1995 Canada had a finance minister who went on Canada AM and took unscreened phone calls from Canadians about his budget cuts. Paul Martin sat there and answered them. Jean Chrétien was on CBC making a personal plea for national unity with the Quebec sovereignty referendum approaching. Canadian peacekeepers were in Bosnia. That was the…
Tragically Hip music has a way of arriving late for some people. Not because the songs changed but because the listener did. Ryan O’Donnell grew up hearing his dad scream the lyrics at house parties and filed it under parents’ music until 2020, when he downloaded a couple of songs and went, oh wait. That…
Tragically Hip Saturday Night Live 1995 started with Gord Downie walking out and saying the wrong first lyric. Instead of fabulously rich he said tragically hip because he could hear Dan Aykroyd introducing them in his head. The band had smoked weed before going on. Jake Gold was watching from the wings. Nobody planned it…
Movie theater comeback stories do not usually start with a $500,000 Canadian horror film made by people nobody has heard of yet. This one does, and Richard Crouse hosted the premiere. The Theaters Were Not the ProblemUndertone cost $500,000 and has passed $15 million at the box office in two weeks. That is 30 times…
Hollywood leading men are disappearing and Ed Conroy has a specific way of putting it: when Clooney and DiCaprio and Pitt are gone, where is the new Paul Newman? Brad Pitt was voted Sexiest Man Alive in 1995. Ed Conroy’s point is that he could probably win it again right now, and that is not…
Gambling on yourself is the one bet most people will not take. A slot machine run by a casino with odds set against you? Fine. A sports app with a two-second deposit and no closing time? Apparently also fine. But when the outcome depends on your own effort and the odds are actually in your…
Sports betting in Canada is now in the broadcast, embedded in the commentary before the game even starts. Jamie Ellerton takes out a hundred dollars, wins it back, and walks. Lindsay Broadhead will not start at all. Neither of them is who the industry is building for, and that gap is the whole problem. The…
Hannah Montana turns 20 this year, and the kids who came home from school and put it on are now the doctors, the managers, the people running things. Katelyn Thomas was 12 when it started. She is now a reporter, a mom, and she will absolutely be showing it to her son. What does it…
Whistleblower versus leaker is not just a legal category. It is the question of who gets to decide what the public is allowed to know, and whether the people drawing that line can be trusted to draw it in the right place. Dr. Lee Kuhnle says they often cannot, and that is precisely why whistleblowers…
By the Power of Grayskull versus the Biggest Pop Star in the World. Generational TV shows tell you everything about who raised a generation and how. In 1985, it was the Smurfs hiding from Gargamel and He-Man holding a sword aloft. In 2006, it was Hannah Montana pulling 200 million viewers worldwide and a Jonas…
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