Open this photo in gallery:
Yvonne Moir, Max Kerman and Tom Moffett, of Arkells, perform during Festival d’ete de Quebec in July, 2024. This week, the band started selling hats to support school nutrition programs in Toronto.Amy Harris/The Canadian Press
Max Kerman, frontman of the Canadian rock band Arkells, likes vintage fashion and loves – really loves – public education.
His mom was a special education teacher in Toronto. Reflecting back on his high school years, he said his time at Harbord Collegiate Institute helped shape who he is today.
In his view, public school is one of the great democratic institutions deserving of much more boosterism. A few years ago, Mr. Kerman worked with the band’s merchandise designer to make a vintage-looking hat featuring the Toronto District School Board’s logo of an apple.
He’s been wearing it periodically ever since. It starts a lot of conversations with people, many of whom don’t even know he’s in a band.
“They just see the hat and they want to talk about their school. They want to talk about their education,” Mr. Kerman said. “Teachers feel really seen by it, teachers really appreciate it, so I figured let’s make this for sale a little bit more widely.”
Open this photo in gallery:
Arkells frontman Max Kerman wears his TDSB hat.Supplied
This week, with the board’s permission, the band began selling two versions of the hat online for preorder, for $40 each. There is a green rope hat, featuring a thin decorative cord stretched across the front, and a floppy grey version.
Proceeds from the sales will go to support the nutrition programs at Toronto Foundation for Student Success.
So far, the hats have received some high-profile endorsements from Canadian indie-rock luminaries. Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo has been seen sporting one. So, too, has former Barenaked Ladies member Steven Page.
Dan Levy, of Schitt’s Creek fame, has reached out to the band to say he’d love to get one.
Mr. Kerman, 39, said his first inspiration for the hat was his mother, who used to teach at Central Technical School in the Harbord Village area of Toronto, near where he attended high school.
Thanks to her, Mr. Kerman gained his appreciation for public education as a great equalizer.
“I’ve always thought about sort of the randomness of luck when it comes to a child’s upbringing, and how amazing a great public school system can be,” he said. “That no matter who your parents are, no matter what postal code you live in, or no matter what your parents’ job is, every kid can come through the same doors and get to share time with each other.”
The hat is a celebration of everyone working in public school, especially teachers, Mr. Kerman said.
Part of its appeal, is that unlike a Harvard sweatshirt or a Ferrari hat, the brand it’s repping – the idea of public school itself – is the antithesis of exclusivity.
“Given how much social isolation there is, given how much division the algorithmic social media channels offer us … what is a place where we can all just see each other for the humans that we are?” he said. “That is a public school.”
The choice to support student nutrition programs came to Mr. Kerman by way of his niece and nephew, who attend high school in Toronto. They had told him about the healthy breakfast program at their school, accessible to all students.
“I thought, yeah, this is a good place because kids need to be well-fed if they’re going to have a good day at school,” he said.
The Toronto Foundation for Student Success supports nearly 1,000 school nutrition programs that provide 284,000 healthy meals to students every school day.
Across the country, nearly one-third of children under the age of 18 – 2.4 million kids – live in food insecure households, according to Statistics Canada data.
The hats are not just a celebration of public school in support of a good cause – they’re also a reminder of the responsibility to care for everyone that public education is founded on, Mr. Kerman said.
“We need to look out for each other. So sure, there are some schools that are in more well-to-do neighbourhoods, but we’re going to use our resources to support schools that don’t have as much, or whose parents are working three jobs and don’t have disposable income to be supporting school fundraisers,” he said.
“That needs to be our duty, right? We need to be in service of each other all the time.”