Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

--> Carnival season in Toronto begins with Venom More fashion show than a costume launch, the 2018 carnival season kicked off on Saturday night with a big bite of   snake venom. The Venom Carnival mas band staged the first costume launch   of the 2018   season and attracted over 1,000 paying customers, most of whom were there for the entertainment of seeing what will be worn on the parade route this summer! “ Last year we held our first launch at a club that had a capacity of 750, which we maxed out by the time the show started,” said Aneil Persad , Managing Director at  Venom Carnival INC “ This year we moved to a bigger hall (Chandni Grand in Scarborough), and by the time the music started we had over 1,000 people inside.” Venom is a new band – this is year number two – and the colourful section costumes (the theme this year is Inked) and youthful design has attracted first time carnival goers to their launch in huge numbers. “ Yes, a lot of the peo

ACTIVE, INCLUDED AND SUCCESSFUL   By Stephen Weir for the Caribbean Camera Next Saturday night the Black on Bay Ball will be held at the Arcadian Court as the Canadian Association of Urban Financial Professionals (CAUFP) celebrates 20 years of championing Black excellence in Toronto. The CAUFP is a member-based resource organization that provides a link between corporations and the black communities through education, information, and programs to facilitate economic empowerment. For the past 20 years, CAUFP has established itself as a catalyst for excellence and for the advancement of Black leaders in the Canadian financial services industry. “We believe that there should be No Boundaries set for what we should strive to achieve professionally and for the community, or where we can go to achieve success,” said Abdul-Aziz Garuba, the president of CAUFP and Senior Manager, Finance at Royal Bank of Canada. “ The Saturday night ball is an evening of affirmation that our

It is Costume Launch Season GO BIG AND GO HOME WITH BIG COSTUME By Stephen Weir for Caribbean Camera For the next six weeks, followers of carnival in Toronto are going to be staying up late, hear ear blasting new road songs and getting dazzled by the latest masquerade fashion statements. The Mas Camp Costume Launch season begins this Saturday night when Venom Mas unveils all the costumes that their camp members will be wearing on the street this summer for the 51st Toronto Caribbean Carnival parade. The Canadian Mas camps design and build themed costumes that will be worn in the parade here in Toronto and at carnivals around the world. The costume launches give people the first chance to see and buy costumes. This year the Mas camps are saying that Toronto’s interest in the 2018 launches is “intense” and “almost boiling over” - more people want to participate in the Toronto parade than ever before.” “ I think it is an issue of safety – Toronto’s parade continues to

LIFE ON THE GROUND FLOOR Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine. Review by Herman Silochan A philosophical treatise, a family story about a grandfather with virtues and values, our human globe that connects through pain, hope and loss, medicine is part economics, part politics, fashionable healing fads, pharmaceuticals call the shots, but in the end, a simple aspirin- a hundred year old medication - still goes a long way in a very, very complex world of futuristic monitoring bedside machines. In the emergency room, you do not vacillate, putting off decisions, you decide now, it creates a work flow among subordinates; to delay is to create chaos, you cannot have chaos in triage at admittance, there are a hundred sufferers waiting in line, no, they are depending on you, they have surrendered their lives for this diagnostic moment, they have transferred trust. In pain there is equality, the mighty and the lowly are in this together. Doctors and nurses know this; th