Caribana Festival performers extend Olympic stay to do it again on Canada AM tomorrow

Performers wrap up their Olympic show on Tuesday afternoon - but more to come tomorrow with CTV's Canada AM.

Eleven performers from Toronto appeared on the Ontario Pavillion stage for the last time today at the Olympics in Vancouver. However, the show is not over just yet! CTV's Canada AM breakfast show has asked the performers to return to the Pavillion on Wednesday February 17th to do it one more time for their television viewers. The Canada AM segment begins tomorrow at 8.30 Pacific Time.
Audiences in Vancouver are experiencing some of the exciting entertainment that make the 3-week Scotiabank Festival Canada’s biggest tourist draw -- next to the Olympics. This year Scotiabank kicks off Tuesday July 13th at the Yonge Dundas Square. The parade will be held along Toronto’s waterfront on July 31st. The festival ends on Sunday August 1st with the DeScotiabank Caribana Lime at Ontario Place.
Even after the Scotiabank Caribana performers have left Vancouver, visitors to the Olympics will see breathtaking images from the annual Toronto festival. Last summer The Canadian Tourism Commission, in association with the Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, sent a film crew right onto the Scotiabank Caribana parade route and shot high definition footage to be used in a video postcard about the Festival.
The Caribana video postcard (one of two dozen made for the Olympics) has been reproduced into four lengths (2.5 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, and 15 seconds), dubbed into several languages, and provided to over 200 official Olympic Games’ broadcasters around the world to be seem by a potential cumulative audience of over 10 billion people.
The Scotiabank Caribana Festival is an exciting three-week cultural explosion of Caribbean music, cuisine, revelry as well as visual and performing arts. Now in its 43rd year, it has become a major international event and the largest cultural festival of its kind in North America. As Scotiabank Caribana is an international cultural phenomenon, the great metropolis of Toronto and its environs will come alive as the city explodes with the pulsating rhythms and melodies of Calypso, Soca, Reggae, Chutney, and Steel Pan music. The Festival Management Committee oversees the running of North America’s largest outdoor festival. www.caribanafestival.com
VANCOUVER TEAM
Ontario Pavilion “CARIBANA”
1. Denise Hererra-Jackson ---- Festival Director
2. Roborta Atkinson ---- Manager
3. Martin Scott-Pascall ---- Artistic Director/Choreographer
4. Tara Eulith Woods ---- Calypsonian
5. Hameed Shaqq ---- Pannist
6. Denise Chang Kit ---- Masquerader/Dancer
7. Lysha DeFreitas ---- Masquerader/Dancer
8. Danielle Edwards ---- Masquerader/Dancer
9. Danielle Ramjattan ---- Masquerader/Dancer
10. Nicki Ramjass ---- Masquerader/Dancer
11. Catrina Ziesman ---- Masquerader/Dancer
12. Sakita Boodhoo ---- Masquerader/Dancer
13. Christiane Tetreault ---- Masquerader/Dancer
Cutline: Derrick Chan www.xpats.ca took the above photographs today at the Ontario Pavillion. Top photo - pannist Hameed Shaqq, second top photo shows the last dance of the performance. The second from bottom photograph shows the 11 performers and Festival director Denise Hererra-Jackson (sitting at left) and show manager Roborta Atkinson (sitting at right) out front of the Pavillion. The last photograph is again showing the last performance in progress.