Caribana Festival (Canada)

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This article is about the music festival held in the city of Toronto. For other Caribana Festivals, see Caribana Festival (disambiguation).
Caribana parade participants, 2006.
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Caribana parade participants, 2006.

Caribana is a festival of Caribbean culture and traditions held each summer in the city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. Annually Caribana draws hundreds of thousands of tourists from around the globe to Toronto's lakeshore. Caribana is a Caribbean Carnival-style event, that has been billed as North America's largest street festival.

The main Caribana events are run by a nonprofit organization named the Caribbean Cultural Committee (CCC). The entire Caribana event, which is one of the first Caribbean Carnivals to be held outside of the region, brings in over 1 million people to the shores of Toronto pumping an estimated $300 million into the local Toronto, Ontario, and Canadian economy.

The festival is highlighted by a massive street parade, with costumed dancers and live Caribbean music, mainly soca, calypso, and steelpan, but you can also find floats which play reggae and salsa. The parade was originally modelled after Trinidad and Tobago's own Carnival and as such has the similar activities and events, such as a King and Queen of the Bands Competition, and a two-day Caribbean art festival on Toronto's Olympic Island, along with many individual music and cultural events.

Caribana has run annually since 1967, and was originally performed as a gift from Canada's West Indian community, as a tribute to Canada's Centennial year. While Caribana runs for two weeks or more, the culmination of Caribana is the final weekend which includes the Parade of Bands. This weekend traditionally coincides with the Ontario statutory holiday Simcoe Day named after John Graves Simcoe who, among other things, abolished slavery in Upper Canada in 1810 (Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863.)

Caribana attracts spectators, celebrities, musicians, and "Mas" players from all over the world including North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and Asia to meet in Toronto from mid-July until the first week of August annually.

[edit] Developments

In early 2006 Toronto municipal government did not renew the funding for the Caribana Cultural Committee (CCC) which has organized the festival in past years citing recurring accounting problems. Instead, the funding was given to the Toronto Mas Band Association which organized the festival in 2002. Due to an ongoing dispute about the ownership of the trademark "Caribana", the 2006 festival is being promoted as "the Toronto Caribbean Carnival (Caribana)." This distinction seems unimportant to most Torontonians, who continue to call the festival simply "Caribana."

In September of 2004, the Consul general of Trinidad and Tobago pledged to work more closely with the city of Toronto to jointly promote Caribana and to provide direct-knowledge on how Toronto can more effectively grow the festival. [1] Trinidad and Tobago holds an annual Carnival of their own from December until Ash Wednesday, on which Caribana was originally based.

Industries and sectors which stand to benefit from more collaboration with Trinidad and Tobago include Toronto's tourism product, the hotels, storeowners, caterers, airlines, transport services and the business community.

[edit] External links

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