First day of the last month of a plagued year
The storm before whatever’s next
Toronto can boast of completing one level of mass vaccination, but a reopening of the city is expected to be more cautious than other parts of Ontario, where stay-at-home orders are being lifted gradually. Meanwhile, before Canada’s Wonderland has an optimistically planned May reopening, York Region plans to use the theme park as a jabbing drive-thru.
The state of quarantine hotels
With mandatory three-day hotel stays effective February 22, there’s curiosity about what international air arrivers can expect for their $2,000, with hopes for a better experience than reported from existing isolation hotels. “We’re not trying to punish people,” went Justin Trudeau’s justification.
Tim Hortons is here to remind you what kind of year it’s been. Roll Up the Rim to Win is now officially rimless, with an app-based contest where everyone’s a winner—of loyalty points. It was February 2020 when Tims announced a shift away from the paper-based contest. The incoming pandemic resulted in giving up on cups.
The state of RCMP tweets
Social media posts, like the one of a thank-you card written by a jailed woman and another looking for the owner of a lost bag full of cocaine, have recently been great for clickbait involving the Mounties. But the Valentine’s Day advice to “keep your privates private” gave the implication that a specific type of intimacy may be an offence in itself:
Lynn Johnston gets a strip reconsidered. A letter from an 11-year-old to the Toronto Star in reference to a son fearing violence from his father in reruns of For Better or For Worse garnered a promise that the newspaper “intends to address this issue.” But a different letter argued for the pioneering context of the comic in addressing issues still relevant today.
Finally, a last AM radio laugh
Bell Media continued to get roasted on social media over how the company handled hundreds of layoffs, which were followed by radio programming changes. The biggest backlash is aimed at the former TSN Radio in Vancouver, which switched to a national comedy format without Cancon airtime rules, heralded by a tweet that received a razzing:
