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Village Squire, 1976-09, Page 34M. Nott CROWN HARDWARE Household Appliances - - Paints General Hardware Seaforth, Ont. 527-1420 See our large selection of on your next visit to SEAFORTH A How much are you worth to society? BY KEITH ROULSTON How much are you worth to society? Don't Zook at your present paycheque. J ust imagine yourself some aloof, all-knowing judge who issued salaries according to how much people contributed to society. How much would you as that judge give to someone who was doing your job? I must admit it's a question that fascinates and disturbs me. It came to mind a few weeks ago as I • was reading an article in a newspaper on results of a survey of incomes of people in the arts. I can't remember all the figures now (I didn't file the paper away for. 'reference as usual because it was somebody elses), but they were pretty startling. It turned out, as I recall, that only about 10 percent of people who acted or played music could make enough money to get above the poverty line in Canada. A bare handful pulled down what would be considered adequate salaries in most professions. • , It's the same situation, of course, among writers and painters and other forms of the arts. The oft -told tale of many people involved in the arts goes like this: "And what do you do", a questioner asks. "I'm a writer (substitute artists or actor or musician)." "That's nice. But what do you do for al living?" It's sad but true. We have a strange ambivalence in Canada tout the elements of what would be called Show Business in the U.S. Down there big name actors, writers, musicians, artists make fantastic salaries,, amounts unheard of by the man in the street. We forget, of course, that many people in the business starve, or even that the big stars of today probably went through some pretty lean years. Still, down there there is actually a commercial market for the arts so the artist can always look forward to breaking through into a position of earning a decent living, or even with luck and a lot of skill, to the point of making a killing. In Canada, we just don't have that hope. If you're an actor in Canada, your goal is just to be able to stay working and survive, not earn 1 millions. There is no movie industry. I here are few television. shows (and short-sighted Canadian television viewers seem to want to keep it that way with their demand for more and ever more imported American produc- •tions), both of which are the really big money areas. There isn't even a "Broadway". The only 32, VILLAGE SQUIRE/SEPTEMBER 1976 really big-time live theatre is the Stratford Festival and the Shaw Festival, both of which operate only a small part of the year. There has been an outburst of theatrical energy in -recent years leading to many new theatres but most are shoe -string establishments and the actors are lucky to get enough to keep them eating while they're working, let alone during the long periods between jobs ,(actors are classed as self-employed and thus cannot collect unemployment insurance). It's much the same in other fields, although there are exceptions. In music, for instance, we have the anomaly of the biggest portion of musicians making little while a few big stars make so much money they don't know what to do with it all. It was recently estimated, for instance, that folk singer composer Bruce Cockburn earned $150-$200,000 a year. If so, what do the really big superstars like Cordon Lightfoot and Ann Murray make? Someone recently guessed that Lightfoot would make over a million dollars a year. Thcte were probably 2000 other musicians who didn't earn that between them. In writing, it's virtually impossible to earn a living even with grants from arts funding organizations. There are a few examples of successes such as the $100,000 a year or so that Pierre Berton earns, but much of this is through television work and due to a work schedule that would kill most people. The arts, of course, are in the vulnerable position of being considered a frill by many people. They are probably today, about where the proponents of universal education were a century ago, The vast majority of the general public didn't see the need for paying teachers much in those days either and would just as soon.have kept the kids home to help on the farm. Now, of course, education is something of a sacred cow and teachers have gone from being penniless and outcasts to forming a powerful bargaining group which can get what it wants. Yet aren't good artists, actors and writers as much a part of the education program as teachers? What would teachers have to teach about without the writers to write texts, the playwrights who write the plays that are studied, and the artists who have done everything from illustrating textbooks to creating the masterpieces the kids see on field -trips to the museum? Canada has a strange priority system when it comes to rewarding people for their contribution to society. It isn't.so much what you do as how much power you wield. So lawyers and accountants who play with red. tape and make the country ever more expensive to live in are given big incomes because government redtape (generally due . to laws passed by the • lawyers and accountants who make up the majority of our legislators) means we can't Ii,t' „ ithout them. We pay our garbage men b ,od salaries because they strike frequently and always in mid -summer 'heat w,i•.es leaving the cities smelling and filled with potential diseases. Our farmers, the people who provide the staff of life get relatively little for their long hours, big investment and high risk while the girls who handle the checkout duties at large city supermarkets make much more for a 9 to 5 job five days a weWt with paid vacation. Given the incongruities of the whole thing, it isn't much wonder that people in the arts are considered not worth worrying about Still, until they are given the opportunity to • earn a decent living, to concentrate on doing their job well instead of worrying where the next meal is coming from, this country is always going to have areal deficiency. I don't know what the answer is, but I think we need to find it.