Whatever it is, Mr. Obeah crumples under the weight of his elaborate getup, and comes crashing to the ground. As he flaps his fabric extensions against shiny, metal flooring, he looks like a wounded bat. It takes five people to right him, and he is visibly shaken. He finishes what's left of his routine in front of a packed house of thousands, then quickly disappears to nurse a bruised ego.
It was not Mr. Obeah's best night, but his mishap last year only sharpened the sense of competition at the King & Queen Xtravaganza, a showcase event that kicks off the biggest annual celebration of Caribbean culture in North America, running this year July 28-Aug. 1.
Caribana is five days of nonstop partying on the north shore of Lake Ontario -- much of which is better suited to ice hockey and cross-country skiing during winter -- attracting about 1.4 million revelers from all over the continent. It injects as much as $300 million into the local economy.
In addition to the King & Queen Xtravaganza, steel bands and calypso groups compete, and children have a kiddie carnival.
The main event is a parade of masquerade, or ''mas," bands along Lakeshore Boulevard to pounding soca and steel drum rhythms. All of it is fueled by tasty Caribbean food, including jerk chicken, roti (curried meat wrapped inside a pancake), and oxtail with black peas and rice.
With words like obeah, soca (a musical style combining calypso and soul), mas, and roti, Caribana can seem like a confusing mix of language and culture. To residents of the Greater Toronto Area, however, who number 5.7 million, exuberant celebrations of ethnicity, whether Greek, South Asian, or Chinese, are part of what living in Canada's biggest city is all about.
