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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Hundreds turn up to view Canboulay

by

20160205

As gold­en rays of the morn­ing sun streamed through the sky, the re-en­act­ment of the Can­boulay Ri­ots un­fold­ed be­fore ea­ger spec­ta­tors who turned up at Pic­cadil­ly Greens in Port-of-Spain from as ear­ly as 4 am yes­ter­day.

The event, an­nu­al­ly put on by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), her­ald­ed the start of the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed Car­ni­val week­end.

Even be­fore the start, ea­ger adults and chil­dren alike filled the bleach­ers at the venue and then surged to­wards the stage area to get a prop­er view of the per­for­mance.

Hun­dreds, in­clud­ing awe-struck tourists, wit­nessed the re-en­act­ment which de­pict­ed up­roar by the de­scen­dants of freed slaves against at­tempts by the British po­lice to crack down on cer­tain as­pects of Can­boulay.

These de­scen­dants would re-en­act the time when the en­slaved African was roused by the planter to douse the fires in the cane­fields to save the crop: cannes brulees or burn­ing cane.

Chair­man of the NCC, Ken­ny de Sil­va, yes­ter­day hailed the event as a suc­cess, say­ing he was hap­py the show ran smooth­ly.

"Every­thing went well. There were no hic­cups and the turnout was al­so very good. We have a re­served area for pub­lic of­fi­cials and all those tick­ets went from very ear­ly," de Sil­va said.

He said that giv­en the smooth start it was a sig­nal of bet­ter things to come as the reign of the Mer­ry Monarch had fi­nal­ly ar­rived.

De Sil­va al­so thanked the NCC's Re­gion­al Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee chair­man Lennox Tou­s­saint for en­sur­ing the show was well or­gan­ised.

The main fo­cus of the re-en­act­ment was that the rev­ellers band­ed to­geth­er in or­der to have their cel­e­bra­tions.

They were even­tu­al­ly recog­nised and grant­ed two days to keep their Car­ni­val as long as they did not cause any dis­rup­tions.

The slaves' de­scen­dants were por­trayed by in­di­vid­u­als of sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in­clu­sive of Laven­tille and Mal­ick.

Af­ter the re-en­act­ment, stick fight­ers, drum­mers, blue dev­ils, Dame Lor­raines and oth­er tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters took to the stage to per­form, sig­nalling the start of the rev­el­ry which ends at mid­night Tues­day.


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