Shas­tri Boodan

Thou­sands packed the streets of Bon Ac­cord and Crown Point on Sat­ur­day for the J'Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tion at To­ba­go's Car­ni­val. The event took the form of a pa­rade that start­ed in the vicin­i­ty of the Bon Ac­cord Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and head­ed straight for Crown Point. There were no judg­ing points.

Of­fi­cials from the Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee were not on hand to move the bands along the street. How­ev­er, the po­lice made sure that the bands kept pace. There was al­so an ab­sence of portable pub­lic toi­lets for mem­bers of the pub­lic to use. Mas­quer­aders, how­ev­er, had the con­ve­nience of us­ing mo­bile toi­lets pro­vid­ed by their bands.

Bands in­clud­ing Fog An­gels, Mon­key Busi­ness, Oil Dev­ils, Dut­ty the World, MIL, Dirty Medics and Break Free par­tic­i­pat­ed. Rev­ellers from Trinidad who made the trip said they were hap­py to en­joy the fete­ing.

Act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent Kirk, who led a large con­tin­gent of po­lice of­fi­cers, said the J'Ou­vert start­ed a lit­tle late and up to 9 am no in­ci­dents had been re­port­ed. "We want this to be the safest part of To­ba­go Car­ni­val," he said.

Media personality Ashleia Baksh, left, and TBC Radio's Slam 100.5 Fm Host Jynnyn Edwards have fun during Tobago Carnival J'Ouvert celebration at Bon Accord and Crown Point yesterday.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, mean­while, said he was elat­ed that tourism stake­hold­ers saw some ben­e­fit from To­ba­go Car­ni­val. Mitchell spoke with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day Night at the Pan and Pow­der event at the Wa­ter­front Old Mil­ford Road, Scar­bor­ough.

He said, "We hope that this can build, and im­prove in years to come. I have not seen so much ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land of To­ba­go for such a long time, and I am ex­treme­ly hap­py. I am hap­py for the tourism prod­uct. I am hap­py for all the tourism stake­hold­ers, this must be an in­cred­i­ble boost for all of them."

Mitchell said that come 2023, the next To­ba­go Car­ni­val should be a sig­nif­i­cant fix­ture on the Car­ni­val cir­cuit.

The event start­ed around 7 pm, two hours af­ter it was ad­ver­tised to start. Pa­trons from Trinidad were con­fused as to what would be the for­mat of the event. The show start­ed with sev­er­al small bands per­form­ing while larg­er bands pa­rad­ed along Mil­ford Road from the west to down­town Scar­bor­ough in the east.

Revellers from the band Outopia enjoy themselves at the Tobago Carnival J'ouvert celebration.

SHASTRI BOODAN