Toronto, July 31: A disused military air base in Toronto claimed a spot in rock festival history Wednesday, as an estimated 450,000 fans braved a scorching sun to help the Rolling Stones, AC/DC and a dozen other acts lift the spirits of the SARS-hit Canadian city. As riffs of Stones classics "Brown Sugar" and "Start Me Up" washed the teeming crowd at Toronto's Downsview Park, city boosters and hospitality workers hoped they had seen the last of a tourism chill that has descended on the only area outside Asia where people died from severe acute respiratory syndrome.
By late afternoon, organizers were putting the attendance at more than 450,000, billing the concert as the largest paid-admission concert ever in North America.

"I think it's the biggest crowd we've ever played to, so it is a fantastic buzz," Stones frontman Mick Jagger told reporters shortly before their set.

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One artist commented that from the stage, the crowd appeared to stretch to the horizon -- "literally people as far as the eye can see."

Big crowds are nothing new for the park, which hosted an estimated 800,000 for a visit by Pope John Paul II last year.
While the World Health Organization is no longer warning people to stay away from SARS hot spots -- a list that once included Toronto -- the outbreak of the flu-like illness and a death toll of 42 scared tourists and business travelers away from Toronto, forcing restaurants and hotels to lay off staff.

The giant concert -- dubbed SARSstock, after the Woodstock Festival of 1969 -- aims at injecting new vigor into the tourism sector, as well as saying thank you to front-line health-care workers who battled SARS, some paying with their lives.

"I don't think people realize, certainly internationally ... what the health-care workers in this city have been through. It's just an incredible sacrifice," said Geddy Lee, frontman of Canadian band Rush, who preceded Australian rockers AC/DC on the bill.
Bureau Report