Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

What Makes Charles Pachter Tick In A Trumpian World? By Stephen Weir. April 5, Huffington Post Too bad Winston Churchill never met Canadian artist Charlie Pachter. The British WW2 Saviour of the Nation might not have given up on aging liberals so quickly when he reportedly opined that "any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains". If you work in the Canadian Art milieu you have will have met Charlie Pachter and seen his work. His huge  Canadian Flag Paintings , The Queen on a Moose, the Pope nose-to-nose with a Moose, the Canadian Moose on a Hudson Bay bag, Hockey Legends. And, of course, Trudeau - younger and elder please. Charlie Pachter with his Canadian flagpaintings He is one of the most recognized contemporary artists and best selling authors, in part because of his passion to use Canadian icons, symbols and faces in the creation of his quirky masterpieces. He is 74-years ...

RBC Finalist Matti Friedman (Pumpkinflowers) describes his life in the Israeli armed forces as  "beyond the mindset of life in Toronto.” --> review by K.J. Mullins for Weir website Matti Friedman When Matti Friedman moved from Toronto to Israel he thought he had landed on another planet.  He was 17 and he was leaving the world’s most diversity friendly city for a place that  was “so beyond the mindset of life in Toronto.” “I was young enough to roll with the punches,” Friedman said of the move from his safe North York childhood home to the Middle East as we started to talk about the differences between North American and Middle Eastern culture and his current book Pumpkinflowers which has been shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction. “I liked the cultural shock. Israel is chaotic with its Middle Eastern culture.” One of the most jarring differences between Canada and Israel is in the military draft. All yo...

Dr. Marc Raboy Raboy's Marconi memoir nominated for the RBC Taylor Prize Feature by K.J. Mullins for Stephen Weir website The rapid rise and steady growth of inventions and patents from Marconi forged the communication world that we live in today. One of the youngest of the early innovators to use sound waves in order to achieve wireless communication Marconi was just in his early 20s when he first blazed on the scene. Marconi's achievements are a marvel and yet the man himself has always been a mystery. In Marc Raboy's book 'Marconi' each aspect of the man's life is examined. Extremely well written this massive tome brings to life the legend of a great man of his time and shows the reader how his insights of wireless communication came to be. The man that author Marc Raboy started to write about when he started the research for his RBC Taylor Prize shortlisted book Marconi is not the same man at all, he found. “I learnt a tremendous amount about ...

Huffington Post Story by Stephen Weir. December 12, 2016 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-weir/icelandic-reggae-amabadama_b_13533242.html   AmabAdamA  strut their way through the longest night of the year  On December 21 st – Day One of Winter – sunlight in Reykjavik is just a 4 hour 7 minute low-in-the-sky rumour. The dim sol stays lit long enough for Icelanders to shop, grab an espresso, gas the car and suck up what little light the gods offer that day. Busy. Busy. But oh so brief. What do Icelanders do for the other 20 hours of a winter day? For   Gnúsi Yones,  Salka Sól Eyfel and Steinunn Jónsdóttir, the three singing stars of   AmabAdamA   the seemingly never-ending night is time for perfecting the Jamaica strut,   singing and writing reggae music -- all in Icelandic of course!   Next spring when the sun comes back, AmabAdamA will have a new album for their growing world fan base. I celand Crowd Goes Wild When B...