Aug 05, 2007
Tamara Cherry
Ashifa Kassam
Staff Reporters

If ever there were a definition for eye candy, surely it would be yesterday's Caribana parade, where millions of sequins dancing along Toronto's waterfront were outshone only by thousands of young women in dazzling bikinis, shaking what their mothers gave them.

Booty shorts pulsated with Calypso beats pumping through speakers on flatbed trucks, creating an electric mood for Caribana's 40th anniversary parade.

And ...

... while some in the audience imitated as best they could, others just enjoyed their share of the day's goodies.

"The parade, the party, the streets, the excitement – a hodgepodge of everything" is what brought Tracey Powell and three girlfriends from Columbus, Ohio, for Powell's eighth Caribana in a row.

Covered in sparkles and grasping the chain-link fence separating her from a sweaty, topless male spectator, she added, "And, of course, the men. It's eye candy."

It didn't seem to matter that the parade was running on "island time," starting nearly two hours late and leaving 15-minute gaps between some floats. When there wasn't entertainment on the street, it was in the crowd.

Organizers estimate that up to 1 million partiers were stretched out along the parade's nearly 4-kilometre-long route.

Premier Dalton McGuinty and a "raising the roof" Mayor David Miller kicked off the parade, sitting on convertibles with leis around their necks.

"It's so political," said Ellen Moore of Kingston, Ont., as the politicians passed by. "That's very nice, but it's not Carnival." Moore was itching for a taste of her Trinidadian culture. And when it finally came, it came big.

As a man with a gold-painted head on the "North America's Hottest Tassa Group" float banged his drum, the Trinidadian community responded with pride, waving red, black and white flags wildly as they danced along.

It was the perfect market for David Spencer. Waving three giant Haitian, Guyanese and Trinidadian flags, he attracted hordes of tourists to his booth to buy colourful flags and bracelets. "It's a beautiful day for selling," said Spencer.

Traditional Caribbean foods lined the bike path next to Lake Shore Blvd., with jerk shops set up every few feet and the smell of butter from corn-on-the-cob stands filling the air.

Young men with coolers of bottled water made their sales pitch to every passersby. If the potential customer already had some, they'd ask: "But is it cold water?"

Despite the blistering sun, the lineups were for hot food, not ice cream, with waits for beef patties in exceeding 20 minutes.

Tens of thousands of revellers flocked to town from the U.S. and beyond to catch the parade, which saw an estimated 25,000 dancers whistle and cheer their way along Lake Shore Blvd.

Two dancers from the Carnival Nationz Band took a quick break from dancing alongside their float and joined the audience, standing out in their sequined and beaded outfits.

"They don't supply us with dessert," joked Suzette Gillespie as she savoured her ice cream cone.

As the sun sparkled off her shiny gold and brown costume, she proclaimed this year's Caribana to be "excellent, as usual."

Her friend Tracie Leewah agreed: "Great music, great weather, plenty of people."

During a break in the parade, one woman sitting on the ground shimmied her shoulders and rattled the fence with her hands, screaming, "Shake that booty! Shake that booty!" to a pair of male police officers walking along the street.

They didn't comply.

While most danced along when the music swept by, the noise was too much for one elderly man, who made his way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd with his hands clasped tightly over his ears.

He was the exception. "You come down here and you can feel the love. Look at everybody – everyone is dancing and having a good time," said Tashique Lorrington, sitting with two girlfriends from the action.

"It's all about the vibes."

By the end of the parade, floats were barely inching along, as people on the sidelines moved the fences aside and filled the parade route, most clad in colourful beads that had been thrown to the crowd.

One MC on a float from a local restaurant and nightclub begged the crowd to let the floats pass through the throngs of people.

"People paid a lot of money to be here – please let the masquerades (floats) through," he urged. They parted and the final floats made it through successfully.

And even with 12 "humongous" floats snaking their way along the route and a massive crowd, Toronto police Const. Art Wright said last night everything was running smoothly and that no major incidents were reported.

In the evening, the party shifted to the area around Lamport Stadium on King St. W. Traffic was at a standstill and revellers drifted between the cars, Jamaican flags tied on like capes.

When asked if he was having a good time, Vaughn Graham, 51, of Brooklyn, N.Y., said, "Mos def, this is my culture. This is how we live. All the nice food, all our music, this is our culture, Trinidad."

He added, "Even white people from Toronto be jumping."

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