“Should I have gone through school and be mocked because I had glasses and was called four-eyes?” asked former politician Stockwell Day during a Power & Politics debate on racism in Canada. The comments were followed by Day’s departure from the Telus board of directors, the law firm McMillan LLP, and his spots on the CBC.
What an opposition party is for
Jagmeet Singh would rather Justin Trudeau directly condemn Donald Trump than stay silent for 21 seconds, in the latest example of the NDP pushing back. More successful was Andrea Horwath calling for the collection of race-based data on health care delivery, which prompted Doug Ford to walk back his denial of any systemic racism in Canada.
You can’t joke about Canadian content during a radio newscast. David McKee from Toronto’s Newstalk 1010 said the push for regulation of foreign streaming services would result in shows “that nobody watches or wants.” A complaint to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council led to a ruling that he crossed a line into editorializing.
Last tips from the cop shop
The family of Regis Korchinski-Paquet will delay speaking to investigators about her deadly fall from a balcony in response to what they see as Toronto police leaking information, which has led to its own war of words. Coincidentally, the contentious Toronto Sun report was the penultimate one filed by its now departing courts reporter:
Thomas Brazier dead at 73. The kid whose doughnut-selling father and uncle initially adopted the concept of offering a dozen mini ones in a bag ended up making them for the rest of his own life. Tiny Tom Donuts was anticipating its 60th year of production at the Canadian National Exhibition before the Toronto fair was cancelled due to COVID-19.
Finally, no Marineland love lost
Smooshi, the 2,000-pound walrus at Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ontario, recently gave birth to a 100-pound calf. This announcement was despaired by Phil Demers, who stars in a new documentary, The Walrus and the Whistleblower. The park dismissed what it calls “wild conspiracy theories” from their former animal trainer:
