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Late journalist's Caribbean books come to Bathurst Street By Stephen Weir   Colin (l), Stephen Weir (m) and Craigg Slowly (r) Toronto bookstore owner Itah Sadu   is busy organizing hundreds of books that have just been donated to her Different Booklist Cultural Centre on Bathurst Street in preparation for the unveiling later this month of the Colin Rickards Collection. Rickards, a tireless reporter and columnist for the Caribbean Camera, suffered a fatal heart attack at his East York home eight years ago, just month before his 74th birthday.   “Colin was voracious reader and a book collector of all things Caribbean,” Sadu told the Caribbean Camera.   “ The oldest book in this collection dates back to 1896. He had a real interest in all aspects of the Caribbean from the Indo presence to the Chinese presence to the Afro presence.   This is probably the most complete library of the Diaspora culture in the city.”...

--> Carnival season in Toronto begins with Venom More fashion show than a costume launch, the 2018 carnival season kicked off on Saturday night with a big bite of   snake venom. The Venom Carnival mas band staged the first costume launch   of the 2018   season and attracted over 1,000 paying customers, most of whom were there for the entertainment of seeing what will be worn on the parade route this summer! “ Last year we held our first launch at a club that had a capacity of 750, which we maxed out by the time the show started,” said Aneil Persad , Managing Director at  Venom Carnival INC “ This year we moved to a bigger hall (Chandni Grand in Scarborough), and by the time the music started we had over 1,000 people inside.” Venom is a new band – this is year number two – and the colourful section costumes (the theme this year is Inked) and youthful design has attracted first time carnival goers to their launch in huge numbers. “ Ye...