This Is Earth Hour

On March 29th 2008, Toronto and many other cities around the world decided to turn their lights down as part of a global movement called Earth Hour to raise awareness of what one small action can do to have an effect on the world.

I had lunch earlier with a few of my friends from my High School days who I haven’t seen in months. After that I went home to rest up for the Earth Hour night. When I headed back downtown, I went to grab some food. I went to Sweet Lulu on Church Street, which was one of the few places in the downtown area that was actively participating in Earth Hour. They had their lights turned off and a bunch of candles lit on the table. They were also able to cook food using gas stove. Plus they were only taking cash transactions from what I could see. So kudos to you Sweet Lulu for participating in this event.

After I got my food, I proceeded to just walk along the streets of downtown to see if lights were shut down for the hour. It seemed that the majority of storefronts still had their lights on despite them being closed for the day. I also walked through the Eaton Center to see that the mall itself had shut off it’s lights, however lights in most of individual stores were still lit. I guess for security reasons or what have you.

It was a shame not to see more lights turned off during the hour, but I guess I only saw a small section of Toronto and from what I hear, lights were turned out in a lot of other places :).

I proceeded to Nathan Philips Square to partake in the free acoustic concert that was supposed to feature Nelly Furtado. I got to the venue rather late, so I thought that I might have missed her performance. As I was walking and navigating through the throngs of people, I heard singing and it turned out to be Fefe Dobson who was performing.

Right after she finished her set, she introduced Nelly Furtado. Nelly proceeded to sing 2 songs and finished up her set. After which I overheard many people either say “That’s it??” or “I came all this way for 2 songs??”, which kind of frustrated me, because they weren’t really there for the cause, but more for the performance and had felt ripped off …but I digress.

It was a great night nonetheless, albeit very cold. I’m glad that celebrities like Nelly Furtado acted as ambassadors for this cause and hopefully brought more awareness to the people here in the city.. This was a great step towards curbing climate change and will definitely be helpful in making people more mindful about how they live their lives and the sort of impact it will have on the earth.

Anyways you’ll notice the picture here of a Sbarro’s in the Eaton Center, which was extremely bright. I snapped the photo while I was walking around and checking out how many lights were out in the downtown area. And below you can watch a short clip of Nelly Furtado performing “I’m Like a Bird”.

To learn more about what small steps you can make to help curb climate change please be sure to visit the WWF’s The Good Life website.