Barbadians living abroad can use this space to share experiences, search for news about what is happening on the Rock.
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2,162 responses to “Diaspora Corner”
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Found the timing of this interesting
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6186673 -
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So good I thought I should share.
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Still got it.
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Awesome…..Looks and singing.
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Brilliant.
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Another story breaking about how rich people hide their money, first there was The Panama Papers, now there is The Pandora Papers
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Frank Baylis is the son of a Barbadian immigrant who won a landmark discrimination case in Quebec in the 1960s. He has also made movies, and served as a member of Parliament.
Now, he’s one of Canada’s wealthiest people, because the company he helped build for 30-plus years, Baylis Medical Company Inc., has agreed to sell its cardiovascular medical devices business to Boston Scientific Corp. for US$1.75-billion
Article is behind a paywall so access is limited
Full credit should be given to his mother who started the business
Baylis Medical was founded by Mr. Baylis’s mother, Gloria Baylis, in 1986, as an importer and distributor of medical devices. It was a second career for Ms. Baylis, who had emigrated from Barbados to Montreal in the early 1950s and worked as a nurse.
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The topic came up on another blog and I couldn’t resist
Before there was James Brown, there was Joe Tex
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Great combination. Roberta and Luther
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Epstein claims another victim
Barclays CEO exits -
OTTAWA – Monday’s reopening of the Canada-U.S. land border is sparking a mixed reaction among Canadian business leaders: They’re excited that people and not just goods will be crossing the border again but are wary of remaining red tape.
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dreaming of 2022
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Awesome Bajan band.
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World class singer. Sweeeet !
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Prime Minister Mottley invites Bajans in the diaspora to come home.
https://www.nationnews.com/2021/11/25/mottley-invites-bajans-diaspora-come-home/
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De PM soun too sweet.
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As we become a Republic
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The Barbados Police Band is really good.
Compliments to the NCF for producing these concerts.
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BRA working with Canada Revenue Agency to improve tax administration
https://www.nationnews.com/2021/12/06/bra-working-canada-revenue-agency-improve-tax-administration/
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I is a CanBajan na I din even know bout dis till today.
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Diaspora backs RiRi
by TONY BEST THE BAJAN DIASPORA in North America has come out in full support of the designation of The Right Excellent Robyn Rihanna Fenty as a National Hero of Barbados.
Almost to a man and a woman, Barbadians in the United States and Canada who were interviewed by the MIDWEEK NATION
from their homes or offices in New York, Toronto, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, Montreal, Florida and New Jersey said they supported the unexpected move to designate the triple Grammy Award
winning music icon, businesswoman and philanthropist a National Hero of Barbados.
They responded that way whether they were church leaders, court officials, professionals in medicine or law, university academics or retirees.
The Bajans based their reactions on what they described as Rihanna’s unfailing commitment to promote her birthplace as an international cultural and business centre; her philanthropic impulses that were manifested in the fields of health care and education, not simply in Barbados but in Africa and the US; and on her “social conscience” which was widely recognised.
“I can live (happily) with her designation as a National Hero of our country because of what she has done for Barbados and for her positive image, especially among young people in almost every corner of the globe,” said Charles Small, a top administrator of New York State civil court system in Brooklyn.
“At first, I would have preferred if she had been given another top honour because of her age. But now that she has been made a National Hero, I accept it with pride. Let’s celebrate it.”
Derrice Deane, a key Caribbean broadcaster in a Maryland suburb just outside of Washington D.C., said she had initially opposed the designation but changed her mind after reassessing Rihanna’s “tremendous contribution” to Barbados in areas of health, education, the youth and global marketing, plus her “savvy” as a businesswoman.
“I have turned around my feelings and assessments of her. I enthusiastically endorse her elevation to the status of a National Hero,” added Deane.
“Her work and contributions to Barbados have been phenomenal. She has made Barbados much better known as a desired place in which to do business and live,” insisted the broadcaster.
“ Rihanna has honed her craft as a business person. Indeed she is a much better businesswoman than she is an excellent singer,” said Deane.
“She has taken her outstanding attributes to the next level, so much so that she is a role model for young people everywhere. Many of them look to her, believing that if she can do it they can too. Her designation as a National Hero is not only deserved but is a source of pride for so many of us. ”
Volunteer
Dr Grant Morris, a prominent Caribbean philanthropist and volunteer in Canada’s best known metropolitan centre of Toronto, agreed.
“She is a good business person, a billionaire, a music icon and has everything going for her,” said Morris, a successful urban planner who has raised more than CAN$1 million (BDS$1.6 million) for scholarships awarded to poor Bajan and Caribbean students.
“She is not only interested in Barbados. She has an interest in people around the world. We should be proud of her. I feel very strongly about this move to honour Rihanna. It was the right thing to do and I applaud Barbados for taking that step when it did. “I am very proud of her as a National Hero. Wherever she goes in any part of the world, she lets people know she is from Barbados. Not only that, she cares about her family and about Barbados.”
