Aging & Wisdom Quote by Maureen Forrester

Forrester’s advice lands with the practical warmth of someone who knows talent isn’t the rare part; traction is. The line is addressed to “service clubs,” those civic-minded networks (Rotary, Lions, local arts committees) that love to celebrate culture but often stop at applause and plaques. She’s nudging them from symbolic patronage to logistical patronage: money for lessons, travel, audition fees, accompanists, a decent instrument, time off work. That “little assistance” is doing a lot of heavy lifting, because she understands the gap between “young and talented” and “professional stage” is mostly a gap in infrastructure.

The phrasing is revealing. “If you hear of somebody” treats discovery as social gossip, not a formal pipeline. Great artists aren’t always in conservatories with grant writers; they’re in church choirs, small towns, immigrant families, working-class households where the cost of excellence can be quietly impossible. “Pick them up” has the rescue-note of the old patronage system, but Forrester turns it civic rather than aristocratic: instead of a lone benefactor, a community takes responsibility.

Subtext: she’s calling out complacency. Service clubs like to fundraise for visible causes and visible winners; the arts require betting earlier, before the winner is obvious, when the return is uncertain and the kid is still unpolished. Coming from a Canadian contralto who crossed from local stages to international ones, it reads as lived experience turned into policy: don’t just admire potential. Underwrite its runway.