Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

FESTIVAL CANCELLED (AGAIN) IMMEDIATE RELEASE TORONTO AFRICAN FILM & MUSIC FESTIVAL EVENT CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE Toronto, August 23, 2013 ATTENTION: MEDIA, SPONSORS, VISITORS & GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS The Toronto African Film & Music Festival which was slated to be held August 30 – September 1, at the Toronto International Centre has been postponed. A new date will be announced shortly. There is one major reason why we are once again postponing the festival. The Federal Government’s Visa services staff are currently on strike and the pending visas for the African performing artists have not been processed as of yet. It has been decided to push back the dates, until the visa’s can be issued for the visiting performers.  This is the third time the event has been postponed and/or moved. Purchased tickets will be refunded over the next few days. For any further Information please contact Paris Rogers TAFMF Festival Director at 647-852-4072 or INFO@torontoafricanfilm...

.  The Award for Innovation in Mas Goes to ‘The Hyper-Physical Being’   Hyper-Physical Being - photo by Anthony Berot   Toronto, ON (August 2, 3013) – With its ambiguous coils unraveling outwards and colourful wings reaching upwards, “The Hyper-Physical Being” is the winner of the Ontario Science Centre’s Award for Innovation in Mas presented last night at the King and Queen Competition at Lamport stadium. The spectacular creation was designed and built by Danzo Balroop and the team at Louis Saldenah’s Mas-K Club. The judging panel was made up of Walter Stoddard and Bernie Hillar of the Ontario Science Centre’s Science Content and Design B ranch, and Dr. Marsha Haynes, Medical Liaison for Merck Canada, who participated in many carnivals in her native Trinidad. “Tremendous research, problem-solving, experimentation and collaboration were clearly displayed at every camp we visited in the days leading up to the competition,” said Walter S...

worker in the shark lagoon - Toronto DIVER MAGAZINE FACTOIDS §       There is a gift shop and food services in the aquarium. They are prepared to accommodate meat eaters and vegetarians §       The Aquarium will be open 365-days-a-year, starting in the early fall of 2013 §       The 96-metre-long (315 foot) moving walkway through an acrylic tunnel – which you will be able to step off and admire the sharks will be, according to Ripley’s, the longest indoor underwater tunnel in North America. §       Ripley’s has two other aquariums – one in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and the other in Gatlinburg, Tenn. §       Robert Ripley was a cartoonist, an adventurer and collector. He was born in 1890 in California and died in 1949.   His Believe It Or Not cartoons continue to be published. Two recent panels show a bull shark fetus with two-heads and a...

  Toronto, Believe It Or Not, You’re Gonna Get An Aquarium. Any Day Now! By Stephen Weir For once, the corporate name really does say it all.   Ripley’s is about to open a new aquarium in Toronto, and given the number of companies that tried and failed, it really is a case of Believe it Or Not!   The Toronto Aquarium - How it Will Look This Fall Construction continues on the Aquarium. The base of the CN Tower in back “Yes we have been working non-stop on this for almost two years, but the project has been a ten year struggle.” said Andy Dehart, the Ripley’s shark expert who is overseeing the daily arrival of live fish at the soon-to-open aquarium.   “Some people thought it would be built in Niagara Falls, with our other properties {the Ripley’s Museum and the Great Wolf Lodge), but here we are at the base of the CN Tower, only a few weeks away from (our debut).” Several companies have been jockeying to build an aquarium in Ca...

 . CTV / CP24: COLOUR OUR   WORLD W ITH CARNIVAL Over 60 mas dancers, pan artistes, make-up people and costume carriers came to Jamaal Magloire's Mas camp to shoot two commercials with CTV/CP24.  The shoot included a lot of paint throwing ( a tradition that is carried on in all Carnival parades), squirting water and having Soca (Soak-A ?) laughs. Hosts Colin D ' Mello and Andria Case were  the only people who managed to leave the Scarborough warehouse (home of Magloire's Toronto Revellers) dry and paint free. The shoot was a lot of fun as these pictures illustrate. What follows are a few photographs from the day long event at the home of the Toronto Revellers on Ellesmere Avenue here in Toronto. PANNING THE PERFORMANCE This is one performance the critics can pan!  AFROPAN - Canada' longest performing steel pan orchestras (they celebrate their 40th anniversary this year) sent five of their musicans to appear on camera in CTV/CP24's up...

. 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...