Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

. Summer Music Festivals: Big Names. Odd Names. Heck just play! The Hill (and the Ottawa Valley) is alive with the sound of music Toronto, June 12, 2009 – When the curtain drops on 2009 there will have been almost 50 (48 to be exact) festivals played out in Ottawa. And while opinions may differ on which festival was the best, all will agree that the Capitol’s summer music festivals are something to sing about. Sometimes Unconventional. Always World Class. In Ottawa it is the summer of the Treble Clef. Jazz. Blues. Classical Music. Three different genres and three separate multi-stage festivals with enough star power to draw visitors from around the world. The TD Canada Trust Ottawa International Jazz Festival (OIJF) features some of the jazz world’s most popular cutting-edge musicians. The OIJF provides visitors to the city with a unique opportunity to enjoy free and ticketed performances both indoors and out. Audiences can enjoy over 80 different jazz performances day and night ...

- Classy Friday Night Fund Raiser at the McMichael A Celebration of Canadian Art, Music, Cuisine and all that Jazz background info/article for Vaughan Citizen, Corriere Canadese (Toronto daily Italian newspaper) and Vaughan Today The woods, the hills and even the galleries of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection were alive with the sound of music. Jazz at the McMichael, an annual fund raising celebration of art, music and cuisine, was blessed with picture perfect weather and a large supportive crowd, the evening of Friday May 22nd. Attending and speaking at the Jazz concert was the Honourable Aileen Carroll, Ontario’s Minister of Culture. 200 people joined the Minister, who enjoyed an exceptional evening of fusion jazz with the Vaughan based VSM Trio. The trio featured popular musicians Vito Rezza, Shelly Birger, and Mario Romano. The three musicians were joined on the McMichael stage by violinists Valentina Romano and Leonid Pejsahov. This unique fundraiser benefits ongoing exhibi...

DIVER MAGAZINE SIDEBAR (TO BE PUBLISHED IN JUNE 09) ABOUT DIVING AND SNORKELING FOR STEPHEN WEIR STORY ON DIVE PHOTOGRAPHERS GUIDE TO THE FLORIDA KEYS AND POMPANO BEACH (AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN) Five Great Places To Dive and Take Underwater Photographs in the Florida Keys 1. Biscayne National Park - 95% of this park is underwater. Outstanding reefs covered in picturesque elk horn coral. Shipwrecks abound. Northern tip of the Florida Keys. 2. Wreck of the USN Speigel Grove. 155m. (510ft) retired warship scuttled to create artifical reef, 10 kms (6 mi) offshore of Key Largo. Ship originally lay on its side but after Hurricane Dennis (‘05), the ship is now upright 40m (130 ft) down. Experienced divers only. 3. Jules’ Undersea Lodge. La Chalupa Underwater Research Lab has been converted to world’s only underwater hotel. Two hotel rooms have glass picture windows onto the reef, air-conditioning, hot showers, a fully stocked galley, and unlimited diving for divers! Key Largo 4. Ten-Fath...

Mathew Rosenblatt, a principal with Cityscape Development Corporation (Distillery), plays with his daughter in the Distillery area's daycare - photo by Toronto Star. GEN-CONS LOOK SKYWARD - THE CONDO GENERATION READY TO RAISE THEIR FAMILIES IN DOWNTOWN HIGH-RISES Published in the Toronto Star, May 2, 2009. By Stephen Weir A new high-rise trend led by the Condo Generation, is pulling into two downtowns. A small but growing number of Gen-Con parents are forsaking dreams of family homes … you know, the one with the white picket fence and the swing set in the large backyard … for condos in the city. There are already family-friendly buildings in downtown Toronto, and Mississauga, with more on the way. Builders, architects and realtors agree that over the next decade an increasing number of parents will decide to raise their children in high-rise condominiums within the city core. Urbanization, a Toronto condo think tank, isn’t so sure. They believe that as long as units are small, pri...

' FAMILY CONDO FACTOIDS In the United States the National Association of Home Builders Multifamily Council regularly issues information on the Multifamily (Condo) Outlook. Among its findings is that: • In multifamily buildings renters have more children than condo owners, but the magnitude of the difference varies by structure type. Fewer school-age children are found in buildings (rented or owned) with 20 or more units • The highest number of children per 100 households is 90.8, which is found among households that have recently moved into newly constructed single-family detached rental units. The lowest number is 3.2 for newly constructed condominiums with 20 or more units. • The National Association of Home Builders found that in hot metro markets - American cities that have retained a vibrant core -- investment buyers now account for 15 percent of purchasers of multi-family condominium units. Speculators are prone to flipping condos, even before the suites are completed. • How ...

