Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

A whale (shark) of an experience Toronto Star July 19, 2008 The Toronto Star published my whale shark story on July 19th. The three-page feature was the cover story on the Travel Section. I originally wrote a 1,300 word story for the Star. The assistant-editor Susan Pigg asked me to cut it back to 700 words. That shorter version appeared in the Star with only minor edits. You can see that story on the Star's website at: http://www.thestar.com/Travel/article/461491 What follows is the first version of the whale shark story. A Whale (Shark) of a Tale and its all true Dive Tourism in Land Locked Atlanta. Big Fish. Big Tank. Big Thrill By Stephen Weir The Georgia Aquarium dive master was a great salesman. He easily sold four scuba divers on the concept that the aquarium’s mammoth whale sharks are in fact gentle giants. So, no one flinched when a 3ft tall dorsal fin cut through the water within touching distance of their dangling flippers. But, after slipping into the lukewarm water...

Sidebar #1 Getting in touch Georgia Aquarium 225 Baker St Atlanta, Georga (404) 581-4000 Register for Swim With The Gentle Giant Experience at www.georgiaaquarium.org Sidebar #2 Indoor Diving for Scuba Tourists The Atlanta Aquarium is not the only place you can dive indoors. Other locations that open their doors (and pools) to scuba tourists include: Epcot Centre – Disneyland, Orlando, Florida. The Seas with Nemo & Friends is a 6-million-gallon indoor aquarium with more than 65 species of marine life, including sharks. $150 per dive. Bonne Terre Mine – Bonne Terre, Missouri. The Bonne Terre lead mine flooded in the sixties. Qualified divers are escorted to see mining artifacts, and spooky tunnels. $65.00 per Dive The Florida Aquarium. Located in Tampa, Florida the large aquarium has a Dive With the Sharks Programme in Shark Bay. $150 per dive Blue Water Aquarium. Chester UK. Dive in 10 year old aquarium and see one of Europe's largest collections of sharks, £199 per dive Ne...

Tail of the Tape. A few factoids about the Whale Shark Fact Sheet The Whale shark is the planet’s largest fish. Whale sharks can grow to a length of 18m (60ft) or more and weigh up to 34 tonnes (5 times the weight of a big elephant). Whale shark skin is both striped and spotted. No two sharks have the same colour pattern The Whale Shark is the only member of its genus Rhincodon and its family, Rhincodontidae In Asia, Whale Sharks are known as Tofu Sharks because of the taste and texture The Whale Shark is often called the: basking shark, the Shalaam Waan (Thai), requin baleine and chagrin (French), pez dama (Spanish) and the tuko (Tagalog). Whale shark are found in all tropical and warm oceans and are pelagic for most of their lives. They are filter feeders. They have capacious mouthes which can be up to 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) wide and can contain between 300 and 350 rows of tiny teeth. A Whale shark has five large pairs of gills. Two small eyes are located towards the front of the...

The Make-Up of Seaside and Lakeshore Trash By Stephen Weir Writer Posts and Reader Responds divermag.com I don't usually post on this site articles of mine that Diver Magazine has posted on its website www.divermag.com. Diver's website gets an impressive numbers of daily visitors ( I get in the 10s they get in the 100s and 1,000s). However, one of the drawbacks of the Diver site is that there isn't a forum yet to show how readers have responded to the articles. The following story was posted a few days ago (July 15) and almost immediately I received a thoughtful response that should get posted. So what follows is what was posted followed by a response from a reader. The Washington-based Ocean Conservancy earlier this year released its annual report on trash in the ocean with new data from its 2007 International Coastal Cleanup Project. Their findings? Seashore trash is hurting the world! Beach trash is clogging shorelines and killing birds, animals and fish. Accordin...

Manchester’s famed Ash Street B and B is tankful guests are driving inn By Stephen Weir (from the summer edition of the Maple Gazette) Aware of rising fuel costs, the owners of the historic Ash Street Inn have created a package for people taking a motor-vacation to their establishment this summer. The 123 year-old Manchester Bed and Breakfast Inn is offering a $20 refund per night to help guests fill that gas tank. The Ash Street Inn is a three-story stain glassed filled Victorian home located minutes from Manchester’s cultural and sports attractions. This summer the award winning Bed and Breakfast Inn is offering three packages to lower the cost of a driving vacation. Guests who spend two or more weeknights received a $20 refund per night. Their “Explore New England” package gives those guests who plan to take driving day trips a $20 a night rebate and for one of those day trips they will also pack a gourmet lunch in an insulated bag for a meal on the road (and guests get to kee...

