Bob Marley Day has been proclaimed for Saturday by Mayor David Miller, the 20th such occasion in Toronto — even held when Mel Lastman was in charge at City Hall. The annual day now coincides with the anniversary of the reggae legend’s date of birth, February 6, 1945. In 1992, the singer’s late mother Cedella Booker came to town to receive the second proclamation — albeit for May 11, the date of his 1981 passing — and when The Globe and Mail solicited her opinion on the preceding week’s wannabe Rodney King riot on Yonge Street, she replied with his lyrics: “Until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of a man’s eyes, there will always be war.” This year, a fundraiser for Haiti at the Kool Haus on Saturday night will be headlined by Bob’s wife, Rita Marley, who drew a huge crowd to the record department of Honest Ed’s in 1982, when her single “One Draw” crossed over to become a local hit with college kids. But the Marley legend was foremost on the Toronto media radar: J.D. Roberts of Citytv’s The NewMusic was the only reporter from North America to fly down cover his funeral in Jamaica — today, even grunge revisionist 102.1 the Edge spins Marley & the Wailers tunes once or twice a day as their only regular acknowledgment of the 1970s, and/or black people. Related reading: rock critic Michaelangelo Matos‘ 2007 presentation from the EMP Pop Conference — “A Matter of Trustafarians: Behind the Bob Marley Poster on the Dorm Room Wall.” Yet, the most meta thing about the weekend’s Rita Marley-headlined tribute show will surely be local rapper Shaun Boothe performing his “Unauthorized Biography of Bob Marley.”