Singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk may have enjoyed a privileged existence while growing up in Winnipeg, but that doesn't mean she wasn't affected by the struggles of those less fortunate.
Quite the opposite, in fact. As a high school student at Balmoral Hall in West Broadway and later, while attending the University of Winnipeg, Kreviazuk frequently found herself coming face-to-face with the realities of inner-city life.
"While Balmoral Hall is itself a prestigious school, it's right in the core area," says Kreviazuk, 33, from a tour stop in Vancouver. "So every day, when we'd leave those gates, I'd just be amazed at what was going on in our own community."
Kreviazuk has, of course, spent the last decade or so giving back to her community and to the global community as a whole. She's been a tireless champion of children's rights -- aligning herself with charities like War Child and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada -- so it should come as no surprise that her latest hometown gig at the Centennial Concert Hall next week is a fundraiser for the U of W's newly established Opportunity Fund. The new fund exists to make education more accessible for disadvantaged students, including inner-city youth, aboriginals and young people from war-affected nations or refugee populations.
"It's not a handout," Kreviazuk says of the fund, which will reward students' individual achievements with bursary credits they can apply towards tuition at U of W. "They have to earn it."
When it comes to hard work, Kreviazuk is something of an expert, having found a way to balance a successful career (her last album Ghost Stories just earned her two more Juno nominations) with the demands of being a wife and mother.
It helps that her husband, Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida, is a successful musician in his own right. In fact, Kreviazuk's show on Monday will mark the first time the two have shared a stage with each other in Winnipeg, should you be looking for further incentive to buy a ticket.
And Kreviazuk herself suspects further incentive might be in order, noting with some irony that Winnipeg has always been one of her weakest markets, not to mention the only stop on the current tour that isn't presently sold out.
"I'm just a hometown girl, not this big glamorous chick, so there's never been much mystery to me," she says, after explaining she hopes to be able to continue in the same humanitarian vein as local activist-rockers like The Weakerthans. "It's not that I'm disappointed but I'm really counting on Winnipeggers to step up, because it's for an amazing cause. And I don't want to be playing to a half-empty theatre in my own hometown!"