On Saturday, May 31st, the Toronto Star ran a story I wrote about the new Trump Tower Hotel and Condo project in Toronto. The story, with an illustration by ED SCHNURR can be see at: /www.thestar.com/article/432040. Below is the original version which was edited by the Star for accuracy and length. Donald Trump’s new vision of luxury Small, Tall and Tight. Really really tight. By Stephen Weir Stephen@stephenweir.com May 22, 2008 Shoe-horning a luxury hotel and condo tower into the already hyper-crowded financial district of downtown Toronto is forcing Donald Trump's real estate company to think small while building tall. The 924 ft (282 metres) Trump International Hotel and Tower is finally underway and as the hole is being dug in a miniscule plot of land at the southeast corner of Adelaide and Bay Streets, a team of architects and builders are importing both people and different construction techniques to build a $400 million tower where a tiny five and dime store used to ...

ORIGINAL SIDEBAR TO TRUMP STORY BY STEPHEN WEIR Trump Tower's: Tale of the Tape ß The first Trump property to be built in Canada, Trump International Hotel & Tower will be one of the tallest buildings in the country when completed. ß Opened for sales in September 2004. Ground breaking event held in October 2007. ß Lot size 15,520 square feet ß Building footprint – 98% of the lot ß Height: 281.6 m / 924 ft. 60 storeys tall ß Hotel Condominiums: 261 (600 - 4,000 sq. ft.) ß The Residences: 118 (1,300 - 7,700 sq. ft.) ß Sticker Shock $900,000 to $14 million. ß Total Suites: 379 ß Model Suites – 11am to 6pm, Amy Richards, 416-214-9285 ß Owners: Trump Organization and Talon International Development Inc ß /www.trumptoronto.ca

Mermaid on the Rocks – has Diver Magazine hatched a trend? Swimming our way back to November 2007, Diver Magazine featured Malena Sharkey on the cover wearing nothing but her mermaid costume. The Florida-based diver has a unique moonlighting career as a mermaid model and the magazine wanted to give her career some exposure. That particular issue turned out to be extremely popular. Does that mean that nearly nude mermaid models will be the next big thing? Is Diver the first publication to grab the mermaid craze by the tail? Check out the latest Compari calendar and you will see that Diver has jumped onto the mermaid popularity wave long before it is even close to cresting. The makers of Compari aperitif have issued a new 2008 calender featuring Eva Mendes posed in 12 different fairytale scenes – one story picture for each month of the year. This month, the American actress (2 Fast 2 Furious, Hitch, Training Day and We Own the Night) appears as a sultry mature Little Mermaid. The c...

March 26, 2008 Title: NEW HAMPSHIIRE'S MOOSE SPOT HUMANS WHILE HUMANS SPOT THE MOOSE RIGHT BACK GREAT NORTH WOODS LEAD THE MOOSE-ON-THE-LOOSE PARADE By Stephen Weir Toronto – A trained eye means everything. One New Hampshire moose, his velvet antlers skimming the surface of the water, didn’t even have to stop munching on water weeds and lift his massive head to spot the six humans standing on the opposite shore of the pristine lake. He tilted his head sideways and looked for the telltale reflection of dawn’s early light on the telephoto lens of a digital camera. “Gotcha” snorted the moose, “my first people spotting of the day.” And while some of New Hampshire’s estimated 10,000 moose (no the plural isn’t meese) are avid people watchers, from May to October, the real sport is Moose Spotting and it is pursued by thousands and thousands of avid animal watchers wanting to get close to New Hampshire’s gentle giants. Most of the moose live in the Great North Woods section of the st...

Title: If group can find $2 million Warship that saw Gulf War service could become the St Lawrence River’s first artificial reef By Stephen Weir (April 2008, Diver Magazine - unedited version of feature including sidebars that didn't make it into print): Canadian divers along the north shore of the St Lawrence River know what ship they want and where they want to sink it, but what they don’t have is the money to make it happen … yet. Late last December a small group of divers in Brockville kicked off a bold plan to create an artificial reef near this small Ontario city. The Eastern Ontario Artificial Reef Association, (EOARA), have set their sights on the now mothballed HMCS Terra Nova. The “paid-off” 112 meter long warship, is currently docked in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A second warship, the HMCS Gatineau, is also available to the group. She has also been mothballed by the Canadian Navy. “We really want the Terra Nova, it is the right height for where we want to sink her i...

The article printed below is a work of fiction, and it is not new ( I have updated it twice. The latest was submitted to the CBC two years ago - this is that version).   I think I wrote Version One in the Eighties. It was used in a long-gone magazine called Valley . It was published by General Store Publishing House in Burnstown, Ontario.  The faded clipping has been pinned to my corked lined office wall for over 20 years. I wanted to post it on my website before the clipping (my only copy) fell apart and the story returned to being just a fading memory.  I figured out the Optical Character Reader on my printer this weekend and so Presto Chango ... another story in my ongoing mostly fiction series about Renfrew in the Sixties and is now on stephenweir.com. Title : TIME IS A BOUNCING BALL by Stephen Weir  It's too long ago now to remember how we got onto the roof of the Howard Haramis restaurant. I can't imagine climbing up the fire escape, but 50 ...

