Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) Carnival in Nelson, BC, Canada ….....with a Twist
Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) Carnival came to Nelson, a small city in Western Canada, in August. But with a unique Nelson innovation.
Nelson is a small city of 11,000 people located on Kootenay Lake in the mountains of southern British Columbia, Canada, many, many miles away from any major urban centre.
Yet in mid August, T&T Carnival came to Nelson.
It featured many of the traditional Carnival costumes.
The music was T&T.
But there was a twist.
The costumes were made of 100% compostable material….. Ferns, cattails, rhubarb leaves, cedar, mud, indigo, wildfire charcoal, bioplastic, paper, burlap, plant-dyed cotton. Ferns became feathers. Cattails and paper became midnight robbers. Rhubarb leaves became bat wings.
It was dubbed Perma Carnival.
an approach to carnival that is rooted in the natural cycles of the Earth: harvesting materials sustainably, creating zero-waste designs, celebrating resilience, and building relationships with the plants and landscapes around us.
It was the inspiration of local artist, Myra Rasmussen, in collaboration with Michael Lee Poy, a Trinidadian teaching at the Ontario Centre for Arts and Design (OCAD) in Toronto, and exploring the possibilities of sustainable design. They met at a Trini mas camp more than 18 years ago.
The Carnival was envisioned as a way to use Carnival traditions of African ritual, music, dance and resistance to connect those who have recently arrived to Nelson, from Trinidad &Tobago, Brazil and other Latin American countries, to the land, and to the Sinixt and others who have inhabited the lands through the ages.
T&T roots run deep, even in places like Nelson.
Some of the Top O’ Tobago family, like Tanya and Orang, played mas. But many more family and friends, like Hugh, who was Top O’ Tobago’s manager from 2002 to 2012, cheered them from the sidewalk.
Hugh is a Carnival enthusiast.
He is on his way from Calgary, Alberta, Canada to the Tobago Carnival in October . Look for him there!
The residents of the City of Nelson had great fun experimenting with biodegradable costume materials.
Can we dare believe that the future of Tobago Carnival is compostable?