Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

. HAS THERE BEEN A COUP IN COLBORNE?  A PUTSCH IN THE APPLE P ATCH ? HAS AMERICA'S MR PEANUT TAKEN A BITE OF CANADA'S BIG APPLE? (popular Facebook posting by Stephen Weir - June 2013)   Peanut Allegeries? No w orries . Mr. Peanut is dead and under glass - cell photo by M. Nenadovich  On our way to Prescott, Ontario on the mighty 401 highway, we stopped off at the Big Apple , near Colborne.  The Big Apple is the world's tallest observation tower (overlooking a freeway) that is shaped like a bright red MacIntosh apple.  The attraction also makes and sells apple pies, has a petting zoo and a miniature golf game.  At one time the concrete apple housed the Peter Puck Collection! (a cheesey hockey museum). The  35ft tall structure is a monument to the local apple industry and was built by Colborne booster George Boycott. But has there been a coup in Eastern Ontario's backyard orchard?  My Northern Spie eye went into full alert mode when we ...

Hawking Meghan Rennie's photographs at Harbourfront's new six-artist year-long outdoor Nine Rivers art installation/exhibition Photographer Meghan Rennie says it took a long-long time to get the perfect picture. Beautiful sky. Calm Lake Ontario waters. A hawk just taking off to hunt overtop of the shores of the Leslie Spit. It took patience. A practised eye and quick finger on the trigger of her old-style analog film camera. Rennie and five other Toronto photographers are featured in a new year-long free outdoor photography show at Harbourfront Centre. The show Nine Rivers City: Toronto's Extraordinary Waterways had its media preview/launch this evening -Thursday June 20th - in the city's newest outdoor park! Photographer Meghan Rennie in front of one of her photographs at Harbourfron The exhibition features 72 large-scale fully winterized photographs that explore the nine rivers that wend their way through the city and down to Lake Ontario. Rennie...

 . IT WASN'T TOO HOT, THE PARADE ROUTE WASN'T TOO LONG AND THE STUDENTS' SPIRITS WER E SOOO HIGH! Students party at York University following the parade (middle) Organizer Itah Sadu (Educational Attainment West) presents awards ! On Friday morning 300 grade 12 students, with the help of the Educational Attainment West group and a number of other associations and institutes, end ed their high school "careers" by walking up the road to York University to begin the next stage of their lives. Graduating students from three Jane/Finch Toronto high schools took part in the first annual Walk of Excellence, with parents and community groups watching on! Teens graduating from C. W. Jeffreys, Westview Centennial and Downsview Secondary Schools took part in a gymnasium ceremony at the C.W. Jeffreys school and then paraded 1km up  Sentinel Road to York. Once at the University, the students were introduced to some of the professors and staff of the...

.  BROCK AND BRONZE IN SAINT CATHARINES, ONTARI O ( http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-weir/danek-mozdzenski-wins-a-m_b_3393809.html ) Sketch of Danek Mozdezenski's proposed Brock sculpture Every winter, w hen the temperature dips below zero, and the snow swirls across the campus of the University of Alberta, someone trudges out into the cold and puts a toque and scarf around Danek Mozdzenski's life-sized statue of Martin Luther.  And on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, new Canadians, fresh from citizenship ceremonies get their pictures taken around Mozdzenski's famous seated statue of Prime Minister  Lester B. Pearson. " Children are often placed on Pearson's raised foot for the picture," said the Edmonton, Alberta sculptor. "So much so that Pearson's shoe is much shinier than the rest (of th e statue)."  In a year's time, students at St Catharine's Brock University are going to have a Mozdzenski of their own.  On Tuesday it w...

. SHARKS HAVE BEEN GETTING A BAD RAP SINCE THE 1800s! (popular Stephen Weir Facebook posting) The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean is a super popular British boy's books that, while written over 150 years ago (1858), is still in print today. The novel written by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne tells the story of how three boys marooned on a South Pacific island, are able to survive off the land, battle sharks, kill wild animals, overcome savage natives and make it back to civilization. This is the book that inspired William Golding's Lord of the Flies . It also inspired generations of fiction readers to keep out of the water for fear being eaten by Mr. Jaws. Ballantyne never traveled to the South Pacific and most likely never  ever saw a Great White Shark, but, it didn't stop him from putting the fear of sharks into young fiction readers around the world. Pictured in an 1890 edition of the book (below), the three boys are fishing from a lo...

.   . AS MAY FADES, SO DOES THE CONTACT FESTIVAL. STILL TIME TO SEE MAGGS, MACLEANS AND SCHOOL EYED KENYA! (Draft article for Huffington Post Blog) Somewhere in the great city of Toronto, there is an art lover who has seen every single Contact Festival picture hung by over 1,500 Canadian and international photographers in 175 venues throughout the city.  But for the rest of us,  it is a challenge to  see at best a few of the exhibitions that make up the  world's largest month long photography festival.  With only a few days left in the At the Design Exchange Big Show, what will you see? May I suggest three -  the late Arnaud Maggs (AGO/Ryerson), Maclean's Face to Face (Gladstone Hotel)  and the intriguing group show - I Am Standing In The Place Where I Live - by four students from Emori Joi High School in Kenya (Design Exchange)! I Am Standing In The Place Where I Live : Christopher Nokes is a well-known figure in Toronto's art...

VIDEO: Stephen Weir interview Atom Egoyan. A short film by George Socka  . Headless in Judeau – Atom Egoyan Dials Back the Kink By Stephen Weir   Curtain Call - Dress Rehearsal For Salome - Canadian Opera Company - Toronto Photo by George Socka Article appeared  first in Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-weir/headless-in-judea-atom-eg_b_3132312.html Atom Egoyan believes it wasn’t adolescent angst that made a young princess demand the head of a   prophet as payment for dirty dancing in front of her stepfather.   No, says the Canadian filmmaker ( Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter , Chloe ) who is back directing the revival of the opera Salome, it is all about voyeurism, frustrated desire, paranoia and the decay of the human soul. The Canadian Opera Company’s 8-performance run of Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss’s Salome, at the Four Seasons Centre For The Performing Arts in Toronto, marks the return of the celebrated Canadian di...

. Curtain Call for the cast of Salome Photograph - George Socka Photographs from the Salome Dress Rehearsal  Toronto Canadian Opera Company Directed by Atom Egoyan . Atom Egoyan - Four Seasons Centre For the Performing Arts. Photograph by Stephen Weir Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils. Salome danced by  Linnea Swan    Space Time Continuum impacts the costumes.  photograph by Stephen Weir Atom Egoyan - Four Seasons Centre For the Performing Arts. Photograph by Stephen Weir Salome Dress Rehearsal Jochanaan ( Martin Gantner) emerges from his cell Photograph Stephen Weir Erika Sunnegardh - Salome with the head of John the Baptist Photograph George Socka Erika Sunnegardh - Salome Photograph George Socka

  Cue the actor. Eric Peterson to receive Order of Canada - Socka You Knew He Was Important Because Of The Size Of The Camera Crew I knew that the film crew of six had to be from the National Film Board . It was 8am on Saturday at the St Lawrence Market, and the crew members were flush with the knowledge of earning time and half pa y.  They were all men. Of course. They were all in the 30s. They all looked like they had worked for the Peace Corp - a few steak dinners ago. Old jeans, but pressed. And of course, the pre-planned 5 o'clock shadow that requires you to shave at 9 oclock the evening before to look like a real player!   Who else but the National Film Board could afford to go this big, this early? Who else could afford a camera man, a sound man, a director, a man with a monitor around his neck (and a cool hood to let him watch the action in the dark), a model release guy and some other man that looked for suckers to fluff up and interview? ...