Julie Payette’s worst workplace review
Discover more from Twelve Thirty Six
The report examining workplace culture at Rideau Hall was released in heavily redacted form, but had enough for headlines to further explain why Julie Payette is no longer the governor general. Along with the Conservatives arguing that Payette shouldn’t receive all ex-GG benefits comes wanting to offer suggestions for her replacement.
Scenes from bureaucrat Slack
A poop emoji was the highlight of obtained virtual office chat from Elections Canada, but one official considered it a “good thing” that their tweet denying any association with Dominion Voting Systems was retweeted by Donald Trump as evidence of voter fraud. This week, Toronto-founded Dominion sued Trump’s loudest lawyer for $1.3 billion.
BlackBerry’s $1.2 billion rebound in a time of stonks. Day traders who pushed the share price to levels not seen in nine years are being taken seriously as a reflection of CEO John Chen cutting deals for things like sensor data in vehicles. But the Waterloo company is also part the Reddit-driven frenzy that’s been boosting GameStop.
MF Doom lives in spray paint
A two-month delay between the Halloween death of metal-masked rapper MF Doom and its announcement on New Year’s Eve further burnished his mysterious history, a subversion that Daniel Dumile demonstrated when he played Toronto in 2010. Now, the hip-hop super-villain is immortalized with a mural in a back alley of the city’s Chinatown:
The political journey of a man who used to call himself Joey Shithead. Something Better Change is a planned documentary of how the frontman for the Vancouver band D.O.A. became Burnaby, B.C., city councillor Joe Keithley. His four decades of dedication to the punk rock cause no doubt helped contribute to the crowdfunding success.
Finally, rap dancing in the dark
Connor Price was six years old when he started acting in Toronto, most notably in Cinderella Man, leading to connections that may have come in handy when he decided to try hip-hop instead. But it was evidently just answering a challenge from Idris Elba on Instagram to fill in a verse that led the two of them to make friends with Courteney Cox: