the country taped to producer Tony Burman's back.

Alerting the world to Ethiopian famine

• Stewart's reports on Ethiopia opened the eyes of the rest of the world to the suffering there and inspired famine aid projects around the world, including musician Bob Geldof's Live Aid concert. For more on Live Aid and its efforts to help relieve the famine, see the CBC Digital Archives clip Can Live Aid Feed the World?

Alerting the world to Ethiopian famine

Medium: Television

Program: The National

Broadcast Date: Nov. 1, 1984

Host: Peter Mansbridge
Reporter: Brian Stewart

Duration: 4:03

Last updated:
Sept. 23, 2011

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