A shot in the arm to begin the end of it
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The first doses of COVID-19 vaccine came in for a landing, with plans to send them to long-term care residents and staff in Montreal and Quebec City and health care workers in Toronto and Ottawa. Manitoba’s more open process for immunization appointments brought a flood of calls, while Ontario has a three-stage rollout plan.
The new island of misfit toys
Whole Foods locations replacing their self-serve food bar with toys and food filling some home decor space at a Bowring store got noticed for circumventing the Ontario lockdown laws—but Canadian Appliance Source lost its court challenge to reopen. Toronto police also laid charges on Queen West after crashing a party at Bar Karma.
The purging of unverified content on Pornhub. A sudden policy change resulted in 8.8 million user-generated videos wiped from the Montreal website, according to its own statistics, leaving it with 4.7 million uploads that passed verification standards. Credit card companies quit Pornhub after attention to it picked up steam in Ottawa.
It’s time to let a ho be a hello
Quebec government censure of businesses greeting people with “Bonjour/Hi!” scaled up to the stuff of Saturday Night Live, but the comedy opportunities continue. The suggestion that Montreal store clerks now adopt “Bonjour/Ho!” was evidently genuine, even if it comes at a time when holiday browsing has been forced into submission:
“Bob McCown determined to move on from Rogers and put Toronto ‘on the map.’” A profile in the Globe and Mail outlines how the former Prime Time Sports host is seeking to reset his life and career at age 68. And while McCown’s ex-employer sees the future in sports betting, the latest Rogers veteran to be shown the door is Citytv’s Pam Seatle.
Finally, your menorah of Cancon
The Hanukkah Sessions! is a cover version project by Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin, which kicked off with an obligatory Beastie Boys track. But it then took a very Canadian turn: “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain (which had a Montreal co-writer in drummer Corky Laing) and Drake’s “Hotline Bling” prior to calling Peaches for a profane fourth:
