The late Neil Peart grew up in the St. Catharines, Ontario community of Port Dalhousie, the lakefront home of Lakeside Park which inspired the lyrics to the 1975 Rush song of the same name. Back in 2020 the St. Catharines City Council, with the full support of the community, voted to name the newly rebuilt pavilion at Lakeside Park the Neil Peart Pavilion at Lakeside Park in honor of the hometown icon who passed away in January of 2020. The Council also established the Neil Peart Commemorative Task Force, with the objective to commission a public work of art commemorating Peart's life and legacy. Back in January of 2021 the Task Force officially began welcoming artists to submit requests for pre-qualification via the city's website, and revealed the finalists in September of 2021 along with the launch of a fundraising campaign for the Memorial. This past November the Task Force finally revealed that the artist who will have the honor of creating the memorial is Morgan MacDonald of The Newfoundland Bronze Foundry. The project and its timelines are contingent on the Task Force raising the $1 million required for completion, and donations of any size can be made online at stcatharines.ca/neilpeart. They are also opening up pre-orders for more of their very popular, Rush-themed Lakeside Park t-shirts that they first revealed back in 2020; the original run of these shirts helped the Task Force raise over $20K. They will be accepting pre-orders for the t-shirts via ptdalhousie.com up through February 17th, and then hope to start shipping out the shirts in early March. The sooner the Task Force can achieve its fundraising objectives, the sooner the community and fans will be able to see the results. So give if you can.
Rush is a Band
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Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson
Thu, Oct 3, 2024
Support the Neil Peart Commemorative Task Force with the purchase of a Lakeside Park t-shirt
Thu, Jan 19, 2023@10:12AM | comments