January 19th, 2013 at 10:17 am » Comments (9)

Leave it to those North of the Border to redefine the term ‘funny money’. Canada’s new plastic banknotes feature Norway maple leaves, instead of the Canadian sugar maple leaf, according to botanists. They argue the leaf shown features more sections and has a more pointed outline than the Canadian version. The maple leaf is featured on the new C$20 (£13), C$50 and C$100 notes, which were introduced in November. Bank of Canada officials say the image is a “stylised” leaf, created with the help of a botanist. “I think it’s
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November 20th, 2012 at 11:34 am » Comments (4)

I’ve heard the people in Toronto are nuts about the NHL, now I believe it. If the NHL decides to flush the rest of the season, Toronto Maple Leafs fan Jim Vigmond is ready. The Ontario lawyer purchased a toilet from the home dressing room of Maple Leaf Gardens for $5,300 at an auction, according to the Toronto Star. Vigmond had been trying to score a 1967 Stanley Cup banner but he said the bidding became too steep, so he went for the toilet. And he was willing to go
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September 1st, 2012 at 9:27 am » Comments (10)

This is the sweetest news I have heard in a long time. Sticky-fingered thieves made off with as much as 30 million Canadian dollars (US$30.4 million) worth of maple syrup from a little-known strategic reserve in rural Quebec—leaving authorities to investigate just how much is missing and where it has gone. The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers said late Thursday that during a routine inventory check at a facility that stores some 10 million pounds of syrup, inspectors discovered barrels had been emptied and reported “missing a large quantity
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June 28th, 2012 at 1:05 pm » Comments (25)

Ouch! A member of the Governor General’s Foot Guards was seriously injured during the Changing the Guard ceremony on Parliament Hill Wednesday morning. A 20-year-old male suffered a severe stab wound from his rifle-mounted bayonet after falling during the parade. Members of the Foot Guards who were on hand in case of emergency immediately provided first aid to the injured man, applying pressure to his wound until paramedics arrived. In addition to his wound, paramedics treated the man for severe blood loss. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where
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December 16th, 2011 at 7:54 pm » Comments (32)

This has to be the lamest excuse yet I have heard for getting out of mandatory ROK military service: Canada awarded a South Korean man refugee status after he objected to the mandatory military service in his home country for being a pacifist and a homosexual, a local human rights group said Thursday. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) granted the status in July 2009 to Kim Kyung-hwan, 31, saying the gay conscript is highly likely to face abuse and mistreatment back home, according to the Center for
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November 25th, 2011 at 7:16 am » Comments (45)

It looks like the Canadian government is moving on with finding another buyer of their oil since the US delayed making a decision on the building the pipeline to export the oil to the US: China is set to embrace Canada’s offer of more crude, heating up competition with the United States as the world’s top two oil consumers jostle to secure supplies and meet ravenous demand. Shipments from a politically stable country such as Canada will be a welcome diversification of supply sources as top consumers make plans to
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January 10th, 2011 at 1:12 pm » Comments (8)

Oliver MacQuat is raising a stink about it too. A rural Gatineau, Que., family is angry at police who raided their home armed with loaded guns looking for a marijuana grow-op, which turned out to only be a skunk that lived on their property. Auto mechanic Oliver MacQuat was home alone just before 8 p.m. Thursday when he saw flashing lights outside. He thought a small water-bottling plant next door was being robbed, but then he heard a knock at his door. The father of two was met by Gatineau
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December 22nd, 2010 at 4:25 pm » Comments (4)

Were they with or without syrup? A frustrated Toronto Maple Leafs fan who threw waffles on the ice at the Air Canada Centre will have to admire his team from afar. Joseph Robb was charged with criminal mischief and barred from the arena for throwing waffles on the ice at a Maple Leafs game to protest the team’s performance this season. The 12-17-4 Leafs were 28th out of the NHL’s 30 teams entering Wednesday’s games. Robb, of Oakville, Ontario, says he’s “just a normal Leafs fan, I love them to
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December 4th, 2010 at 6:06 pm » Comments (27)

This State Department document provided by WikiLeaks should give everyone a good laugh: “The degree of comfort with which Canadian broadcast entities, including those financed by Canadian tax dollars, twist current events to feed longstanding negative images of the U.S. — and the extent to which the Canadian public seems willing to indulge in the feast — is noteworthy as an indication of the kind of insidious negative popular stereotyping we are increasingly up against in Canada,” the cable said. A trove of diplomatic cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made
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November 21st, 2010 at 8:12 pm » Comments (68)

Since Tom is allowed to comment again I am sure that he will have plenty to say about this article: When Alexandra and her friend Rachel, both graduates of Toronto’s Havergal College, an all-girls private school, were deciding which university to go to, they didn’t even bother considering the University of Toronto. “The only people from our school who went to U of T were Asian,” explains Alexandra, a second-year student who looks like a girl from an Aritzia billboard. “All the white kids,” she says, “go to Queen’s, Western
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