Pickups need to yield to the school bus
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“Why does Jason Kenney love this pickup truck so much?” asks a Toronto Star headline sparked by a bit of Twitter trolling in response to a Globe and Mail column that poked the premiers of Saskatchewan and Alberta. The latter province also recently asserted its position by asking Ottawa to allow regular folks to carry pepper spray.
Dreams of a different wheel
Doug Ford’s pandemic press briefings returned to folksiness with his desire to drive school buses himself to get kids back to school. The premier also expressed support for regular COVID-19 tests for unvaccinated health care workers, but vaccine passports are still a no-go for Ontario. (Pearson Airport has now backtracked on separate queues.)
“I should have walked out of there like 10 years ago, 20 years ago. “ Cathy Jones spoke to the Canadian Press about her officially amicable exit from This Hour Has 22 Minutes after 28 years. But it took attention to her appearance at a rally protesting masking and vaccines for this career change to become national news.
The crowds will soon get loud
Toronto is getting its first post-lockdown music festival, in the form of DJs spinning in mid-August for an audience anticipated to be allowed to stand on their feet at the drive-in for a day, dubbed Together Again. Summer concert bookings across Canada are otherwise dominated by classic rock, but at least Winnipeg’s demands full vaccination:
Alfie Scopp dead at 101. A fixture of the first decade of CBC Television, including as Clarabell the Clown on the Canadian version of the Howdy Doody show, the British-born Scopp had his biggest role in Fiddler on the Roof. He also did cartoon voices in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and as Socrates the Scarecrow on Tales of the Wizard of Oz.
Finally, reproducing Stay-Puft
Ghostbusters: Afterlife had its release date postponed three times, as Ivan Reitman passing the franchise torch to his son Jason was deemed too important for the result to premiere via streaming. The sequel that was shot across Alberta is now readied for November release with action figures and a new trailer featuring flashes of continuity: