BY PAUL JUNOR

The captivating and inspiring Carnival Arts costume showcase was held on Friday, April 12^th, 2024, at the Student Learning Centre located at the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). It featured many student designers who were enrolled in the Fashion Arts program at TMU. The promotional material describes it as a showcase of creativity, storytelling, and student-curated costumes taking center stage with SugaCayne’s Innovation in Mas collection.

This is made possible through SugaCayne, which is one of the newest bands in the Toronto Caribbean Carnival launched in 2010. “We are honoured to fulfill our mission to create educational spaces and exhibitions for the carnival curious in collaboration with the TMU School of Fashion’s flagship event Mass Exodus.”

I spoke with bandleader Dwayne Harris of SugaCayne prior to the showcase. He was quite excited to be involved in this launch in partnership with TMU. He told me that he has previously worked with the Toronto Revellers prior to launching his own band with his wife. He is excited about this unique partnership as it serves “To bridge the gap in awareness and knowledge for those who may not be as familiar with the Carnival experience by creating educational spaces and exhibitions.”

The costumes designed by SugaCayne have been featured at different locations in the Greater Toronto Area. They include places such as: Toronto Carnival, Nike, Artwork TO, The Design Exchange, Holt Renfrew, The Bob Marley Experience, and the Royal Ontario Museum as well as other venues in the Greater Toronto Area.

Caron Phinney (Course Instructor) describes details about the Carnival Arts course at the Creative School at TMU. “It brings an innovative and critical learning experience like no other in North America. The course offers a contextual history of carnival and challenges students to upcycle materials and explore digital fabrication.” She describes the significance of the showcase as the catalyst of explorations and discoveries in the future. She notes, “The show is a space for students to express complex human stories through colourful and intricate design work that celebrates not just Caribbean tales, but also encourages students to learn from, explore, and embrace their own cultural background.”

The narrator of the showcase was Henry Gomez (aka King Cosmos). He is well known as a calypsonian in the Greater Toronto Area and regularly performs across Canada. He was introduced as a “Trinidadian and Tobagobian Canadian musician, actor, and educator. He is recognized as one of Canada’s best-known performers of Caribbean music and revered elder in the Caribbean Arts community.” He provided a good overview of the history of the Toronto Caribbean Carnival from its start in 1967 to the present. He outlines many of its features, the importance to Canada, and its future potential.

The names of the scenes that were presented in the showcase are:

• Fantasy & Folklore
• Natural Phenomenon
• Flora & Fauna
• Darkside

The showcase of the visually exciting and spectacularly appealing costumes provides a platform to bring the design process in the classroom. Students who were involved in the production of the Carnival Arts Show were enrolled in the transdisciplinary Live Event Supercourse. They participated directly in an environment that duplicated various aspects of the real-world. There is a collaborative approach with respect to different event production. Students participate in areas such as:

• Management roles
• Broadcast
• Curation
• Installation
• Exhibition Design
• Service Design
• Space Design
• Content Creation
• Technical Direction
• Promotion
• Budgeting

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

It’s disheartening to witness the trajectory of our society. There’s a palpable sense that something isn’t right, that a subtle but insidious indoctrination is taking place, particularly targeting our most vulnerable: the youth. Some believe that our youth are being fed narratives that shape their perceptions, often without them even realizing it.

In the midst of this, stories emerge quietly, slipping under the radar of public awareness. One such instance occurred recently, unbeknownst to many of us. This quiet alteration had far-reaching implications, with the power to shape the minds of future generations in ways we might not fully comprehend until it’s too late.

Last week, I received an email from Gregory Tomchyshyn (CitizenGO) with an update on a story that our esteemed Journalist Michael Thomas, had brought to our attention a few months ago.

In February of this year (2024), Janine Stephanie Penner shared that her son in grade 10 was given a “Gay porn graphic flip book at school as a method of learning how to use condoms and in addition, received 15 condoms and a wooden pecker for practice.”

The book distributed to students is called, “Who’s Got The Condom?” Both the front and back of the book include a sexually graphic image of what looks like an older male laying nude with a condom on, and a younger male, also nude, about to engage in a sex act.

Although the purpose of this book was to serve as a resource for condom education, the majority of the pages are blank of text, directions, or any other information. Instead, the flip book is filled with illustrations that merely depict a sequence of increasing motions in which the younger man masturbates the elder man. It then introduces a condom and flips to show the two male individuals having sex.

The Virden Collegiate Institute’s principal, Mark Keown, has issued an “apologetic” statement regarding the distribution of sex education kits that included: fake genitals, condoms, and pornographic flipbooks by the Sexuality Education Resource Centre (SERC) and Public Health. Principal Keown mentioned SERC was invited into the school to give the students in grades 9 and 10 the presentation.

They also were invited to place up a lunch hour display to distribute these kits to the grade 11 and 12 students, who “were not part of the presentations.”

In his statements to parents, which were also published online, Principal Keown speaks to students being able “To preview or take if they chose to” the pornographic “flip book ‘Who’s Got The Condom?'”

He said that originally, public health nurses who serve the school and community are the ones who have done those presentations. During the pandemic they became too busy with other duties. “That’s when the SERC staff was added in. They became those experts who came in and did the presentations for our students.”

He went on to say of the presenters, “They’re not necessarily certified teachers …as a teacher, we always try to deliver the factual neutral point and allow kids to have perspectives on that.”

This year was different. “I think in this scenario, there were some examples throughout the presentations where there was some personal bias, or personal perspectives that were not necessarily in the [curriculum].”

Principal Keown acknowledged his responsibility as school administrator and expressed concern over the presenter’s decision to make that material available in Virden Collegiate. “I wasn’t aware of that information being made available to our students over the lunch hour, and that’s where the apology letter went out. We should have screened that and been a part of that process, knowing that was information that was going to be made available for our kids.”

Given this backlash, the Fort la Boss Superintendent of Schools instructed all schools under its jurisdiction, including Virden Collegiate Institute, to “Postpone any further presentations by SERC until further notice and a review.”

While this apology and pause is good news, the victory is just one battle won against the much larger war against pornographic materials infiltrating our tax-funded schools. We must remain vigilant to ensure that these types of materials and presentations are no longer allowed to slip into schools under the radar.

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

Throughout history, there have always been individuals who ascend to the higher echelons of cognitive prowess, where our brains undergo profound transformations in the acquisition of knowledge.

Progressing from mere understanding – the ability to interpret, summarize, and infer meaning – they delve into the realm of application, where concepts are wielded in real-world scenarios with astuteness. Advancing further, they embark on the path of analysis, dissecting ideas into their constituent parts and perceiving them through diverse lenses.

Synthesizing follows, as they weave together disparate threads of information to unveil overarching truths and patterns. Then comes evaluation, where judgments are forged through rigorous scrutiny and comparison against established criteria.

Finally, at the pinnacle stands creation, the zenith of Bloom’s Taxonomy, where elements are ingeniously fashioned into novel configurations, marking the culmination of intellectual mastery. In these higher states of cognition, the journey from understanding to creation represents a transcendence, a testament to the boundless potential of the human mind.

We are lucky to have a mind in our community that has reached profound levels of thinking; that individual is Elder Errol Gibbs. I received a thought-provoking Mini Position Paper titled “Unthinkable Thoughts!”

In the paper, he speaks to the fact that every country needs alliances, but they must be as equal partners, not as subordinates to self- appointed “great powers.” “Africa is far superior in its potential than any nation in the world to benefit from the new world—the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) (Industry 4.0), undergirded by AI digital resolution. Africa does not need the IMF, or the World Bank to keep suffocating her growth through a “debt trap,” he shares.

Elder Gibbs mentions that it is not theoretical, but scientific and a practical reality, undergirded by significant data gathering and analysis of Africa’s balance sheet. Africa might be cash-poor, but it is asset-rich. Africa has many advantages that the world seems unaware of. For instance:

Natural resources:                                    

For example, Africa has 40% of the world’s gold and up to 90% of its chromium and platinum. It also has the largest reserves of cobalt, diamonds, platinum, and uranium in the world. Africa holds 65% of the world’s arable land, and 10% of the planet’s internal renewable freshwater source.

Massive land mass:

For example, The African continent has a land area of 30.37 million sq. km (11.7 million sq. mi) — enough to fit the: United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico, and many European nations combined.

Massive youth population:

For example, the youth is Africa’s greatest asset. Africa’s population is projected to more than double to reach 2.5 billion by 2050, representing 25% of the world’s population. Almost one-half of the world’s youth will be from Africa, with a median age of 35.

Massive intellectual student base (national and internationally):

For example, in 2020, France hosted approximately 126,000 African students. China comes in second with roughly 81,500 students, while the United States comes in third with approximately 48,000 African students.

Massive medical practitioners (internationally):                                         

For example, approximately 65,000 African-born physicians and 70,000 African-born professional nurses worked overseas in a developed country in 2000. This represents about one-fifth of African-born physicians worldwide and about one-tenth of professional nurses. The fraction of health professionals abroad varies enormously across African countries, from 1% to over 70% according to the occupation and country.

It is at this point of the paper that Elder Gibbs asks some questions; does the UN Sustainable Development Goals help Africa focus on gaining autonomy in any of these seven sectors? Can they enable Africa to get out of the “debt trap?” Can they help Africa achieve the status of “industrialized nation,” and a “United States of Africa?”

According to Elder Gibbs, “Africa has the means to accomplish these goals as her primary responsibility. Africa needs to craft a unique set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals “apart” from the United Nations: Department of Economic and Social Affairs Sustainable Development Goals. Africa is burning through her: money, talent, and resources in a futile and endless effort of “stop-gap” management instead of building autonomously permanent infrastructure that she can afford.”

“I refer to the cornerstone of the vision for Africa as “Assets versus Liabilities—the Economic Factor: The Rise of Africa?” I prefer to share it with a panel of: African Leaders, academics, and researchers rather than in this paper. It requires a boardroom presentation in an academic setting.”

For my higher-level thinkers, what are your thoughts; do you believe that Africa needs to craft a unique set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals “apart” from the United Nations: Department of Economic and Social Affairs Sustainable Development Goals? If you would like to add to this discussion, feel free to reach out to Elder Gibbs at gibbse143@gmail.com. He will be able to field any questions you have and share the mini position paper with you.