Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

ALBERT JACKSON’S FAMILY STAMP HIS NAME ON NEW SCARBOROUGH BUILDING   If you don’t know who Albert Jackson was or what he looked like, you probably haven’t been s If you don't know who Albert Jackson was or what he looked like, you probably haven't been sending letters home to Mommy. Tall, fit, and finely groomed with a mustache, Canada's first Black mailman cut quite the figure walking his route. So much so that Canada Post put his painted portrait on a stamp back in 2019. Born into slavery in the United States, Jackson was just a boy when his family escaped to Canada via the underground railroad. In Toronto, he pursued his education and won a position as a letter carrier in 1882. When he reported for work, he faced discrimination from his colleagues, who refused to train him. The debate over the situation raged for weeks until political pressure, especially from Toronto's Black community, triumphed, and Jackson was able to walk his route. He passed away in 1918 at the ...

North is Freedom – Black History Month events in Brampton all month By Stephen Weir   Tonight's Caribbean Camera newspaper The Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives (PAMA) in Brampton and the Ontario Black History Society soft launches this weekend North is Freedom , an evocative new photo exhibition celebrating the descendants of former American slaves who fled to Canada in the years before the American Civil War. In portraits of 24 descendants of freedom seekers– the great-great-grandchildren of once-enslaved African Americans – Toronto photographer Yuri Dojc explores Canada’s end of the “Underground Railroad,” a clandestine network of "conductors" and “stations” that helped some 30,000 men, women, and children follow the “North Star” to freedom. Yuri Dojc The Black freedom seekers settled across Canada but most of them came to places in Ontario, such as Windsor, Chatham, Buxton, the Niagara Peninsula, Owen Sound, Oakville, Mississauga and Toronto. ...

Model Beverlyn Asante wears golden headdress by Dawn Grant Black History Month: No Time To Sleep.  Events almost every hour of the day for 28 days straight By Stephen Weir It’s not a big secret – Toronto is about to become the epicentre for the country’s most important Black History events this February. At a press conference on Tuesday, Black History Month organizers and key officials from the Toronto Dominion Bank unveiled a record number of 90+ different February events that will occur for the most part in the GTA. The presser was held at A Different Booklist Cultural Centre on Bathurst Street. It was a full-house with radio, television and print journalist on hand to learn about all-things-Black beginning next week. Damcers' Duet Inside The A Different Booklist's Community Centre Music. Fashion. History. Food. Performance.  There is a mammoth formal gala, crazy good concerts and small unique happenings for 28 days in a row.  It ...

. By Stephen Weir Edited version posted by Huffington Post Moscow. Jerusalem. Vatican City. São Paulo . Canadian photographer Yuri Dojc is is known and admired for his world vision.   His photographs of crumbling synagogues, badly decayed Torahs scrolls and discarded school books he discovered in a rotting   70-years locked Jewish school in Slovakia are seen as instruments of change in a battle against cultural genocide. Here in Canada little is known about his travelling exhibition of pictures of those holocaust books. That is because he is Canada’s most accomplished nude photographer. That may changes now that his Last Folio exhibition has finally arrived in Canada, and people in Ontario are seeing his passion and his dread of mankind’s darkside. The Last Folio is an exhibition, an art book and a documentary movie, based on the Slovakia pictures he has taken.   The exhibition that continues to tour in Europe, Israel, South America and the United ...