Community
For over a decade, Grafstein served on the Board of the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith and the Joint Community Relations Committee of Toronto during the 60’s and 70’s.
He served as Co-Chairman of Toronto Committee for the Group of Seven Economic Summit in Toronto in 1988. He served as a member of the Executive for the Toronto 1996 and 2008 Olympic Bid Committees.
In 1998, the Grafstein Annual Lecture in Communications was established by Grafstein to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his graduation from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and the 10th anniversary of the graduation of his son, Laurence Grafstein, and daughter-in-law, Rebecca Grafstein (nee Weatherhead), both from the Class of 1988. The Grafstein Lecture is hosted by the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the Faculty of Law.
In 1999 he and his wife, Carole, established the Grafstein Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto.
Grafstein co-organized “Canada Loves New York” in November 2001, when over 26,000 Canadians visited New York City after September 11, to assist New York City’s recovery after 9/11, called “the largest peaceful invasion of Canadians since the War of 1812”.
In July 2003, he co-created and co-organized “Toronto Rocks”, considered the largest ticketed band concert in history, attended by almost 1/2 million people, to offset the negative impact on Toronto in the global media as a result of the SARS outbreak.
In December 2004 he co-organized “Canada for Asia”, a three hour broadcast telethon in aid of relief for Tsunami victims, and raised over $15,000,000.00.
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Famous quotes containing the word community:
“What I wanted was to create thoughtful citizens—people who believed they could live interesting lives and be productive and socially useful. So I tried to create a community of children and adults where the adults shared and respected the children’s lives.”
—Deborah Meier (b. 1931)
“The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When a language creates—as it does—a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.”
—Christopher Ricks (b. 1933)