Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony is facing bankruptcy:

The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony will be out of business by the end of the month unless it raises $2.5-million in emergency funds, says the orchestra's board chair.

Now to me it suggests stunning fiscal mismanagement if we only hear of this problem now, less than 30 days before the crisis hits.This sounds much more like political grandstanding, and I have no doubt that the local governments will cough up the cash, even though this crisis is the Symphony's own fault.

So we'll blow $2.5 million of local taxpayers money to save an organization that a relatively elite few (and fewer and fewer apparently) go to see.

Yet I've seen my son's friends try to put on concerts with hundreds, even thousands of students attending, where the city won't even cover a couple thousand dollars of insurance coverage. There is a thriving arts and local theater scene that the local cities barely acknowledge, let alone provide any funding for.

I live in Waterloo, a city with two universities that speaks often of how much it wants to ensure that graduates stay here after they finish school. But new graduates don't generally attend the symphony, but they do look for a vibrant local cultural scene.

Perhaps we must keep the Symphony running because it would be a shame to lose it. But it would be a far greater shame to lose a vibrant art community that is growing organically by myopically viewing culture as that which appeals to only a certain segment of the community.

There is a place for the Symphony, but if you want your town to grow, and keep people in it, then there is also a place for many other things as well. And there should be some support for those other communities as well.