. SIDEBAR What are downtown condos projects offering parents in other cities? • Singapore's Capital Land builder has constructed over 40 family friendly condo projects. Their new 420-unit Clearwater Condominiums has: a children's playground, family fitness corner, children's pool, karaoke room, rooftop BBQ, a kid's space net and outdoor maze. Their Waverina has an outdoor wave pool. • The downtown Denver 42-unit Zocalo Condominiums opened in 2006. The building includes a small city police station at street level. • Daniels Capital Condominium in Mississauga has two 30-story high-rise condo towers and a few three-storey family friendly villas. It has a Hollywood style home theatre, barbecue patios and indoor pool. At street level there is a dental practice, a walk-in medical clinic and a pharmacy (which delivers to your condo door). Mississauga Living Arts Centre right across the road. • Craig's Ranch, a planned community in Texas includes, homes, soon-to-be built ...

http://www.yourhome.ca/homes/article/626607 I have received feedback from readers (which is very very rare for my condo stories) already. These four emails were posted on the Toronto Star site. Don't disagree with any of them! sl119 mf123, Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah, familyof3, Saime: You miss the point. Condo markets attract a certain kind of customer with a particular mindset. This kind of customer wants only a condo, regardless of the deals on homes with yards or other opportunities out there. These condos attract people with money (and these people are clearly, at least monetarily, not an "average family"), and they don't mind the prices. There will always be people out there who will scoop these condos up. Submitted by Sherry119 at 5:41 PM Monday, May 04 2009 | A million for a 2.5 bedroom or... how about some acreage with a big home just on the outskirts of Burlington? Even $400 000 for a 2 bedroom plus den is ridiculous. Again, in the 905 you could pick up a nice...

' DIVINE DIVE PICTURES Olympus Puts The Bite on Underwater Digital Picture Taking Market For divers, swimmers and snorkellers By Stephen Weir 3 May 2009 …By Man-Eating standards, this was a very small shark. She was as big as my two fellow underwater photographers swimming hell-bent-for-rubber towards her. But, what with the cameras in their waterproof housings, aluminum scuba tanks and chewy neoprene wet suits, there was far too much bulk approaching even for a hungry 2-metre long Ginglymostoma Cirratum. After my strobe (underwater flash) fired, the grey Nurse Shark shook her large dorsal fin and leisurely swam through a cut in the living Florida Keys reef and headed into the gloom. Probably in Havana by now. With only one large fish shot to show for an hour of diving, and my air supply dwindling, I quickly scanned the lush shallow reef for something - anything – big to shoot. There! Up above, hovering around the coral-encrusted bow of a WW2 shipwreck, were a dozen 2-metre long...

. TEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT SCUBA DIVING IF YOU INTEND ON BECOMING AN UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHER More people have taken pictures from inside the International Space Station than have dove down and taken photographs of the wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald. Lake bottoms, rivers beds and the ocean floor are truly the final frontiers. If you use scuba gear to take pictures you must be a certified diver (there many levels and types of certification). It is estimated that there are about half a million people in this country who are active scuba divers … a growing number of them own cameras. So, what does one need to know to join the growing rank of Canadians who live to spend time breathing air from an aluminum cylinder? 1. Age. Some scuba training agencies begin teaching students at the age of 10. Last year, Bert Killade, the self-styled “Last Pirate of the Caribbean”, died at the age of 94. Killade claimed to have been the oldest active sport diver. 2. Ability. You should know how to swi...

' Snorkeling is a gentle sport that is safe, fun and healthy. Unlike scuba diving, one doesn’t need a course before getting wet. Snorkeling leaves no carbon footprint, doesn’t harm the underwater environment and requires little gear beyond a mask, a set of fins, and of course the snorkel. Depending on where you are, a wet suit and a weight belt (to neutralize the buoyancy of the suit) should be worn. While there are advantages to taking pictures underwater using scuba gear (you can stay up to 90 minutes underwater to get a good photograph and you can go deep to take pictures), there are many photographers and videographers who prefer snorkeling and free diving. SIDEBAR: FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SNORKELING AND PHOTOGRAPHY Interested in snorkeling? Consider the following: 1. Only David Blaine can stay underwater for more than 15-minutes (and we aren’t sure he didn’t have a secret supply of air). Some free divers can stay underwater for 10-minutes (and reach incrediable d...

