Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

Yes I broke my @#&£§≤#! ankle birdwatching in the rainforest A NOTE ABOUT TOMORROW'S LUNCH Dear John and Alex: Last Saturday got permission to get into the  Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge  on The Big Island of Hawaii. The huge, usually off-limits Hakalau Rain Forest is located on the  windward side of the  Mauna Kea volcanic   mountain between 2,500 and 6,500 feet above sea level. This year the Forest is only open to the general pubic twice (up from once-a-year). Four-wheel drive required. It is down the mountain from  a dozen observatories including the Canada France Hawaii Telescope. Anyway, got to the rainforest early and my wife and I joined a Hawaii University Ecology professor and went into the forest looking for tiny colourful songbirds. The 32,000 acre preserve was established in 1985 to protect endangered birds and native Hawaiian plants. Our mission was to find and photograph 'akepa , the 'akiapola'au, the 'i'wi and th...

 . APRIL 2nd – Big Big Day For Three Canadian Book Prizes Today is an important day for three book prizes – one prize announces its grand winner tonight, while two other prizes announce their shortlists this morning . In Ottawa this evening, the Writer’s Trust will be awarding the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing . The winner will receive $25,000, the runner-ups received $2,,5000. The shortlist has five authors including one who is a past RBC Taylor Prize winner and one a RBC Taylor Prize finalist: • Margaret MacMillan - The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 • RBC CTP winner: Charles Montgomery - Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design • Donald J. Savoie -Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher? How Government Decides and Why • RBC CTP Finalist Graeme Smith -The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan • Paul Wells - The Longer I’m Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006 – This morning the John W. Dafoe...

Weir Facebook Posting: Sad News From Eastern Canada  - Artist Molly Bobak Has Died Canadian Press is reporting the death of East Coast artist, 95-year old, Molly Bobak.  Mrs. Bobak was the first female Canadian war artist and had a long successful career as an artist in New Brunswick.  There were 32 official war artists in World War II and she was the last surviving member of that group .  Born in British Columbia, she made a name for herself in Atlantic Canada. I took the above picture of Molly and her late husband, artist Bruno Bobak, in the Founders'Lounge a few years ago at the McMichael Canadian Gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario.  The couple had travelled to Toronto to see Bruno's exhibition at the McMike.

FIRST COMEDY FOR TORONTO’S FILM AND OPERA DIRECTOR By Stephen Weir  (from Huffington Post ) Photographs by Stephen Weir and George Socka http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-weir/atom-egoyan-opera_b_4674959.html#es_share_ended It is night-time in downtown Toronto. The opera,  Cosi Fan Tutte , has just ended and the subway platform is crowded. Amongst the post show murmur two names are overheard -- Atom Egoyan and Superman. The Canadian director of movies and tonight's opera is juxtaposed with the Man of Steel. “ Egoyan takes a Superman view on facial recognition,” one 20-something woman lectures her group of friends.   “ When Superman puts on glasses everyone thinks he is Clark Kent – they just aren’t able to see the Man of Steel behind those horn rims.” In Egoyan’s COC production of Cosi Fan Tutte, the movie producer turned opera director admits that the big challenge for this Mozart opera buffa is to make the audience forget some of the silli...

Three Major Cultural Events Staged On Just One (Very Cold) Day In Toronto (Culled From Popular Weir Social Media Posts) MORNING, JANUARY 21st. Carlton Theatres, downtown Toronto Fabienne Colas Colas' advice to Toronto? Buy tickets early (like today) Award winning-actress, director, producer and film festival founder Fabienne Colas advises film lovers to buy tickets to her Toronto Black Film Festival as soon as possible.  " Like today! Don't be disappointed, these are great films and will sell out fast" Colas hosted a morning press briefing at the Carlton Cinema to introduce the line up to this year's festival.  33 films from around the world will be shown at the Festival between February 11th and 16th at the downtown Toronto Carlton Cinemas, the TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre and the Al Green Theatre. Keynote films include From Above (starring Danny Glover), Grigris (Chad's choice for the Oscar's Best Foreign Film category) and director Chris Eska...

Originally published in: http:// www.huffingtonpost.ca/../ ../stephen-weir/ sink-captain-johns-create_b _4475196.html Toronto, It's Time to Sink This Ship .... and Captain John doesn't have to go down with Her. Bow of Capt. John's Floating Seafood Restaurant Sometime on my bum-busting boat ride out from Fort Myers, I realized that the city of Toronto could do something special for its diver tourism industry ... sink the Captain John Toronto Harbour Floating Restaurant. I was in Florida last month, on board a small, open boat heading 21/2 hours out into the wilds of the Gulf of Mexico to scuba dive on a failed Florida Keys museum. I like hundreds of thousands of other divers will go just about anywhere to dive on a shipwreck. Thirty miles out and 90 feet down, the USS Mohawk, sunk just a year ago, is now one of the most sought after underwater attractions in Florida waters. And for the last few months she has hosted an underwater art show that is gar...

Harold Levy and John Artis Photo by George Socka TWENTY YEARS OF SAVING THE INNOCENT.  AIDWYC SET TO GO BACK TO THE FUTURE Originally published in Huffington Post.  http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-weir/wrongful-convictions_b_4256461.html#es_share_ended     BY Stephen Weir.      Over the past 20 years, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) have quarterbacked 18 post-conviction exonerations of people convicted of murder here in Canada. As AIDWYC gets set to mark its 20th anniversary, there are appeals before the courts that could cause that successful case count to rise. On Friday morning, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered that Leighton Hay , a Toronto man found guilty of first-degree murder in 2004, will have a new trial. For 12 years Mr. Hay and AIDWYC have been fighting to clear his name and the Supreme Court of Canada's decision is an important step towards establishing his innocence. A...

. Boomer Memories of the Cold War Aerospace Industry as it spins, flies and slips off the Mortal Coil Litton gyro spins in junk store I spent over 15-years working for a company that made very expensive, highly accurate navigation systems for military and commercial aircraft.  Towards the end of the Cold War, Litton Systems Canada modified an aircraft navigation system for the US cruise missile programme. Employment and profits soared - but as with most things Boomer, it all eventually leads to Bust. The cruise missile was the first low cost missile to use a terrain mapping system (think of it as a precursor to Google Maps) that allowed it to fly close to the ground, past mountains and even tall buildings to blow up a target.  The Litton spinning wheel gyroscopes made sure that the missile knew where it was at all times. It was a technology leap forward in modern warfare. Mindful of the "Red" menace, very little news of the Canadian made navigation eq...