A long weekend 12:36 to end a long week with
A long weekend 12:36 to end a long week with
Stuff to discuss on Valentine’s Night
Anne Kingston is remembered by Kenneth Whyte, her boss at the National Post and Maclean’s, where she covered a plethora of social topics after starting out as a business writer. Recently, she taught a University of Toronto course on #MeToo and the media. (Kingston died in the same cancer centre, on the same day, as Christie Blatchford.)
Cops caught with new drug
Toronto police chief Mark Saunders ordered his force to stop using Clearview AI, the facial recognition technology unmasked in a New York Times investigation in January. Some officers had been using the technology, despite a prior claim that the force wasn’t.
Huawei has found a friend in Telus. The plan will give the Chinese company access to part of at least one Canadian network when its 5G goes live. Telus’s confirmation of its rollout coincides with new U.S. charges that Huawei stole trade secrets, while concerns over its limited U.K. approval led the Chinese ambassador to label it all a “witch hunt.”
Baird is totally out now
Citing his commitment to an “equally rewarding career in the private sector,” a week of serious speculation that John Baird could save a lukewarm Conservative leadership race crashed with a Twitter statement, leaving others to run without him. So, after Peter MacKay tried CBC comedy, Erin O’Toole is advocating for its demise:
Via Rail basically took the rest of the week off. Protests in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs opposed to the Coastal GasLink pipeline has put nearly all passenger train travel on hold, despite a court injunction via CN Rail. Justin Trudeau is urging a resolution, while the PM himself shuttles from Senegal to Munich.
The play that was a thing
After attention to Toronto theatre artist Yolanda Bonnell explaining how she would only invite critics who were Indigenous, black or people of colour to review Bug, the Globe and Mail ran a kind of counterpoint by Drew Haden Taylor: “The intersection of political correctness and Indigenous theatre.” Bonnell also earned one enthusiastic review:
Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper’s first Friday without an original movie review. Peter Howell taking a buyout from the last staff critic position at the Toronto Star is reflected in the latest big-screen releases being covered by exclusively American writers, as the print edition no longer frames a weekly section for movies.
Finally, a host of “pamper parties”
Peter Nygard is denying all the allegations made in a civil class-action lawsuit, which accuses the Winnipeg fashion mogul of raping 10 women at his seaside mansion in the Bahamas. The claims follow two suits filed against him, alleging other misconduct. Nygard is also currently avoiding Bahamian jail time for environmental degradation:
