photo from Polaris awards ceremonyCaribou Donates Polaris Prize Money to Charities
11/20/2008 By Brock Thiessen
Exclaim.caIf there was any doubt Dan Snaith was an all-around nice guy, the man better known as Caribou is giving his $20,000 Polaris Prize money to charity. Via Caribou’s
website, Snaith recently announced that two Canadian charities —
Ecojustice and the
Stephen Lewis Foundation — will receive the bulk of the cash prize, while the remaining money will be used to finance Caribou’s next album, which he’s in the early stages of recording, he revealed.
When discussing his choices of charities, Snaith had this to say about donating to Ecojustice: "I have always thought of Canada as an environmentally progressive place... however, recently the Canadian government has acted as a global obstacle to climate action. In a study this year Canada ranked 29th out of 30 industrialized nations for tackling climate change."
On the Stephen Lewis Foundation, he said: "They fund community-based projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, which address the fact that the AIDS epidemic affects not only those infected but their care networks and communities as a whole, emphasizing women, orphans and grandmothers."
According to CBC Radio 3 (which alerted us to this story), previous Polaris Prize winner Patrick Watson allegedly spent the $20,000 on a hot tub and a crashed rental van, while Final Fantasy invested his money back into Blocks Recording Club and helped his boyfriend pay off some student loans. (We’ll leave it up to you to decide which winner has spent his money most wisely.)
As previously reported, Caribou took home this year’s Polaris Prize for his 2007 album,
Andorra.
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