The Canadian Ethnic Media Association's 28th annual awards event occurred on Friday, June 23, 2006 at Rogers head office on 333 Bloor Street East, one step away from being a total media gala, everyone in formals, several video cameras manned by persons not in formals with large earphones and microphones in the Velma Rogers Graham Auditorium. The event will be broadcast on OMNI-TV at a later date.
 
Journalists were honoured for their work in varying categories. The ceremony was started by CEMA President Ben Viccari. 
 
In print media Ashoke Dasgupta, a freelance writer was mentioned for his article "Hyphenated Canadians, Mixing Cultures, Blending Identities", and Claire Tsolkas for his work with the Canadian Multicultural Hockey League.
 
Radio Media was represented by Zelda Young, host of "Zelda Show" CHIN Radio and Jali Ojah Maharaj who did a piece on gang crime in the black community.
 
Television's Barbara Jones was honoured for her piece "Fundamental Freedoms", to be shown on OMNI.1 and 2 in seven languages. Sadia Zaman, producer, 360 Degrees, VISION TV received a nod for her work on "CSIS in the Mosque", a revealing expose of government intelligence activities in the Muslim community. She also mentioned that less than 8 % of the Muslim community attends mosque activities yet they receive all of the police/CSIS attention. Zaman said nothing about the 17 young Arabs who were arrested recently.
 
The internet, a new category, was represented by Shahid Shafiq, a webmaster for the Canadian Multicultural Hockey League and Tricia Hylton, Webmaster for Palpitations for her informative opinion piece on AIDS in Canada's Black communities.
 
The 2006 Sierhey Khmara Ziniak award went to Jack Jedwab, founder/editor of Diversity/Diversité, a magazine expressing the Association for Canadian Studies. The award was presented by Madeline Ziniak, Chair of CEMA and Vice President and Station Manager of OMNI TV. 
 
The entertainment was provided in part by a Finnish group called "Nice Trio". As it was they all were indeed "naised" (women). "We picked the name as a double meaning," said Anita Nutikka.              
 
Anyway, we Estonians aren't really ethnics/diverse are we ... no, not us.
 

 

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