Charitable Donations Deadline Extended

Government of Canada announces extension of 2024 charitable donations to February 28, 2025

It is not too late to make a 2024 donation to QSCM: Donations made by the end of this week, (February 28, 2025) can still be claimed on your 2024 Tax Returns.

The extension is intended to mitigate the impact of the four-week Canada Post mail stoppage last year. You can find read the official documentation here https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2024/12/government-of-canada-announces-extension-of-2024-charitable-donations-to-february-28-2025.html

Looking this up I found myself revisiting the idea that QSCM can even be a registered charity. I mean, why should supporting Chamber Music even be considered a charitable act? I had to make that argument to the Charities Directorate, back in 2018, actually I started in 2017, to achieve the status. Basically it goes like this:
Professional musicianship costs $. To play the music as it was meant to be heard, professional classical musicians must practice, rehearse, study. To be a professional musician is to engage in professional development every single day of the week, 365 days a year. Musicians who do not practice, do not get work on the concert stage. It’s that simple.

The result? Ticket prices to live professional music events are generally upwards of $45 to $50 a seat. A family of four coming out to listen needs to pay about $200 to have a listen, maybe more. If only the adults attend, then a babysitter has to be hired. If you don’t live in the GTA it means you also have to drive to a large urban centre that offers this level of performance, drive your own car, pay gas, parking, buy a restaurant meal and, of course, budget the time.

All of this makes professional classical music performances inaccessible to families living on less than $50,000 year, in small rural communities where public transit is virtually non existent. The median household income after taxes in Ontario sits at at $79,500 per year. In Ontario’s rural communities where many are un- or underemployed that number drops to a heartbreaking low, single family households averaging an income of $31,454 per year in Centre Hastings, in Bancroft $26,494.

This is the kind of data provided by StatsCan that I used to show that rural Ontarians do not have equal access to professional arts culture, and that many are deprived of the opportunity to experience what is a cultuarl heritage owned by us all.

But why does it matter? When people are scrambling to keep a roof overhead and put food on the table, shouldn’t we all be putting everything into food bank, soup kitchens and warm sock depots?

Perhaps. But then again once you feed people what are they going to do? A deeper question is why are we feeding people? Why get out of bed in the morning, particularly if all that lies before you is the prospect of trudging the food bank, then huddling in front of a fire you can barely keep going because wood costs more than you can afford? Why?

Because you, and everyone around you is capable of beauty. Because musicians sound the beating heart of compassion and community, because hearing live music makes people feel like they belong to the human race, that life somehow matters, that tomorrow may be a better day and meanwhile, today at least I have this.

That at least is the message we at QSCM get every time we let our musicians, our paid professional musicians, loose in rural Hastings and Prince Edward Counties, to play for everyone and anyone who wants to listen.

It is probably apocryphal – that is made up – that Winston Churchill, during the Battle of Britain, said when asked to move money from the Arts and Culture Budget to the Defense Budget, “But what are we fighting for.” What is not made up is that he believed the arts mattered, that he did indeed say in a Speech to the Royal Academy, Burlington House, London, 30 April 1953, “The arts are essen­tial to any com­plete national life. The State owes it to itself to sus­tain and encour­age them….Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the rev­er­ence and delight which are their due.”

“Ill fares the race….” – but why? Why? Because, well… just listen! Come out to a QSCM live event, bring a friend who has never before bothered with classical music, and listen. Everyone who does goes away knowing the answer to that question. It is written on the faces of everyone who listens, and in the hearts of those who stop to tell us, in so many different ways, “I never knew it could be like that.” Come out and listen, because – well, I mean – if I could tell you in words, we wouldn’t need the music would we?

But it appears I did find the words to convince the CRA in 2018 because as of that date, QSCM, founded in 2015, incorporated as an Ontario Not For Profit and 2017, became a Federal Registered Charity the following year. Our mandate? Making professional performances of live chamber music accessible to all in the rural communities of the Bay of Quinte watershed.

I hope you too are convinced, and will support us as we go forward into our second decade. Founded ten years ago, QSCM remains committed to fostering classical music culture at the grass roots level i rural Ontario with the goal. The result? A track record of outstanding performances, a reputation for excellence, a community of people who, having never listened to classical music before, now ask us “Can we have Shostakovich again?” and are conversant in the new music of our own contemporary Canadian artists such as Jocelyn Morelock, Patricia Morehead, so many others. But what matters to me most of all are the faces, faces on people from all walks of life, all circumstances and backgrounds, that looking upat the stage, break into smiles, grins and sometimes tears as the violinists pick up the bow, the singers take the breath, the pianist sets their hands on the key, the music begins, and the magic is unleashed.

If you can help make that happen in any way, by donating, by volunteering, by just coming out and telling us what we do matters to you, please do. Love to hear from you. Anytime. Love to see you – Keep watching the web site. subscribe to the newsletter to find out what’s new.

Bonnie

To read more about supoorting the professionalism of classical music performance in Canada, see Petya Stavreva on “Why Pay Musicians” https://qscmusic.com/why-pay-musicians/ and “Down Tools” at https://qscmusic.com/down-tools-oh-i-surely-hope-not-i-dont-have-time-to-go-on-strike-i-have-to-practice/