Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

Best Ideas Are Being Thrown At The Wall Big Rig comes in at night on Bloor Street to work on new Mirvish complex photo Herman Silochan By Stephen Weir While you are mixing some outdoor paint, turn on the Calypso music real loud and then throw it against a blank wall. If luck is with you, you might have created Toronto’s next downtown mural, which will make Itah Sadu very very happy. The Caribbean Camera has been following how her  Blackhurst Cultural Centre, formally named A Different Booklist Cultural Centre to lead a project which will create a large outdoor mural devoted to calypso in the City of Toronto.  The proposed outdoor wall mural will be in the new Mirvish Village currently under construction where the iconic Ed’s Warehouse once stood at Bloor and Bathurst St.  Sadu’s bookstore and culture centre is directly across the street from where the mural will be installed. Earlier this week reporter Stephen Weir brought along some photographs of both Toronto...

DWIGHT DRUMMOND moving to  CBC News Network’s Canada Tonight for a year! By STEPHEN WEIR  A Toronto dinner time TV tradition is about to end at least, for the next year. On Monday night, after 10-years on the job, Jamaican Canadian journalist and announcer Dwight Drummond will not be reading the news on CBC Toronto News at Six. Oh no Drummond hasn’t left the building, for the next year he will be the host of CBC News Network’s Canada Tonight. The 8pm news broadcast is seen across Canada on the CBC News Network.  He is temporarily taking over from award winning host Ginella Massa while she on maternity leave. The Caribbean Camera contacted the CBC to find out how the community could continue to get their Dwight Drummond fix on the Canada Tonight news hour. “Canada  Tonight is available weeknights at 8 pm in Canada on CBC's premium 24/7 cable news channel, CBC News Network,” reported the CBC PR department. It is also available “with a premium subscriptio...

Hallelujah. Maybe this time it will happen The Canadian Radio and Television Commission made a decision on Tuesday that allows for a religious broadcasting company to create a radio station specializing in religious music in British Columbia with a transmitter in Saskatoon and here in North Toronto.  “ The Commission approves an application byUnited Christian Broadcasters Media Canada to operate three English-language specialty (religious music) FM radio stations in Kelowna, British Columbia, and its rebroadcasting transmitter in Kamloops, British Columbia; in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and in Scarborough, Ontario” read yesterday’s decision. “The Commission also approved an application filed by International Harvesters for a broadcasting licence to operate an English-language specialty (religious music) FM radio station in Scarborough, Ontario.  The decision might sound familiar.  As the Caribbean Camera reported last summer during the pandemic that the CRTC ...

Hurricane warning at the CP-24 weather map   Say it isn’t so Patricia Jaggernauth. Say it isn’t so.  Toronto’s TV world got a shock last week with the announcement that the community’s favourite weather announcer had just quit, and the details aren’t pretty.  The 40-year-old Caribbean Canadian journalist worked as a weather specialist a  fill-in host of the CP24 morning show.  The Emmy award winner also hosted lifestyle and celebrity talk series, Patricia J Show on  Bell Fibe TV1.  She was also  a staple at the best of the best Caribbean events in the city appearing ob behalf of the station.  With Jamaican and Guyanese parents, she was raised in Scarborough and is Caribbean to the bone. She was a fixture reporting from Caribbean Carnival events including the Grand Parade. Jaggernauth was so much a part of the parade she actually volunteered to put on the feathers and sequins and was the showstopper at a late night costume ...

  Doing a Number on Mister Two and his Three Wishes University of Windsor. 4th year. Creative Writing Assignment - Stephen Weir - story has copyright  I know that I can’t out wish Lucifer, that Old-Scratch. It is well known If one gets three wishes and Number One is to demand three more, punishment is coming Big Time.  Satan style. He is bound by God to make people like me pay for their avarice and sins. Kidnapped. Beaten. Raped. Theft. Soul Destroying. God knows I have done it to more than a few angels in my time. Or maybe he will get all humourous and transfer me into the body of Helen Henny the chicken bassist with  Munch's Make-Believe Band at Chuck E. Cheese's. In between playing that maddening Happy Birthday ditty He will force-feed me day old pineapple pizza until I break down and wish away those extra wishes. It could take decades, but  Mephistopheles  doesn’t care, he revels in timeless torture. Back on Earth I have always done my homework. Be...

  The Art Gallery of Hamilton Is Trini to the Bone  (at least until January)   Between being born in Winnipeg and now living in Hamilton, artist Roger Ferreira, had a long stop in Trinidad where he went to school and learned how to paint. He and his artist son Kareem are now being featured at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and some of  Roger’s water colours are best described in David Rudder terms – these Caribbean themed  canvases are “Trini to the Bone”. Watercolour above Their exhibition,  Gatherings: Roger Ferreira and Kareem-Anthony Ferreira,  opened last week and will hang in the downtown public gallery until January 8 th , 2023.   This major exhibition by Hamilton-based father and son artists Roger Ferreira and Kareem-Anthony Ferreira features over 30 paintings spanning Roger’s 35-year career and highlights the accomplishments of Kareem’s emerging practice.   Roger and his family left Trinidad and Tobago and moved to Hamilton i...

  36 dancers from Africa here to show Toronto the Rite of Spring BY STEPHEN WEIR .   African Dancer Shelly Tetely Ohene-Nyako and 35 other dancers from 14 African countries, is in the middle of an around-the-world tour which brings them all to Toronto this weekend. She told the Caribbean Camera yesterday that European and North American audiences who have already caught their Rite of Spring performance were so amazed seeing so much blackness on stage. The Rite of Spring   will be performed Saturday and Sunday at the Meridan Hall (St Lawrence Theatre) danced by this specially assembled company of dancers. “The choreography is very powerful,” said Ohene-Nyako. “Instead of the body type people are used to seeing in dance – tall thin women - Toronto will be seeing a wide range - we have small girls, tall girls, women with girls’ curves and (buff) men. While the language of this  choreography  is the same as a visceral 1975 version of this historic dance, there is a ...

  Yes it over. The theatre is empty. The screen is black. The annual Caribbean Tales Film Festival (CTFF) has gone dark for the 17 th   time … sort of. Late last week the venerable CTFF announced the winning films in its 2-week downtown Toronto movie fete. And while there were no big surprises in the movies that took top awards (The Caribbean Camera was accurate in our predictions), the CTFF announced that from this week until October 22nd, people can watch virtually all the movies that were screened at the movie marathon.   It is not clear if the 2022 film festival was a success or not – there were certainly excellent films screened and people did come out. But it wasn’t the same festival we have grown to love. After years of showing the film entries at the comfy 400 seat Royal Cinema on College Street,  this year CTFF moved downtown to one of the Carlton Cinema’s smallest and most uncomfortable theatres (150 seats) screens in the building. And while many night...

  Late Breaking Good News For Obsidian   OF THE SEA! OPERA Just as the Caribbean Camera was going to press, the Slaight Family Foundation  announced a $15-million donation to be spread among 22 Canadian theatre companies that continue to be affected by the pandemic. The money  is to be used over the next two years for theatre production and marketing by those receiving this infusion of cash.  One of the theatres that is to receive a portion of Wednesday’s surprise announcement is Toronto’s Obsidian Theatre. Founded in 2008 by the late media mogul and philanthropist John Allan Slaight, the Slaight Family Foundation has donated  given $185 million to a variety of health care and wellness initiatives, not including the latest arts funding. Allan Slaight’s son Gary ,  president and CEO of the Slaight Family Foundation,  and a one-time major investor and part-owner of FLOW radio,  commented, “We’re very happy to support these organizations so they...