Snapshots (January/February 2008)
Can cricket teach you to read? The saying goes that knowledge is power, but that power is gained through reading. With that in mind, British [...]
View ArticleRemembering Miss Lou
Louise Bennett-Coverly, 7 September, 1919 — 26 July, 2006 Louise Bennett-Coverley (“Miss Lou”), who died in Toronto on 26 July, was one of the most [...]
View ArticleÀ la recherche: Monsieur Toussaint by Edouard Glissant
High in the picturesque mountains of the Jura, not far from France’s border with Switzerland, stands the Fort de Joux. Perched on a vertical crag, [...]
View ArticleAustin Clarke: “I was a necessary nuisance”
The prize has made my life more hectic than I like. It has opened vistas that I never thought could be associated with writing. I am seeing an aspect of life in Toronto that is at a much different...
View ArticleTrinidad’s Stephen Ames: Seeing Green
Chaguaramas Public Golf Course on Trinidad’s north-west peninsula. A still, sultry February afternoon. Vultures wheel lazily under a brooding sky, riding the thermals above the forested hills of Tucker...
View ArticleSandra Dean: Rethinking Education
How does the sheltered daughter of a suburban community in Trinidad come to be one of the most decorated principals in Canada? What is it about Sandra Dean that qualifies her to talk to teaching...
View ArticleThe Bellairs Research Institute: Finding the Answers
It is late at night. Savage waves pound the shoreline of Barbados’s rugged Atlantic coast. Emerging from the turbulence, a l80-pound Hawksbill turtle makes her slow and lumbering biennial trek up the...
View ArticleHot Shoppe in a cold country
Customers tap their feet to David Rudder’s “Trini to the Bone” as they shuffle down the line for their boneless chicken roti at D Hot Shoppe Restaurant in Burlington, Ontario. Come rain or shine,...
View ArticleRhythms International rocks
If you happen to be within easy reach of a computer – and who isn’t, these days? – you might want to call up the following website before reading this column: www.rhythms-international.com. In the...
View Article‘Round breakfast
Think jazz, and your mind conjures up a dark, smoky bar, ‘round midnight. What you probably don’t imagine is a cheery breakfast scene: muffins and fair-trade coffee served amid bright yellow walls....
View ArticleThe hottest cup of tea
In Trinidad, for generations, we have been a nation of tea-drinkers. The British governed the island for over 200 years, until 1962, and one of the things we adopted from them was a passion for tea....
View ArticleIsland girl
You can take the girl out of the island, but maybe it’s true that you can’t take the island out of the girl. Not entirely, anyway. Something, deep down, continues to yearn, across cities and...
View ArticleKobo Town: sing the beloved country
When Drew Gonsalves first started to sing, his mother, apparently, was less than impressed. Tactfully, she offered to pay for voice lessons for her moody teenage son. It may have been her best...
View ArticleSandra Brewster: the shape of a name
“The history of Buenos Aires is written in its telephone directory,” suggested Bruce Chatwin in his book In Patagonia. The insight is true of most places. The phone book’s catalogue of names,...
View ArticleFamily’s fortunes: Aston “Family Man” Barrett
Among the venues the greatest bass guitarist in the history of popular music has played in recent months: Sherpa and Yetis in Breckenbridge, Colorado; the Big Easy Concert House in Boise, Idaho; the...
View ArticleJim Westlake charts new waters
The RBTT and RBC merger The US$2.2 billion takeover of the RBTT Financial Group (RBTT) by Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has redrawn the Caribbean banking map, creating one of the region’s biggest...
View ArticleBrownman blows up a storm
In an intimate jazz bar in mid-town Toronto, a well-fed horn is making some startling statements to a rapt, respectful crowd. Attached to its mouthpiece and blowing up a storm is The Brownman – a tall,...
View ArticleFrank Francis: riding Toronto’s jazz trane
It’s Saturday night and the Trane Studio is packed. A smoking-hot trumpeter sizzles onstage; an appreciative audience sits rapt. Situated miles away from Toronto’s overheated Entertainment District,...
View ArticleAnton Gabriel: the man with the golden boots
Boots on the ground. That’s where it all started for Anton Gabriel. The 63-year-old accountant retired from his corporate job two years ago, and promptly started thinking about what to do next. Trini...
View ArticleToronto: summer in the city
They may not have written any soulful ballads about it (yet) — but Toronto in summer is well worth singing about. For one thing, it’s not cold. As any West Indian who lives year-round in the city will...
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