City of Toronto officials hope 1 million residents will participate in the first Toronto Earth Hour event on Saturday night to raise awareness about pollution and global warming.
Millions of Canadians are expected to turn off or dim their lights between 8 and 9 p.m. as part of the World Wildlife Fund effort that began in Sydney, Australia last March 29.
The movement has spread to dozens of countries worldwide, but Canadians seem to be one of the strongest supporters of the plan as about 150 communities will take part.
"This has really just blown up across Canada,'' Tara Wood, spokeswoman for the fund in Canada, told The Canadian Press.
"Canada is really going to be the shining star in this global effort.''
Initially, the fund's idea was to try the event in one city -- Toronto -- to see how the effort should be rolled out in future years, but the plan proved impossible.
"There was no way to control it once people got wind of this really cool lights-out event,'' Wood said. "It's been truly phenomenal.''
Many businesses in Toronto will participate in Earth Hour, and most offices in the downtown core will flick off or dim their lights.
The 23,000 twinkling lights on the famous Honest Ed's sign on Bloor and Bathurst Streets will go dark for the hour, and so will almost all of the 1,300 exterior fixtures on the CN Tower.
Cadillac Fairview will shut off the media tower at Yonge and Dundas Square and the Eaton Centre will operate with 50 per cent reduced lighting.
Lights on both the Rogers Centre and the Air Canada Centre will be turned down even though both facilities are hosting major events.
Toronto is celebrating Earth Hour with a free acoustic concert at Nathan Phillips Square with Grammy-winning musician Nelly Furtado. The show runs from 7:30 to 9 p.m., and officials expect more than 10,000 people to attend.
For a list of Toronto's Earth Hour festivities, click here.
The Toronto District School Board did its part ahead of the event by turning off the lights at its 500 schools between 2 and 3 p.m. on Friday.
Ontario, which would usually use between 16,000 and 17,000 megawatts of power on Saturday evening, is forecasting a drop of about 800 megawatts -- almost five per cent -- during Earth Hour, according to the province's Independent Electricity System Operator.
Last year, more than 2 million people and businesses in Sydney participated, pushing down demand for power in the city by 10 per cent -- the equivalent of turning off 50,000 cars for an hour, the World Wildlife Fund said.
With a report from CTV Toronto's MairiAnna Bachynsky and files from The Canadian Press