Reverend Dr Laurel Scott, a theologian and pastor of Wakefield Grace United Methodist Church in the Bronx, was equally effusive in her fulsome praise of the young superstar from Westbury Road.
“She is not only talented as a singer and entertainer but she is a brilliant businesswoman who is known and admired around the world,” said Scott.
“I know that some of her actions at an early age were risqué but I understand she is in a very competitive global business. I applaud her for standing up for many of the decisions she has made in her young and highly successful career.
“This is not an excuse but one has to consider the context and the competitive age in which Rihanna lives,” added Scott, who has led congregations in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York in the past dozen years. “It is the age we are living in.”
Like Scott, Dr Louis Browne, a retired university communications professor in Texas, focused attention on the “age” in which Rihanna functioned, contending she was a product of that environment and should be judged that way.Source: Nation
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Wish I was there.
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Nadia Batson & SASS ( all female band ) sweeeeeet.
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The stinging continues
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A polished diamond
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More sweetness
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Staying in my lane
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All I want for Christmas ( and everyday is ) G G but…lol
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Fish
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@Hants
The OPP is not what it used to be, imagine the Premier can’t get back into his home due to anti vaxxers, however, he is headed to his cottage which is where he wants to be😊
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Despite the title not a traditional Xmas song
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Bahamas – Christmas Highway with rights to Neil Young – Unknown Legend
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Bajan creativity
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An uplifting link, a Bajan doing well in the diaspora.
https://www.facebook.com/kammie.holder/posts/3009512572596705
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NASA is set to launch 1ts 10 billion James Webb satellite on Xmas day, if it survives the myriad things that could go wrong we could (according to NASA) discover things about the formation f the Universe. Past generations of Bajans or maybe this one would call it “flying into God’s face”.
To borrow a line from Star Trek “Boldly Go where no man has gone before”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/interactive/2021/webb-space-telescope-launch/
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Earliest known burial in Africa estimated to be 78,000 years (Kenya)
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Christmas in de park
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good message
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They call me Mr. Tibbs
Farewell Sidney Poitier
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Poitier ‘paved the way’ for black actors
LOS ANGELES – Sidney Poitier, the first black man to win a Best Actor Oscar, has died at 94.
The Hollywood star’s death was confirmed by the office of Fred Mitchell, The Bahamas’ minister of foreign affairs.
Poitier was a trailblazing actor and a respected humanitarian and diplomat. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies Of The Field in 1963.
Celebrity television host Oprah Winfrey said he “had an enormous soul I will forever cherish”.
Born in Miami, Poitier grew up on a tomato farm in The Bahamas and moved to New York at age 16. He signed up for a short stint in the army and did several odd jobs while taking acting lessons, en route to becoming a star of the stage and screen in the 1950s and ’60s.
Poitier broke racial barriers in Hollywood. His appearance in The Defiant Ones in 1958 earned him his first Oscar nomination – in itself a historic achievement for a black man in a lead category at the time.
Five years later he went one better, taking the glory for Lilies Of The Field, in which he played a handyman who helps German nuns to build a chapel in the desert.
Speaking on a live Facebook stream yesterday, Bahamas’ Prime Minister Philip Davis said: “Our whole Bahamas grieves. But even as we mourn, we celebrate the life of a great Bahamian.”
He added: “His strength of character, his willingness to stand up and be counted, and the way he plotted and navigated his life’s journey. The boy who moved from the tomato farm to become a waiter in the United States, a young man who not only taught himself to read and write, but who made the expression of words and thoughts and feelings central to his career.”
The actor was a regular on the big screen at a time of racial segregation in the US, appearing in a Patch Of Blue in 1965, and then In The Heat Of The Night
the year after, followed by
Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, playing a black man with a white fiancée.
In the film In The Heat Of The Night he portrayed Virgil Tibbs, a black police officer confronting racism during a murder investigation.
His other classic films included To Sir With Love, The Blackboard Jungle and A Raisin In The Sun, which he also performed on Broadway.
He went on to direct a raft of films, and a Broadway
play about his life and career was announced last month.
Empire magazine’s Amon Warmann said: “He was a pioneer. He’s so influential and paved the way for so many in the industry to make their own mark, not least Denzel Washington, who paid tribute to him when he won an Oscar.”
Washington, who won an Oscar in 2002 on the same night Poitier won an honorary Oscar, joked as he said: “Forty years I’ve been chasing Sidney and what do they do – they go and give it to him in the same night.”
Warmann added that Poitier “tackled racism head on” in his work but was also “so versatile”.
“He really helped change the game for how black actors were viewed at that time [of his Oscar win]. He was one of the biggest stars during that period.” (BBC) -
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