Progressive Rock
St. Catharines city council approved the implementation plan for the Neil Peart memorial at Lakeside Park this week. It allocates $800,000 to the art installation and a further $200,000 to a reserve for ongoing maintenance, as reported by Karena Walter in the Welland Tribune.
The project consists of two bronze statues of the drummer — one of him young and one of him older — along with pathways and interpretive panels. The work is expected to take about a year.
Last week the city announced it had reached its $1-million fundraising goal after Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson donated $785,000. The rest came from community fundraising, and council still had to give final approval to the task force’s plan before anything could start.
Peart was born in Hamilton but grew up in St. Catharines, where he went to elementary and high school and spent a summer working at the old midway in Port Dalhousie: that is where “Lakeside Park” came from, the song Rush put on “Caress of Steel” in 1975. He died on 7 January 2020, aged 67, of brain cancer.
Text by Guillem Cardós