Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

Celena Seusahai Has Costume And Will Travel By Stephen Weir Celena Seusahai has packed her new costume and headed out the door for her flight to Trinidad and Tobago.  Her trip to T&T’s Carnival is the 2020 start to a Mas on the Move for one of Canada’s leading exporter of the Carnival Arts. She and her father Dexter head up the Tribal Carnival Mas Camp here in the city and on Grand Cayman Island. She is a past Queen of the Toronto Caribbean Carnival and for the past two years has captured the Band of the Year Award at Cayman’s annual carnival.  Oh yes, Tribal also supplies costumes to other carnivals events in the Caribbean and the US, including Miami. “I’m going down by myself and l will be playing Mas with Rogue once again (in Trinidad’s Carnival), they are a branch of Tribe,” she told the Caribbean Camera. “We will have about 30 people in costumes in the T&T Grand Parade. They will be wearing outfits made by my dad and I for T&T’s Carnival Monday!” Afte

Venom's Snake Eyes - Launch attracts over 1,000 revellers By Stephen Weir More than 80 reptilian mas' models slithered, slinked and strutted onto a huge V-shaped stage in Toronto early Sunday morning. Despite a very late start, the models put on a fashion show that wowed the more than 1,000 people who crammed into the Grand Cinnamon Banquet & Convention Centre on McNicoll Avenue   in Scarborough for the Venom Mas' costume launch. Dubbed the "venomous show,"   it was a non-stop parade of models wearing the briefest of costumes.   Two human lizards stood on stage throughout show, wagging long red tongues at the crowd.   There was even a section that outfitted their male and female models with "snake eye" contact lenses.    And was the show sexy? It was bare as you dare time from 1.30 a.m. to 3 p.m.   (The show was due to start before midnight). “Extremely happy with the show. A true testament of the hard work   of our band

THE BIGGEST SO FAR THIS COSTUME LAUNCH SEASON SALDENAH CARNIVAL   IS ALL HEART AND SOCA! By Stephen Weir The Saldenah family pulled it off.  There was too much at stake. Louis Saldenah was able to get a record number of people – 2,800 people into the Scarborough Cinnamon Banquet Hall,  He had 120 fancy dressed models on and off  the stage before the bar closed at 2 am and didn’t have a heart attack getting the job done! Saldenah Carnival, the largest and most winning Canadian band in the annual Toronto Caribbean Carnival Grand Parade is taking it all to heart in 2019.   Note that their theme is the Heart Beat: the Thrill of Life. And to keep the whole thing beating a record 17 sections were needed to show all the costumes they will have on the road this year. “ We expect to be making 6,000 costumes this season,” said  Hayden Harbin. “ There will be five trucks on the road with special guest stars on the floats (Caribbean Camera hears that Trinidadian singer Nadia Batson

Epic Carnival’s costume launch last Saturday has Freudian influenced sections for every revellers' inner dreams Story by Stephen Weir Photos By Gilbert Medina If Sigmund Freud had attended Saturday night’s Epic Carnival costume launch he’d probably would have said that it was an event that reached out not to his Ego, but to his Id.  The Id is that part of the  mind’s psyche, where innate instinctive impulses reside!  Epic’s moniker was Persona and the 500 people who attended were asked to choose the costumes they liked based on their own impulses! “We asked people to think about what their Persona is,” explained Epic’s Jerrol (Stretch), Augustine. What they saw on stage was our EPIC Carnival models portraying many different concepts of Persona. We wanted unique themes that captured the energy, passion, imagination and culture of our masqueraders. This year's focal point is image and self-expression. “ EPIC put a list together of possible persona and matched them wi

Two Different Approaches For The Saturday night Battle of the Bands By Stephen Weir  Photographs by Stephen Weir  Jully Black from reggae singer to Soca sailor Two Mas Men went head-to-head on Saturday night and both came out winners, each in their own way.   A pair of Caribbean Carnival Band launches were held on the same night – one in North Toronto and the other in Malvern.    The two band leaders   - Raptor celeb Jamaal Magloire (Toronto Revellers) and Will Morton (Fantazia) took two different approaches to showing off the costumes that their bands will be wearing on the road this summer. In the business of Mas, the winners and losers of a Battle of the Bands, is ultimately not determined by the number of people that attended (in which case Jamaal won hands down) but rather by the number of costume buyers who decide to sign on the bottom line as a result of the fashion show.   The Revellers won at the gate, and Fantazia had the most social media cameras beamin