Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

A Fete of Epic Proportions – April is full of Energy By Stephen Weir   Centre Stage, EPIC's 2018 Costume Launch April is StretchMas time in Toronto. Stretch (aka Jerrol Augustine) the popular bandleader of EPIC Mas knows how to put on a fete.  And, on April 18th his band is going to show the city just how exciting a costume launch can be. The number one medium sized band in the 2019 Toronto Caribbean Carnival parade is holding an early launch at the large Cinnamon Banquet Hall on McNicoll Avenue in Scarborough. “Our theme for 2020 is ENERGY,” said Augustine when speaking to the Caribbean Camera yesterday. “Energy is one of the pillars of what EPIC Carnival stands for.  E.P.I.C or Energy. Passion. Imagination and Culture. We want our masqueraders to release their energy on the road with us this year!” Model from 2019 launch Epic is one of the first competing bands to hold a costume launch in 2020.  They will have ten sections on stage presenting costumes unde

All-Round Champion Soon To Be All Round The Dial All-Round Champion. The title of Perdita Felicien’s new TVO television series nails it oh so well. The 11-episode, 60-minute series stars the Canadian athlete and ten of North America’s most decorated young athletes who compete in the sort of sports young people love; wakeboarding, gymnastics and skateboarding to name just three. This is not your average sporting saw-off.  The ten athletes – five American and five Canadian – don’t compete in their own sports, they will be competing in each other’s specialties!  By the end of the Season One – there will be a single athlete crowned the All-Round Champion. Perdita Felicien is a two time Olympian and a two time World Champion in the 100m hurdles. One of Canada’s most decorated track and field athletes, she has won two World Championship silver medals, was named Canada’s Athlete of the Year, and was given the keys to the city of Pickering, her hometown. Since retiring fro

Brampton’s getting ready to show Toronto how to Reggae down the road By Stephen Weir Maybe it is time the annual carnival changed its name again.  How about the Toronto and Brampton Caribbean Carnival?  Johanna Grant, a long time Carnival reveller, is starting her own band  - The Freedom Mas Band - and has already organized her camp in Brampton. She has taken a space in the Dixie and Steeles area and has a booked a hall for her early April 5th costume launch.   “ As far as I know we are the first Mas Band from Brampton to participate in the Toronto parade,” she told the Caribbean Camera this week. “ You know Scarborough is getting a little crowded (with camps). Everyone in Brampton and Mississauga loves the idea it saves a lot of driving. And for out-of-towners we are are only 10-minutes from the airport, if they want to pick-up a costume after landing.” For its inaugural year, Freedom Mas, will be a non-competitive band.  That means that Grant is limited to signing u

Kim Nelson – taking names, firing old White men and walking over Indigenous students Review by Stephen Weir   Kim Nelson For white men of a certain age, 2020 is a scary time when teaching an old man new tricks means putting him out to pasture.  In Tarragon Theatre’s new play, This Was the World, Kim Nelson is the young quiet woman who manages to take names, fire a an aging legal superstar and stomp over an indigenous students private affairs. Nelson a relative newcomer to the Toronto theatre scene is the quiet force in this small play about gossip war between Boomer white privilege and her generation’s seething millennial rage. “This play is about how its characters deal with change and loss of status or privilege (or what is sometimes called white fragility),” explains playwright Ellie Moon.  “I believe that it is worth exploring the ordinariness and the consequences of  White fragility.”   This Was the World, Kim Nelson &  Dakota Ray Hebert  The one-act, on

THE MOSQUITO DETERMINED OUR HISTORY Review by Herman Silochan - Toronto Caribbean Independent Newspaper The Mosquito - A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, by Timothy Winegard In the past four decades, history has been forced to be dramatically rewritten, over and over, from ancient times to the here and now. The further opening up of archives in the great libraries, monasteries, museums and government records offices of the world is but one avenue for revision. Significantly though, subjecting specimens, species, animal and plant, even relics, to DNA classification and testing has forced re-interpretation on its head. Forensic anthropology and archeology have come into their own. Those of us who recall our high school history, and later at university, do have a good sense of the sequence of events. But what about the scenes behind the scenes, so to speak? All of us know that Alexander the Great invaded western India through the Indus Valley, and it was drummed i

Opening Saturday at North Toronto’s Meridian Arts Centre Eddie Grant photo of PM Manley Way back in the 70s and 80s a quintet of Caribbean Canadian photojournalists were literarily the Ears, Eyes and Voice of Toronto’s many hard-hitting community newspapers!  Press photographs taken by Jules Elder, Eddie Grant, Diane Liverpool, Al Peabody and Jim Russell are on display beginning Saturday at the Meridian Arts Centre in North Toronto as part of Black History Month celebrations in the city. This free exhibition, presented by TO Live, brings together important historic works by the five “shooters”. Their combined collection of photographs is a rare pictorial record of newspaper stories that covered the evolving history of the community. Ears, Eyes, Voice bring back both good and bad memories from the streets of Toronto. There are pictures of reggae star Peter Tosh at the O’Keefe Centre; Caribana as a giant Blocko on University Avenue, and a large Africa Liberation Day march

SugaCayne Can And They Will Candice and Dwayne Dixon have launched a new competitive Mas Band that is using 21st century cutting edge technology to put a new Wow factor into the costumes their dancers will be wearing down the road. Their name is SugaCayne, and the mas band already has chosen a costume launch location and date, five section leaders and a theme name – Liquid Courage – that comes with a double meaning. “ Liquid Courage brings to mind something you need to give you the courage to do something you might never ever do (like putting on a mas costume and dancing down Lakeshore Blvd in the annual Toronto parade),” explains SugaCayne co-founder Dwayne Dixon. “Taking it a lot deeper, our costumes will, in part, be constructed using 3-D technology making spectacular costumes that you can’t make with just wire and glue. These 3-D created parts start off in a liquid state, and that takes some courage.” SugaCayne Designs has made a name for itself by designing and building