- Producer and Musical Director Maribeth Solomon (right) attend opening of Imax Under the Sea at the Ontario Science Centre in April. At the Opening - Story to Follow

. Toronto Dive Industry on the Ropes? First signs that the current recession is taking its toll of Toronto's scuba industry appeared early in 2009 when the classey Toronto dive shop, Waterline, quietly closed its doors. The dive store, located on Avenue Road in the heart of Lawrence Park, one of Toronto's most affluent neighbourhood, has been servicing sport divers since 1992. The shop, established by Wendy Rutherford and her late husband Craig, was a full service store. It offered equipment, repairs, classes and popular dive trips. Waterline was the first shop to use the Internet to effectively communicate with divers throughout the city. Rutherford has always believed in having a close relationship with the dive community. On her website she has long said that the goal of her store was "to provide top-quality merchandise from companies which stand behind their products and value customer satisfaction, and to provide incredible customer service by knowing our products,...

. Early version of a piece written for Sunwings' inflight magazine, summer 2009 edition There is a myth about Canadians that just won’t go away. It says that we are a nation of hewers of wood and drawers of water. Truth is, most Canucks live in urban communities within 150kms of the American border, our trees are for shade and the water comes right out of the tap. A visit to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario (just north of the City of Toronto) shows, however, that the myth has done some good things for the country. The publicly owned gallery is the only major art gallery in the country that solely collects and exhibits Canadian Art, and its most prized works were created by the Group of Seven, painters who painted the myth! In 1920, seven artists – Lawren Harris, J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston, Franklin Carmichael and A.Y. Jackson – decided, for the first time, to exhibit as the Group of Seven. The Group’s first exhib...

. Canadian Star teams sail against the world's best off Miami Beach in March Bermuda's Peter Bromby and veteran Star Class crew Magnus Liljedahl of Miami won the 2009 Bacardi Cup Star Class Regatta Friday March 13th on Biscayne Bay in Miami, Florida. Bromby and Liljedahl sailed to victory on the final race in the six race regatta to finish with a commanding six-point lead over Floridian Mark Mendelblatt, the 2005 Bacardi Cup champion, and crew Bruno Prada (BRA) who finished second overall. The Bacardi Cup Regatta, hosted by the Coral Reef Yacht Club on Miami's Key Biscayne, attracted sailors from around the world. There were 128 sailors in 64 teams representing 15 countries competed in the race. Eight of the competitors were from Canada including four-time Olympian Hans Fogh and the Queen City Yacht Club (Toronto Island) team of Terry Hofkitchner and Jeff Imai. According to Queen City Yacht Club Vice-Commodore and Diver Magazine photographer Pat Whetung, the r...

. Diver Magazine at Volunteer Driven Festival Welland, Ontario Shipwreck Symposium marks its 15th Year - Niagara Diver’s Association For the third year in a row, Diver Magazine will be at the day long Shipwrecks Symposium in Welland, Ontario. The Magazine’s travel editor, Stephen Weir will be at the annual conference to meet subscribers and to take pictures of the popular dive conference for Diver. The Niagara Divers' Association’s 15th Annual Shipwrecks Symposium, "Shipwrecks/2009" will be held Saturday, April 4th at Welland’s Centennial High School. This year the volunteer driven event features nine multimedia presentations given by both world-renowned wreck experts and local divers. Jonathan Moore is one of the headline speakers. Moore is an underwater archaeologist with Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology Service. He will be showing never before seen pictures of the government protected wrecks of Lake Ontario’s Hamilton and Scourge (War of 1812 shipwrecks...

. Granite State Pairs Chocolate and Martinis New New Hampshire Trail is Shaking And Stirring Tourists’ Road Trip Imagination with Chocolate Martini Tour Toronto– In New Hampshire the pairing of martinis and chocolate make for an original, tasty and fantastic getaway. For those who like their vacation shaken but not stirred, the Chocolate and Martini Tour has a licence to thrill. You could spend many nights sampling a delightfully-varied array of crème de cacao and vodka combinations in the great bars of New Hampshire’s Seacoast – from Roosevelt’s at Wentworth (their signature Stoli and Kahlua martini and the molten chocolate cake dripping with Valhrona are out of this world) to the Espresso Hazelnut and the rest of the martini menu at Green Monkey on Pleasant Street in downtown Portsmouth. Just around the corner on State Street, sample exceptional chocolates at Byrne & Carlson, produced in small batches using the finest ingredients. Driving your Aston Martin DBS V12, or hitting t...