Caribana Festival Photo Tour, Toronto Canada
Also see: Toronto Architecture | Toronto Neighborhoods | Castle Loma | Toronto Night | Niagara Falls All images by Mark File. Please do not copy without permission.
(2008) I was truly one in a million at Caribana Festival in Toronto, Canada. Caribana is a festival of Caribbean culture and traditions held each summer. It is billed as North America's largest street festival, attracting a million visitors this year for the festival's final parade, an incredible display of colour and pageantry, commencing at Exhibition Place and proceeding west along Lake Shore Boulevard. The parade inches along in the crowds and lasts most of the day. Thousands of brilliantly costumed masqueraders and dozens of trucks carrying live soca, calypso, steel pan, reggae and salsa artists jam the 1.5 km parade route all day.
More info: The Caribana Festival is an exciting two-week cultural explosion of Caribbean music, cuisine, revelry as well as visual and performing arts. In its 40th year it has become a major international event and the largest cultural festival of its kind in North America. As Carnival 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, Hip Hop, Chutney, Steel Pan and Brass Bands. This colourful exhibition and display of genius is truly a musical panorama that is certain to bring a pleasing smile to the ancestral titans of Pan and Calypso music.   Caribana Festival is an expression of Toronto’s multicultural and multiracial society. An increasing number of attendees and participants come from the US and overseas. The events are planned months in advance. The costumes and mas band displays are elaborate and oh so delicately worn and designed for movement. Move they do, in a breath-taking spectrum of colours that is best refl ected in the King and Queen Showcase on Parade Day. No Caribana Festival is complete without African Drumming along with the Arts and Crafts displays celebrating “Things Caribbean”!   The Caribana Festival season is destined to be six weeks culminating in the pinnacle of Parade Day on the Lakeshore with a kaleidoscope of music, colourful costumes, theatrical mas band displays, steel bands beating intricate orchestrations coupled with mouth watering feasts of Caribbean cuisine and delicacies. Read more about the Caribana Festival on the Festival website.