“How Hallmark Took Over Cable Television,” a feature in The New Yorker, touches on how most of the channel’s Christmas movies lean on locations across Canada—where they air on the W Network—and provide a creative outlet for filmmakers like YTV veteran Ron Oliver. Despite the red-state standards, we have no option but to deal with their ideal.
Aura can’t hide in Mississauga
The silicone sex-doll brothel claims to be working with the city of Mississauga to get the proper permits to operate at the location where it opened after being blocked from Toronto. For now, Aura Dolls is facing charges for operating without an adult entertainment licence—Mississauga isn’t issuing new ones—and being located in a zone that forbids them to begin with.
Nicole Walker’s drug test got Canada’s show-jumpers expelled from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The national equestrian team member, who blamed the positive results on a cocaine metabolite from drinking coca tea, plans to appeal the suspension. Walker is the daughter of Belinda Stronach, whose family made a lot of news in 2019.
Cryptic crypto death questions
The story of the QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency exchange, whose Halifax-based founder died along with the exchange’s passwords last December, continued all year as investors sought their shares from its bankruptcy. Now, the story is getting wider attention due to the RCMP being asked to exhume Gerald Cotten’s body, if just to prove that he’s dead:
The alt-weekly saviours begin the pivot to weed. Media Central will start integrating CannaCentral.com content with the website of Now Magazine in the wake of claiming that Now’s online traffic reached an all-time high readership this fall. Meanwhile, the end of free StarMetro newspapers has PressReader peddling its app to replace it.
Scenes from a Keanussaince
Keanu Reeves regenerated his career this year, to the degree that a mere promotional photo from Bill & Ted Face the Music generated extensive clickbait action, eight months before its release. There’s actually more interest in his apparent girlfriend, Alexandra Grant, but if reality won’t deliver, the internet can always make something up: