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Nothing really matters to anyone
After Trudeau video backlash, do world leaders have the right to sing or party? ctvnews.ca/politics/after…
Justin Trudeau singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” in a London hotel lobby the Saturday night leading up to Elizabeth II’s funeral may well have delighted the deceased Queen.
Back at home, a fabricated tweet shared by skater Jamie Salé drew further attention to Trudeau having branded unvaccinated Canadians as extremists.
Pressure to lift COVID-19 border restrictions and mandatory ArriveCan app use is evidently being heeded, but Trudeau will have the final decision.
The city of Toronto pulled a series of videos that promoted vaccination for children as their ticket to freedom, admitting the spots “missed the mark.”
The view from platform shoes
The Halton District School Board will no longer be answering questions about Kayla Lemieux, who’s now the most infamous manufacturing technology teacher in Oakville, Ontario.
The board also attempted to correct the sources that were incorrectly identifying Lemieux as a different teacher who’s “completely unrelated to this matter.”
Dress codes at the school don’t technically prohibit a staff member from sporting overly large prosthetic breasts, but the board is looking into that now.
Oakville Trafalgar High School anticipated a Monday morning protest, but only one person showed up. A more organized attempt is set for Friday.
Rumble leaves Canada behind
Fast-growing video platform Rumble set to go public today rumble.com/v1koih1-fast-g… @MorningsMaria @FoxBusiness
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski drank some rum to mark the video platform he founded in Toronto going public on Nasdaq, after boasting of growth based on belief in free speech.
TikTok and YouTube hope senators will take a sober second look at the details of the Online Streaming Act that was already passed in the House.
Disney has also approached Ottawa to request that Broadcasting Act amendments will allow productions like Turning Red to count as Cancon.
Committee hearings are ahead for the Online News Act, which has independent publishers hoping to be heard, to prevent this from being a windfall for clickbait via legacy players.
Streaming against the current
Corus Entertainment set a date for the Canadian launch of ad-supported streamer Pluto, which will offer endless reruns of The Love Boat, just like Global TV once did.
Postmedia cancelled Monday print editions at nine urban dailies, five years after it happened at the National Post. (The Toronto Sun is still doing six days.)
Now Magazine’s acting editor-in-chief Radheyan Simonpillai quit the job which he wasn’t getting paid for lately, even as the website kept running advertorials.
Zoomer Media made a $16.4 million deal to buy the Vancouver-based publisher of Daily Hive websites—which includes assumption of $2.4 million of debt.
Toronto Mike is making podcasts. Want a podcast? Get in touch with Toronto Mike.
Finally, unbundling album charts
Nav is the Toronto rapper whose initial Billboard chart-topping success came from bundling downloads with merchandise, until the criteria was changed. And yet, he recently scored a No. 2 album without gaming the system, with help from Vancouver riot-inducing Lil Baby—alongside Travis Scott making a comeback after the tragedy at Astroworld:
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Not reporting from her cottage
You don't need a step ladder to feel the deeply respectful silence of the crowd as the Queen's coffin passed by. An extraordinary moment. More later @CityNewsTO
“Special correspondent to CityNews” is the title bestowed upon Lisa LaFlamme for her role of leading coverage of the Queen’s funeral across all platforms controlled by Rogers.
Five years ago, the evening newscasts on Citytv stations across Canada pivoted to an anchorless format, prior to combining radio and TV newsrooms.
CTV News naturally sent LaFlamme’s replacement, Omar Sachedina, to cover the U.K. mourning after his moment of interrupting regular programming.
York Region’s school board sent a memo telling educators that honouring the Queen “could be triggering” to students. Ontario’s government begs to differ.
Shouting out from the scrum
Extremely embarrassing for Global News hack job, David Akin.
Professionalism is out the window when legacy media see’s a candidate who has a good chance at winning against Trudeau.
Heres Akin, exhibiting behaviour with the thought of Poilievre defunding his employer.
Cringe.
David Akin of Global News later apologized for being “rude and disrespectful” to Pierre Poilievre with confrontational questions before a Parliament Hill press conference began.
The new Conservative leader called Akin “a Liberal heckler,” even though the parliamentary correspondent actually used to work for the Sun News Network.
Press secretary Anthony Koch tweeted that Akin told him to tell Poilievre to “go fuck himself” beforehand, upon being told that questions weren’t welcome.
The subsequent fundraising email to Conservatives declared party ambitions to “go around the biased media.” With that comes a comparison to Trump.
Toronto election dos and don’ts
While unveiling his housing platform in front of city hall Wednesday morning, city security asked mayoral candidate Gil Penalosa to leave.
Formal campaign events aren’t permitted at Nathan Phillips Square, which was news to Gil Penalosa, given how John Tory has been making some announcements on city property.
The difference is his team brought a microphone, a speaker and giant letters—which are all prohibited under these circumstances during an election.
Penalosa came to city hall to announce the housing platform part of his long-shot campaign for mayor, up against Tory claiming that he can fix everything.
The failure of Sidewalk’s smart city to conquer Quayside is chronicled in Josh O’Kane’s newly published Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy.
TIFF got twisted before it’s over
THE PEOPLE'S JOKER has played once at TIFF and has been forced to be pulled and have the rest of the screenings cancelled. People should talk about this because the man doesn't want you to see it.
Vera Drew is the filmmaker who withdrew The People’s Joker after one screening at the Toronto International Film festival, evidently due to intellectual property enforcement.
Sarah Polley is basking in accolades for directing an adaptation of the Miriam Toews novel Women Talking, but she’d rather take a hike than watch it again.
Anna Kendrick getting rescured from a stuck elevator drew attention to the fact that more than 1,700 people had a similar experience in Toronto this year.
Zac Efron used TIFF to debut his new chin during his first public appearance in three years. The surgery happened in the aftermath of a running accident.
Finally, at home with Kate Beaton
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is the new graphic memoir from the Nova Scotian artist, who chronicles her relocation to northern Alberta at age 21 to get a job that could pay off her student loans. Kate Beaton first got noticed for webcomics during that period, while her personal perspectives were transformed:
The publishing model has recently shifted, so it’s time to try some different things at 12:36, and there’s already an inaugural sponsor for this idea. Look for these weekly roundups on Thursdays for the next while—plus additional pop-up experiments in your inbox at a familiar minute. Ride along to learn how it turns out! And reply if you’ve got worthwhile thoughts: 1236@1236.ca
Pierre Poilievre’s next opponent
Sources at a closed-door cabinet retreat in Vancouver dispatched the scoop that Justin Trudeau intends to stick around for long enough to get re-elected one more time.
Chrystia Freeland said she has “two busy jobs” when asked about a possible appointment as NATO secretary general, as initially revealed by Paul Wells.
Jean Charest got one last Canadian Press piece concerning his Conservative leadership plans, in the unlikely event that Pierre Poilievre hasn’t won this one.
CTV News commissioned a Nanos Research poll that concluded about 70% of Canadians see a politician’s support of the trucker convoy as a negative.
Municipal election headline quest
MAJOR TORONTO CITY COUNCIL CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT:
I am advocating for a pedestrian cycling lift bridge to the Toronto Islands! All Torontonians deserve to access our ward’s largest public park for free.
It's practical. It's possible. It's a priority.
1/5
#TOpoli #ONpoli
A candidate in the Spadina-Fort York riding did her best with the idea that locals would venture east in order to access a bridge to Toronto Islands, rather than taking a nearby boat.
Mayoral candidate Gil Penalosa is lamenting plastic bottles of Gatorade when he prefers the powder in a can, which he uses as fluid for walking.
There’s now more attention being paid to top Conservative strategists backing Nikki Kaur’s effort to unseat Patrick Brown as the mayor of Brampton.
But the most discussed candidate has been Ottawa school board aspirant Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth, who wore a mask for a remote argument on The Agenda.
No greying hair from this guy
.@omarsachedina speaks to Canadians on his first night as Chief News Anchor and Senior Editor of CTV National News.
The first night on the job for Omar Sachedina included the CTV News anchor reading a statement that acknowledged his predecessor opting to not say goodbye on the air there.
A petition to reinstate Lisa LaFlamme hit 200,000 signatures, which is two-thirds of the way to the organizer’s goal of hitting the homepage of Change.org.
Wendy Mesley says it’s too easy to blame sexism for what happened here, even if the narrative swung to the perception that it was about grey hair.
Grey hair was a useful focus for marketing campaigns that seized upon a story from the Globe and Mail, but LaFlamme herself never mentioned it.
Worse than a broken escalator
Hell hath no fury like journalists and critics frustrated by the ticket process at the Toronto International Film Festival, which eventually developed a solution to assist them.
A few TIFF titles won’t screen at the Scotiabank Theatre because Cineplex is still fighting with Netflix over a refusal to have theatrical windows.
Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans is among the big premieres, but the press conferences at TIFF now sound like extremely scripted affairs.
“When a Globe and Mail film critic goes on the other side of the camera” is a personal essay by Chandler Levack ahead of the premiere of I Like Movies.
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Finally, a miracle with Al Waxman
Will Sloan asked Twitter to help identify the cartoon playing on TV in a photo taken 30 years ago in Southwestern Ontario. The second stab at this search culminated in a piece for The New Yorker after a Canadian answer was found: The Soulmates: The Gift of Light was a 1991 production featuring the voices of Al Waxman and Sheila McCarthy:
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