Hollywood North warms up after six months off
Lights, camera, hand sanitizer, action
Lady Dicks became the first widely sighted shoot of the pandemic era, as the new CBC buddy cop series started filming in Toronto locations. Murdoch Mysteries has restarted on the set, and Netflix dramedy Sex/Life also resumed lensing. Movies with American stars are currently on the fall production slate, including the promise of Man From Toronto.
New lock over the old schools
Ontario teachers’ unions are filing a labour board complaint over the school reopening plan, arguing that it violates the province’s own workplace safety laws. Classes have already started in Quebec, where at least two high schools had an outbreak of COVID-19. Doug Ford says Ontario is ready to act, as early as the first day back, if the province ends up seeing similar outbreaks.
Canada is racking up the vaccine options. The latest deal with Novavax joined the federal contracts for potential doses designed by Pfizer and Moderna, although a domestic partnership with Chinese company CanSino was abandoned due to tensions. Nonetheless, there’s some fear that Canada may be among the last in line for a supply.
PM condemns the beheading
“Actions such as that have no place in a society that abides by the rule of law,” said Justin Trudeau about the destruction of the John A. Macdonald statue in Montreal, as he decried the culture war “on both sides.” But it’s unclear if the city will restore the monument. Meanwhile, its iteration in Toronto has been living in a box ever since it was splattered with paint in mid-July:
Facebook is threatening to block news content in Australia. The face-off surrounds the drafting of legislation to force digital giants to pay for the content being linked to. Winnipeg Free Press publisher Bob Cox has led the lobbying for Canada to follow suit, but his newspaper is now working with Facebook to integrate its subscriber articles.
Finally, a world still going pop
Men Without Hats had to postpone tour dates with A Flock of Seagulls, but its leader, Ivan Doroschuk, is assuaged by the Montreal synth-pop band’s two big 1980s hits being inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. The first was written to protest anti-pogoing bouncers, but Doroschuk says the second had an environmental undercurrent:
