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Rush is a Band

A blog devoted to RUSH:
Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

Sat, Apr 20, 2024

Full video of Rush's Allan Slaight Humanitarian Spirit Award ceremony now online

Sat, Jul 8, 2017@10:30AM | comments

The annual Canadian Music & Broadcast Industry Awards Gala Dinner took place back in April at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto as part of Canadian Music Week. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were in attendance and accepted the 2017 Allan Slaight Humanitarian Spirit Award, which was awarded to Rush for their achievements and longstanding career in the music industry, social activism and support of humanitarian causes. Allan Slaight's son Gary took the stage to introduce the Award and then brought out Toronto Mayor John Tory who was sporting a Rush Moving Pictures t-shirt. A tribute video highlighting the band's success and charity initiatives was then shown and then Geddy and Alex took the stage to accept the Award with Lifeson doing the bulk of the talking. Canadian Music Week has just released the video of the entire Rush presentation which you can watch below or on YouTube at this location (thanks RushFanForever). Recipients of the award are also given $40,000 to be donated to their charity of choice, and Rush donated their prize to the Gord Downie Fund for Brain Cancer Research. Samaritan Magazine sat down with Geddy and Alex after the ceremony for an exclusive interview to discuss the Award and all of their charitable endeavors. Here's what Geddy said when asked about their choice of the Gord Downie Fund for their $40000 donation:

I lost a friend to brain cancer and it's close to my heart and we've all been touched in our families by somebody that has that illness. And we're all still heartbroken over Gord. So it was an opportunity, and it's sort of in the air what Gord is doing, so it just seemed like the right timing to try to help.

You can read the entire interview online here. The Canadian Music Scene has also posted a great batch of photos from the Canadian Music and Broadcast Industry Awards ceremony, including several of Alex and Geddy which you can check out here.