Fall of The Wall 09 Toronto
Monday, November 9, 2009 - 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Location: Nathan Phillips Square , Toronto City Hall
A celebration of the triumph of human liberty, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communist tyranny in Europe.
TORONTO EVENT TO COMMEMMORATE THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL
An event to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall is organized for Monday, November 9th, at 6:00pm in Nathan Phillips Square at Toronto’s City Hall.
A chunk of the Berlin Wall is embedded in the arches of Toronto City Hall. (Twitpic by Shawn Micallef http://twitpic.com/oo1pb ) The event will take place near the “Freedom Arches” which span the Nathan Phillips Square reflecting pool/skating rink. At the base of the arches is a piece of the Berlin Wall; naming the freedom arches and placement of a block of the Berlin Wall was a project of Markus Hess and the Black Ribbon Day Committee in the early 1990s.
Confirmed to attend and speak at the event are
- Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic, Bob Rae
- President of The Treasury Board of Canada, Vic Toews
- Etobicoke Centre Member of Parliament, Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Toronto based documentary filmmaker, Marcus Kolga, is spearheading the event along with The Central-Eastern European Council (CEEC is made up of representation from the Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian communities in Canada) and its Chairman and Black Ribbon Day founder, Markus Hess.
“As a child of the Cold War, the fall of the wall was probably the single most significant geopolitical event that my generation ever witnessed or ever will. It was as if the entire world exhaled together at one moment as those East Berliners started climbing over the wall. And in that moment, decades of fear instantly changed to hope,” says Canadian-Estonian Kolga.
“We need to remind ourselves about how we felt that day: so that we never take for granted the freedoms we enjoy as Canadians.”
November 9th, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Toronto’s event is among many planned worldwide to commemorate the event, which marked the beginning of the end of many totalitarian Communist regimes in Europe and began the process of European reunification.
Millions of Europeans were affected by brutal repression under Communism, as were many of the 3.4 million Canadians of Eastern and Central European heritage.
For more information please contact:
