A requiem for mine victims
Matt Pearson

A concert was held at Kitchener's Centre In The Square on Sunday to aid victims of one of the world's most tragic problems.

Consort Caritatis launched a fundraising campaign for land mine survivors with a performance and the release of a CD recording of Verdi's Requiem.

The show incorporated the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony and four of Canada's leading soloists. The result was an afternoon of beautiful music and increased awareness.

Consort Caritatis is an international choir made up of professional singers from four countries including Canada. It is dedicated to the principles of musical excellence, international cooperation and humanitarian causes.

Since 1994, they have raised over $125 000 for the Mennonite Central Committee and Habitat for Humanity.

The choir toured Europe during the past summer, performing the Requiem to sold out houses.

During the performance at the 1998 Pontes Festival in Prague, the performance was recorded for a CD, which is now being sold with all proceeds going to land mine survivors.

A requiem is a Catholic mass for a deceased person, and for this campaign it was meant to symbolize the loss and pain inflicted by land mines. The spirit of the victims is captured in Verdi's music, which plays upon a range of feeling from mourning to rage to hope.

All the elements came together beautifully, giving tremendous life to the music. The audience was captured by the power of the performance, with many people moved to tears by the raw emotion of the work.

The standing ovation lasted nearly ten minutes.

Consort Caritatis is hoping that this CD will be able to move Canadians to do something to support the eradication of land mines. Referred to as a weapon of mass destruction moving in slow motion, land mines are one of the most terrible weapons facing the world today. Many anti-personnel mines are designed not to kill, but to cripple and maim those who detonate them.

They are a threat which does not disappear once a war ends. The most horrible part of land mines is that they are indiscriminate. They cannot tell the difference between a soldier's and a child's footsteps, and they will wait decades until they are activated.

There are currently 100 million land mines already deployed, with another two million on average deployed each year. The main victims become civilians who live in the areas affected by the mines.

Those people are unable to go about their lives without the fear that they may be killed with their next step. As mines are mainly used in developing nations where the people depend on agriculture to make a living, the fields they need to survive become a deadly threat.

Getting rid of the mines in these areas is extremely difficult. Mines are occasionally laid in recognized patterns and have their location mapped, but more often they are dropped from passing planes, helicopters or trucks, or fired from a distance by mortar shells. Because of these methods of planting them, often nobody knows exactly where a mine is until it is detonated.

The materials used in construction are usually plastic, so that the mines cannot be located with metal detectors.

Many armies use land mines because they are cheap and efficient weapons, costing between three and thirty dollars. But the cost of removing a mine is between three hundred and one thousand dollars. Because many of the nations affected are developing economies, they cannot afford the removal costs. This is why the aid of other nations is most desperately needed.

Strong economies have to provide the money it takes to get rid of these hidden murderers.

As long as the farming fields continue to be devastated by land mines, countries such as Cambodia, Somalia and Mozambique will not be able to afford the removal costs. Developed nations with strong economies have to do something about the problem because nobody else can.

The threat of mines does affect Canadians. The largest threat to Canadian peace-keepers is land mines.

If nothing is done to provide aid to the areas in need, we will be continuing to send our forces into danger.

Remembrance Day is getting closer, and this year we should do more than just remember the dead; we should do something for the living.

Consort Caritatis is accepting donations at: Consort Caritatis, 64 Allen St. West, Waterloo, ON N2L 1C8.

Every dollar donated goes to land mine survivors, helping them to return to a normal life.

Matt Pearson is a new writer. Yéay!