Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

. A slighty different version of this was written for my Huffington Post blog http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-weir/sandra-perron_a_23074869/ By Stephen Weir I spent the 80s and early 90s working for a company that designed, built and marketed weapons and defense systems to the military.   I was often called upon to interact with military leaders at classified trade shows, product demonstrations and, of course, the never ending plant tours (The military Dog and Pony shows). In all my time on the job I never once helped with a Canadian Forces visit that included a high-ranking female officer.   The business of buying multi-million dollar defense systems was a Man’s World, after all, women weren’t allowed to lead troops onto the battlefield (although some NATO allies were more enlightened).   Sandra Perronn  Toronto park - sweir photo I left that world in 1993, and it wasn’t until last month that I actually met a senior female combat officer from the Canadian

Anmol Tukrel - photo Ontario Science Centre Blind? There Is An App For That. by Stephen Weir written for Huffington Post On top of my fridge there is a growing pile of spectacles. Reading glasses. Seeing for distance. Prescription sunglasses.   Half glasses. Safety glasses. Sigh. I guess I always knew that loss of vision was all part of the aging process, but it has happened a bit too soon for my liking.   Luckily a remarkable teenager from Markham has come up with an App that will fix all that. I am still a long way away   --I hope -- from needing to use an App created by 17 year old student Anmol Tukrel.   He has created iDentifi that helps a visually impaired person identify objects by using a smartphone. The app uses the phone’s camera and artificial intelligence to provide audio identification of objects, brands, colour, facial expressions, handwriting and text. I caught up to him at the Ontario Science Centre earlier this week while he was being presented wi

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Book Review In The Black: My Life --> By B. Denham Jolly An edited version of this review appeared in Huffington Post today In the Black, a new autobiography by activist businessman and radio pioneer Denham Jolly, is going to have members of Toronto's white community seeing red. It might have Black Lives Matter soldiers taking names and making notes. "To the white readers of this book, I have to stress that for Black people the basic and continuing infringements of our rights are not mere distractions. Canadians like to congratulate themselves over our diversity, but … " Denham Jolly told me when we talked about his early days in Toronto. Quoting from his just published book, he explains that discriminatory policing (from carding to driving while Black) "remain part of our day-to-day life and cast a long shadow over it." From time-to-time over the past four decades, Jolly and I have crossed paths. He doesn't remember m