Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

Best Ideas Are Being Thrown At The Wall Big Rig comes in at night on Bloor Street to work on new Mirvish complex photo Herman Silochan By Stephen Weir While you are mixing some outdoor paint, turn on the Calypso music real loud and then throw it against a blank wall. If luck is with you, you might have created Toronto’s next downtown mural, which will make Itah Sadu very very happy. The Caribbean Camera has been following how her  Blackhurst Cultural Centre, formally named A Different Booklist Cultural Centre to lead a project which will create a large outdoor mural devoted to calypso in the City of Toronto.  The proposed outdoor wall mural will be in the new Mirvish Village currently under construction where the iconic Ed’s Warehouse once stood at Bloor and Bathurst St.  Sadu’s bookstore and culture centre is directly across the street from where the mural will be installed. Earlier this week reporter Stephen Weir brought along some photographs of both Toronto...

 2022 Saldenah Carnival Costume Launch   By Stephen Weir / Photographs by Herman Silochan and Gilbert Medina. Louis Saldenah, Canada’s most winning Mas Man said it before last month's Saldenah Carnival’s Streets of Fire costume launch and he is saying it now for sure.   “ I told you so! The people of Toronto are hungry, hungry, hungry for carnival and 2022 is going to be that year, ” predicted Saldenah after his launch party attracted 2,000 people hungry to  look at the costumes that will be worn on the road in this year’s Toronto Caribbean Carnival Grand Parade. “ I have always said this is going to be the best Carnival ever,” he told the Caribbean Camera. “After two years being cooped up at home without Carnival, I think everyone is saying, “Damn it, let’s just get out there (and jump up).”     Photograph by Herman Silochan  Louis’s S aldenah Car nival (formally the Mas K Club) holds the record of twenty “Band of the Year” titles ...

Exhibition has a month ending run at the Pilot Photographer, Artist and Filmmaker Jenny Baboolal Will Be Forever Young. By Herman Silochan   A lovely little art show and reception at the Pilot Bar on Cumberland Street, just off Yonge, in Toronto was held on Tuesday night.  Missed it? Show was stay up until the end of August. Jenny Baboolal  the Trinidad artist and photographer showed off some of her delightful collection. Born in Trinidad but now living in Toronto, she has been amassing quite a portfolio, and of which many hanging in the Pilot are for sale to the public. At the Pilot - artist  Jenny Baboolal - photo Herman Silochan   Here is a sample of what was shown on display Tuesday night. She has concentrated on  Children in Carnival , the portraiture transferred to canvas and which makes for excellent display. All the subjects are from Carnival in Trinidad, not the Toronto Carnival. In two of the photos, are of the images on the wall with some fans in...

Killer Book About Killer Bug In The Running For The RBC Taylor Prize Timothy Winegard by Herman Silochan This is the last year for the RBC Charles Taylor Prize. The non-fiction Canadian book prize is closing down in March after marking 20-years of rewarding the country’s best authors. The Prize recently announced the last five authors on the shortlist to win the Prize. One of their books, Timothy Winegard’s history of the Mosquito will have Caribbean readers itching to buy insect spray and install bug proof screens. The female mosquito has, through history, killed more people with her bite than all the wars in the history of man. In the Caribbean, where the fears of dengue, malaria, West Nile and sickle cell, grow, the mosquito is to blame. Dr. Winegard is a Sarnia born, hockey-loving historian who now teaches at the Colorado Mesa University. He has served in both the Canadian and British Armed Forces and knows about war. He says the world is losing the battle against ...

LIFE ON THE GROUND FLOOR Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine. Review by Herman Silochan A philosophical treatise, a family story about a grandfather with virtues and values, our human globe that connects through pain, hope and loss, medicine is part economics, part politics, fashionable healing fads, pharmaceuticals call the shots, but in the end, a simple aspirin- a hundred year old medication - still goes a long way in a very, very complex world of futuristic monitoring bedside machines. In the emergency room, you do not vacillate, putting off decisions, you decide now, it creates a work flow among subordinates; to delay is to create chaos, you cannot have chaos in triage at admittance, there are a hundred sufferers waiting in line, no, they are depending on you, they have surrendered their lives for this diagnostic moment, they have transferred trust. In pain there is equality, the mighty and the lowly are in this together. Doctors and nurses know this; th...