Sub-Title : Photo at left: Rendering of a proposed downtown Toronto condo: One Bedford The Toronto Star, like every publication I write for, edits and rewrites my copy. Don't mind, always amazed at how many mistakes I make. I send in what I think is a bullet proof story and then the questions from the editor begins (I call it death by a thousand questions). My answers/changes, are one of the reasons that the story gets modified. I also hand in copy that it is too long ( hey, we freelancers are geared towards being paid by the inch). So, to make a short story long, the Toronto Star ran a story yesterday: http://www.thestar.com/living/Athome/article/298644 that I wrote after a month of research. The story was about how new buildings in Toronto are casting long shadows over the city and rate payers are unhappy. Anyway, check out the link above to see the Star's version of my piece. Below is the original text -- mistakes and all. Star headline: OUR PLACES IN THE SUN The shadow...

PROS AND CONS Made in the shade » Shadows can be healthy. Toronto City Council has a shade policy committee, which is expected to issue a report by summer. The committee has heard from the board of health, which is in favour of increasing shade in "areas where children are most likely to be in attendance." » The shade policy committee reports that from 2002 to 2004, 238 Toronto residents died from skin cancers. Of these, 186 were attributed to malignant melanoma. Shade, especially in public areas, helps protect people from the harmful ultra violet rays. » The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that in the summer, about one-third of a home's heat enters through the roof. This ages shingles, blisters paint and robs a house of moisture. » Some experts say shade can reduce homeowners' air conditioning costs up to 30 per cent. » Some garden plants thrive in the shadows. Begonias, hosta, lobelia and Japanese anemones like shade. The sunny side » City of Toronto planning st...

Diver Magazine has just published my feature article on Ghost Diving in Grenada. Similiar to the story I wrote for the Toronto Sun -- they are both about the same underwater incident -- but this story is aimed at the certified diver. The Toronto Sun is very much a working man's paper and most of the readers probably do not dive, so every effort was made to make it a fun travel piece that was light on dive technical terms. The Diver story was edited by Peter Golding. Most of the pictures used in the article weren't taken by me and only have fleeting reference to the story - don't know the photographer at all, I gather Peter Golding bought them from a freelancer. If anyone would like a copy of the printed article, let me know, I will mail it to you. My address is on the splash page. Here is my original version of the Diver Magazine story. Live aboard stories from the Wind Dancer A ghost of a chance for unusual underwater sightings in warm Grenadian waters By Stephen Weir...

In December I was part of a six-person panel which looked at all the "new" products that were going to be shown at the 50th anniversary Toronto International Boat Show. At boat shows the word "new" is used loosely. In North America most marine companies debut products at the Miami Boat Show, so, for trade fairs being held after Miami (The Toronto show runs in January 08) new becomes new-to-Toronto, or, first-showing-Canada. We choose the ten best products. I wrote a story and press release about our panel's picks. The story appeared in the showguide (cover at left) and I have seen it also in the January/February issue of Boating Business. I believe a coupla other magazines used varients of the story as well. Since the content of the story is only germane to the show, which ends Sunday, I haven't bothered to post the story. If you want to see it (can't imagine while) drop me a note and I will forward it to you.

Every year for the past five years I have written travel stories for the annual 2008 Marinas and Destination Guide - Boating Ontario. Late last year I updated last year's story for the annual guide. That small format magazine came out in January and made its debut at the annual Toronto International Boat Show. HEAD: Lake Huron and Area DECK: Catch the sun on a sandy beach. Cruise and fish the open water. Lake Huron is ready to thrill with every visit. By Stephen Weir What was once called La Mer Douce (the fresh water sea) by early French explorers and later, Lac des Hurons (The Lake of the Huron Indians), by the First Nations people, is a vast on-water playground where excitement is king. The second largest Great Lake with a surface area spanning 23, 010 square miles, approximately the size of West Virgina, Lake Huron is considered the third largest lake in world (if the saline Caspian Sea is included) and boasts a shoreline spanning 6,157 kilometers. While the west coast of the ...

In September I wrote a couple press releases for Holmes Communication to be used as long-lead stories in boating magazines. Boats and Places, a magazine started by Ted Rankine and now owned by Brian Minton, used my piece as the basis of a two-page article in their January 2008 issue. What follows is the original piece that I wrote. 2008 -- Golden Anniversary for Canada’s biggest boating event Toronto International Boat Show launched 50 years ago This January 11th the Toronto International Boat Show will be celebrating its 50th anniversary by doing what it does best -- opening the hatches on the Direct Energy Centre and inviting the public to come on board and see the fleet of 2008. The nine-day Toronto International Boat Show is turning fifty; it is a major exhibition milestone but more importantly, it is a time for celebration for the show, the boating industry and the Canadian economy. The world’s biggest indoor harbour! Exciting wakeboard boats, rooftop aluminum fishing boats, ...