When it comes to helping others, saxophonist Dave McLaughlin is always there.
For years, world-class Toronto saxophonist Dave McLaughlin has been raising money for good causes in and around the GTA.
Through his gospel fundraising concerts, he’s provided scholarships to deserving students, donates a portion of his album sales to charity and performs for free at other charitable events.
On Aug. 10, he will hold another fundraising gospel concert — this one at Scarborough’s Rosewood Church of the Nazarene, 657 Milner Ave., starting at 7 p.m. — for a cause close to his heart.
This one will be a concert to raise funds for victims of Hurricane Beryl, which devastated McLaughlin’s birthplace of Jamaica on July 3.
The Category 4 hurricane — with winds of up to 215 km/h and heavy rains — caused widespread death and destruction throughout the Caribbean.
The most powerful hurricane to strike Jamaica in more than a decade, Beryl caused major flooding, destroyed homes and businesses, left hundreds of thousands without power and hundreds more homeless.
It also caused major damage to Jamaica’s agricultural sector, resulting in food shortages.
McLaughlin said he felt he had to do something after seeing a woman interviewed on television, saying she only had a can of sardines to feed her family in the wake of the hurricane’s destruction.
His lifelong commitment to helping those in need was first instilled in him while he was growing up in Montego Bay, Jamaica, attending Sunday services with his family at their local parish church.
There, he was taught that the act of charity was not merely an option or something one did for personal aggrandizement, but a commandment from God because, “blessed are those who consider the poor.”
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It was also in Jamaica that McLaughlin learned about the importance of mentoring the young, when a visiting music professor from Indiana State University, on hearing him play the saxophone, told him to keep at it because he was “a natural.”
That moment of encouragement gave him the confidence he needed to keep practising, eventually becoming a world-class musician, performing around the world and opening for the likes of the late, great Ray Charles.
Immigrating to Canada in 1991, McLaughlin became a Canadian citizen and, settling in Toronto, formed the popular Dave McLaughlin Band, which today performs at corporate functions, weddings and other business and social events.
But he never forgot the lessons he learned in his youth in Jamaica — the importance of charity and of encouraging young people to pursue their dreams.
Tickets for Saturday’s gospel concert cost $25 and can be purchased at the door or at a number of local businesses.
For more information, call 647-655-7811.
McLaughlin and I have known each other for years, and I’ll be the master of ceremonies on Saturday.