Ottawa, ON (April 20, 2021) – Atlético Ottawa is excited to announce the signing of 27-year-old Canadian and Trinidad and Tobago International Winger, Ryan Telfer.
Telfer played the last two seasons with fellow CPL side York9 FC (now York United FC). He managed ten goals and three assists, including scoring first goal in Canadian Premier League history just three minutes into the first CPL match. He sits second in all-time club appearances (39).Ryan, 27, was born in Mississauga, Ontario and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. He returned to Canada and continued youth soccer with Erin Mills Eagles. He went on to play at York University where he won an Ontario University Athletics (OUA) and Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) championship (now U SPORTS).
Ryan played with League1 Ontario side Vaughan Azzurri in 2016 and in 2017, signed with Toronto FC II (USL Championship) and made 38 appearances scoring one goal and adding one assist.
In 2018, Telfer signed with Toronto FC (MLS) and made 19 appearances across all competitions scoring one goal and adding two assists. Ryan scored his first and only MLS goal, a game winner against Orlando City FC, on May 18th, 2018.
Ryan Telfer is known for his speed down the wing, ability to create chances and eye for goal. Telfer represents Trinidad and Tobago at the international level. He has eight caps since 2019 and has scored four goals.
“Ryan is someone who brings a lot of experience and leadership to our Club. He is one of the top players in the Canadian Premier League. We believe he brings a lot of skill to our team and we will look for him to contribute to achieve our objectives. Telfer encompasses the values of what it means to be a member of the Atleti family,” says Fernando Lopez, Atlético Ottawa, CEO.
“We had an idea of what we were getting when we signed Ryan, but he has exceeded our expectations and impressed with his physical and technical quality. Our fans should look forward to what he brings to our club,” says Mista, Atlético Ottawa, Head Coach.
“I am excited for this new chapter. Joining a new club is not something you can do every year especially one with the history of the Atlético family. I am ready to give the fans in Ottawa everything I have to win,” says Ryan Telfer, Atlético Ottawa, Winger.
Ryan Telfer is the 15th player announced by Atlético Ottawa for the 2021 CPL season. He joins fellow Canadians Zach Verhoven, Jordan Webb, Dylon Powley, Chris Mannella and Keesean Ferdinand as new signings for Atlético Ottawa.
In addition, to already announced domestic re-signings Milovan Kapor, Antoine Coupland, Ben McKendry, Brandon John, Malcolm Shaw, and international players Viti Martinez, Bernardinho, Tevin Shaw and Vashon Neufville.
Source:  Canadian Premier League

When Top Chef Canada reached out to him last year, Jae-Anthony Dougan accepted the reality show’s invitation not just for a shot at culinary glory, but to raise the profile of Black chefs and his ancestral cuisine.
“I felt like Black chefs are not really out there as much as the other cultures of chefs,” Dougan said in a recent interview. “I wanted to change what people know about Caribbean cuisine. I feel like Caribbean cuisine, nobody knows about it.


When the ninth season of the Food Network Canada competition begins on April 19, Dougan will be the only one of its 11 “chef-testants” with operations in Ottawa. The 35-year-old Montreal native splits his time evenly between his hometown and Ottawa, where he runs the Chef Jae-Anthony Pop Up project from a space in the City Centre complex.
The pop-up, which opened in December, serves modern Caribbean fare through the major third-party food delivery services, Thursday through Sunday. In mid-March, Dougan also opened Tropikàl, a restaurant in Montreal, where his young son lives. 
During the early days of the pandemic last year, Dougan was the chef who opened Tingz, a Caribbean restaurant on York Street. Tingz closed in mid-September.
The son of a mother from Barbados and a father from Trinidad, Dougan is self-taught when it comes to cooking. That said, it runs in his family. His father is also a chef and his two grandmothers are cooks who sold food from their homes, he says.
Dougan says that on and off the TV show, he wants to promote the breadth of food from the many countries that make up the Caribbean. “There a lot of ancestry there, a lot of heritage, and lot of culture,” he says.
While Dougan can’t say just how well he did or how far he went on the elimination-based contest, he does say the show’s high-pressure cooking challenges played to one of his strengths.
“I’ve always been someone who goes to the grocery store and picks out something and makes something that’s really dope.,” Dougan says. “I can make a lot of dishes out of nothing. It wasn’t really difficult for me to think quickly.”
The show was filmed in September and October, with its chefs essentially in quarantine and undergoing regular COVID-19 testing, while crew members wore PPE and observed physical distancing, says Eric Abboud, showrunner for Top Chef Canada and executive producer at Insight Productions.
Last fall’s pandemic situation, while not as grave as current conditions in Ontario, “added a layer of anxiety to making the show, that’s for sure,” Abboud says. “Normally, you don’t worry about finishing a series. But of course COVID added to the stakes of that.”


The season reflects the reality of the pandemic as it impacted the restaurant industry, Abboud adds. “We tried to keep the show positive while trying to understand the struggles of chefs. Our show is a competition that features professional chefs, and the professional culinary industry has taken a massive hit, had a massive struggle because of COVID.”
In previous seasons, Top Chef Canada dedicated one episode to a contest called Restaurant Wars, in which teams of chefs open competing restaurants for a night and feed dining rooms filled with customers. This season, the show pivoted to create an episode called Takeout Wars, which nonetheless featured elevated cuisine, Abboud says.
“It’s a really, really cool episode,” he says. “It really embraced how things have changed.”
The show’s judges, including leading Canadian chefs and restaurateurs, also acknowledge the blow the pandemic dealt restaurants. “Whether you’re (celebrity chef) Mark McEwan or Jae-Anthony, it doesn’t matter,” Abboud says. “Everyone had to make a giant pivot and find ways of surviving.”
Dougan says he now has loftier goals, including running a kitchen that raises the bar for Caribbean cuisine that’s lauded by Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants magazine. “Now that I’ve been on Top Chef, I have more to prove, certain accolades that I really want to attain,” Dougan says.
“Top Chef has lit a fire on my ass,” he says.
Source:  Ottawa Citizen, April 16, 2021

THIS country’s first and only aquatic veterinarian, Dr Ayanna Phillips Savage, has received a regional award for her professional contributions.
She said she was honoured and that it was as a result of “years of dedicated, unwavering hard work in a still little recognised field in our region.”
She is a lecturer in marine mammal medicine/aquatic animal health and co-ordinator of the aqua health/aquatic animal health unit and the aquatic animal health diagnostic laboratory at the School of Veterinary Medicine at UWI, St Augustine.
She recently received the Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Excellence Award for science and technology.
In a release, UWI said in her senior year at the institution, she presented an aquatic animal-based research project which earned the highest score in that year group.
But despite this, it said, it was “met with some scepticism as the field of aquatic animal medicine was not yet recognised across the Caribbean."
Now, however, “aquatic animal medicine is well recognised globally, having been introduced to the curricula of several of the top veterinary programmes in North America and Europe.
“The aquatic animal medicine unit seeks to sensitise and educate the Caribbean region about the importance of the health, management and conservation of aquatic ecosystems, and the impact of aquatic ecosystem health on human health.”
The unit has ongoing studies in the areas of diseases of marine and freshwater fish and shellfish, sea turtles and marine mammals and the potential impact of these on public health.
The release said, “Her dedication continues with her work in the rehabilitation of endangered and protected sea turtles.
“Dr Savage is responsible for the work of the TT Marine Mammal Stranding Network, a network of 100-plus volunteers from many varying professional spheres who work together to respond to marine mammal stranding when they occur in TT…(She) described some of her current work as being focused on identifying, documenting and educating on diseases of economic and public health significance in aquatic species across TT.”
Savage said receiving the award was a “tremendous honour” for which she is “immensely grateful.”
The school’s director, Dr Karla Georges, believes the award shows there is a “wealth of talent” at the school and the work it does is relevant and has an impact.
“Our school, though very small, is making a giant contribution to the region, and this recognition by our Caribbean peers is an immense booster for the morale of the school, staff and students, faculty and the UWI family.”
The release said Savage promotes and advocates for her field’s inclusion by means of regulatory guidelines in the local aquaculture business.
It said she intends to continue “promoting aquatic diseases that have economic and/or public health implications in an attempt to safeguard the livelihoods of those who interact with the aquatic ecosystems and championing the cause of Caribbean aquatic ecosystem conservation so that our protected and endangered aquatic wildlife are preserved for generations to come.” Source: Newsday, March 31, 2021