Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

. Handcuffs led to marriage and a strange encounter with Canada's grand master of photography: Thaddeus Holownia. Why it is worth checking out the Jane Corkin Gallery's launch of a new Thaddeus show this  Saturday in Toronto.  . Huffington Post Blog  by Stephen Weir  Hollownia Flickr photo by Christopher Mackay Back story: It was the fall of 1969. Somehow at the age of 16 I got accepted at the new Windsor University and I left my Renfrew home, pretty well for good.  It was me and a huge number of Americans  avoiding the draft and Vietnam who enrolled in an advanced style of Grade 13 - Windsor's Q-Year. IT was mandatory to live in residence if you made it into Q-year.  Most days were spent in the residence lounge since it was the one room on campus with a working stereo record player. I was listening to Jimi Hendrix for the very first time when a beautiful girl I'd never seen  on campus sat next to me waiting her turn to put on an LP....

From Handcuffs to the Group of Seven  It was the fall of 1969. Somehow I got out of Renfrew alive! University of Windsor. Q-Year with a class full of American draft dodgers. I was in the residence lounge, the one room on campus with a working stereo record player.  I was listening to Led Zep for the very first time.  Beautiful girl who I'd never seen on campus  before was sitting next to me listening to her new LP. Thaddeus Holownia floated in, dressed like Sgt Pepper with the addition of  a turkey feather stock in his hat. He drifted over to us, snapped handcuffs on our wrists and slouched out of the building in his own purple haze! Thaddeus used to do that a lot - walk around in a bit of a haze -- but, this time he did remember to come back and unlock us. We have been together ever since. My wife and I, not Thaddeus. In fact I haven't seen Thaddeus much since then. He moved from Windsor, to Toronto and settled eventually teaching art at Mount Allison Un...

  Toronto Museum Has A Small (but important) Wreck Exhibition 3-D printer was used to make this replica bell.  On display in Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum In 1845 the British Franklin Expedition sailed into Canada’s Northern waters to look for the Northwest Passage. There were 129 men, on two ships – the Erebus and the Terror – in the expedition. Early into their planned 3-year quest both ships and all hands were lost somewhere near the Victoria Straits in the Eastern Arctic. The search for Sir John Franklin, his crew and the two ships, began in 1859 and continues to this day.  Earlier this year a Canadian expedition did locate the shallow wreck of the Erebus. Parks Canada underwater archaeologists – the first to lay eyes on the ship in nearly 170 years – conducted seven dives to the shipwreck over two intensive days of on-site investigation, taking diagnostic measurements, high-resolution photography, and high-definition video. The artifact was ide...

Buy Book Lovers Canada's Best Nonfiction From 2014 (Charles Taylor Prize Longlist Announced!) Originally Posted on Huffington Post: 12/17/2014 5:20 pm EST Updated: 12/18/2014 1:59 pm EST     It is almost Christmas, the stretch run that authors and publishers in Canada live for. As the clock ticks down book buying consumers push some book genre sales an amazing 280 per cent. The industry watchdog Booknet Canada explains the book buying frenzy as consumerism fueled by "desperation dollars." Former Booknet Canada CEO (and now president of Kobo) Michael Tamblyn once described it as the " 'What Do I Buy for Dad? Effect.' All categories see a meteoric rise during the December rush. Book buyers seem to save their trickiest recipients until the end (this week)!" Publishers plan for the Buy For Daddy Effect and release hundreds of n...

Josef Karl Dietrich Josef Karl Dietrich When I worked in the PR department for Litton Systems Canada I often had to take military leaders on plant tours. They wanted to see the company's expertise in making navigation systems for commercial aircraft, war planes and cruise missiles. With a background in Journalism and zero understanding of anything to do with precision engineering, I soon memorized a mostly-true patter that I could deliver while walking backwards down the production lines. Of course, when dealing with people who actually knew something of what they were looking at, I was hopelessly over my head.  No one knew this more than the men and women who spent their working lives at LSL (what we called Litton Systems Canada). Some let me drown, others, like Joe Dietrich always threw me a lifeline - he was always willing to address our guests and explain in detail while Litton was the best. He did in English or in German  and he was always the hit of the tou...

. BIG NAMES. SRO EVENT. SPONSORED BY RBC TAYLOR PRIZE RBC Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction Spotlight: We Were Here First   with  Thomas King ,  Lee Maracle ,  Samual Watson  and  Waubgeshig Rice . "We weren't concerned because we never thought you (white people) would stay ..." laughed  First Nation's author Lee Maracle at  last night's RBC Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction Spotlight: We Were Here First.  Well-known CBC Host (not that one - it was CBC videographer Waubgeshig Rice) had asked Maracle and three other celebrated indigenous writers from Canada and Australia to comment on the evening's theme  - We Were Here First. The Friday evening book event was an integral part of the closing weekend of Harbourfront's International Festival of Authors.  The festival, now in its 35th year, brings the world's biggest names in literature to a number of Harbourfront stages  along Toronto's waterfront. The ...

It has been a good year for the Massey Murder (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-weir/charlotte-grays-true-toro_b_6004036.html#es_share_ended) Ottawa author Charlotte Gray   is the winner of the 2014 Toronto Book Award for her non-fiction book,   The Massey Murder: A Maid, Her Master and the Trial that Shocked a Country.  She is 40th author to capture Toronto's annual literature prize.  Gray $10,000 win was announced at last night's award ceremony, held at the downtown Toronto Reference Library.  "I offer my warm congratulations to  Charlotte Gray , who has drawn an unforgettable portrait of   Toronto's   social life at the beginning of the 20 th   century," said Acting City Librarian   Anne Bailey . "In telling the true story of   Carrie Davies , the maid who shot a  (famed)  Massey ,   Charlotte Gray   captures the class conflict and societal upheaval that marked our city's reinvention of itself at t...

A Prize Week For Authors In Canada By Stephen Weir  Published September 17, 2014 Huffington Post Story Yesterday it was the Giller. This morning it was the Griffin and the Weston Prizes and this weekend Word On The Street. This week is the busiest time of the year for authors, readers and the nation's book industry. On Tuesday it was the  Scotiabank Giller Prize  announcing their longlist of a dozen authors for the 2014 Canadian Fiction Prize. The Giller also dropped a bomb - they aare doubling the prize purse given to the winning author - first prize is now $100,000. Runner-ups will receive $10,000 each. The Giller is Canada's most prestigious fiction prize, and, with the new $10,000 award, it is now also one of the world's largest English language prizes. Usually the Giller announces here Toronto, but this year's shocker was made at McGill University's Moyse Hall Theatre  in Montreal. The award will be presented on November 10 and will be broad...