The well-attended opening ceremony, held on Monday July 7th at 6pm, was situated in the rotunda amongst the media displays.
Don Wanagas, veteran City Hall columnist, now media guru for hizzoner David Miller, with his worship at the ceremony honouring Toronto’s ethnic media. Eesti Elu was one of the newspapers selected to be displayed in the rotunda of City Hall to mark the event.
Politicians that spoke included Toronto Mayor David Miller (since it is his house) who spoke about his life before politics as a refugee lawyer and the insights he derived about the "ethnic/diverse". Miller was accompanied by his media guru Don Wanagas, who prior to his present responsibility was among other jobs in journalism a superb City Hall columnist for the National Post and NOW weekly as well as a commentator on CBC radio. Alas, Wanagas did not speak to the gathering.
MP Mike Wallace from Burlington represented Prime Minister Stephen Harper with an address to the gathered.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty was represented by Ontario Citizenship Minister the Honourable Michael Chan, who reminded people that he too was foreign born and then gave the statistics that each year Canada receives 250,000 immigrants, 90% of who settle in cities and 60% in Toronto.
Provincial Progressive Conservative Party leader John Tory was joined on stage with PC MPP Peter Shurman - Thornhill (who didn't get to speak, just stand there) and spoke about his experiences with ethnic media through being President of Rogers and producing a series at OMNI-TV.
Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis gave his standard speech on the inequality of ethnic advertising, which deserves repeating. Though Toronto has over half of its population which is foreign born it only receives a mere 5% of the government advertising. Karygiannis has pointed this out to his own party (which ignored his advice) when it was in power so feels he has the right to demand the same from Conservative Prime Minister Harper.
There was also a Conservative Senator, Trevor Eyton (who did not speak to the public).
The diplomats, who were noticed, were the ones from the United States, Japan, and Afghanistan.
The entertainment was from Russia, Afghanistan and a very spirited group of dancers from Greece.
Food and drink rounded out the evening and allowed people to meet fellows of the ethnic media.