Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Canada Read online

  Pamela Anderson is a published author.

  •Pamela Anderson has written one novel (Star Struck, 2005) and co-written another (Star, 2004).

  •Newscaster Peter Jennings got his start in broadcasting in 1947 when, aged nine, he hosted Peter’s People, a Saturday morning kids show on the CBC. (He got the gig because his dad worked at the station.)

  •Folksinger Joni Mitchell was supposed to perform at the famous Woodstock Music & Art Fair in 1969, but she was also scheduled to appear on the Dick Cavett Show (a popular talk show in the 1960s and ’70s) on the same day. The traffic in and out of the festival was so bad that her manager didn’t think she’d make it to Cavett’s show on time, so he urged her to pull out of the Woodstock lineup. She did, appeared on Dick Cavett as scheduled, and wrote a song in homage to the festival, entitled (surprise!) “Woodstock.”

  •Today, musician Sarah McLachlan mostly sticks to the piano and guitar, but the first instrument she learned was the ukulele.

  •On April 1, 1997, Jeopardy host (and Ontario native) Alex Trebek swapped jobs with Wheel of Fortune frontman Pat Sajak as an April Fools’ Day joke.

  Celine Dion is proudly Québécoise.

  Michael J. Fox before the 1987 Emmys. He won the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series award for Family Ties, in 1987.

  •Back in 1990, when Celine Dion recorded her first English album, the Quebec music industry gave her its Anglophone Artist of the Year award. But having been born and raised in Charlemagne, Quebec, Dion was insulted to be called an “anglophone artist.” She refused to accept the prize, saying, “I am not an anglophone artist, and the public understands that. Everywhere I go in the world, I say that I’m proud to be Québécoise.”

  •Neither NBC president Brandon Tartikoff nor producer Gary David Goldberg thought Michael J. Fox had the right look for the role of 1980s heartthrob Alex P. Keaton on TV’s Family Ties. Tartikoff explained his concern by saying that Fox just “didn’t have a face you’d see on a lunchbox.” After the show became a hit, Fox glued a picture of himself onto a lunchbox and sent it to Tartikoff with a note that said, basically, “Eat crow!

  We Love Canada, Part I

  Canada has so much history and natural beauty that it’s impossible to cover it all. Here are some of our favorite things about Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec.

  Ontario

  •Ontario is the only province to border the Great Lakes—well, four of them anyway: lakes Erie, Superior, Huron, and Ontario. (Technically, Lake Michigan is part of the same body of water as Lake Huron and is contained entirely in the United States.) The five lakes make up the largest body of freshwater lakes in the world.

  •In September 1885, P. T. Barnum’s famous giant elephant, Jumbo, was struck by a train and killed in St. Thomas while the circus troupe was touring the area. It reportedly took 150 people to remove Jumbo’s carcass from the tracks. Today, a giant elephant statue downtown commemorates the city’s deadly connection to the iconic elephant.

  Toronto Blue Jay Reed Johnson swings for the fence.

  •Okay, technically the Sky Dome is now called the Rogers Centre, but where’s the fun in that? Opened in 1989, it is not only home to the Blue Jays and the Argonauts, it’s also got the world’s largest JumboTron (10 meters x 33.6 meters / 32.8 feet x 110 feet) and was the first stadium in the world to have a fully retractable roof. Plus, if you lined up all the hot dogs sold at the Sky Dome in one year, they would cover the distance between more than 3,000 bases. Ketchup, anyone?

  •Ottawa began as Bytown in the 1820s, but by 1858 it had changed its name to Ottawa and was declared capital of the new United Province of Canada. Why Ottawa? That’s what bigger, fancier places like Toronto and Montreal wanted to know. It turned out Ottawa was situated in just the right spot to win the title: far enough away from the United States (which was always making eyes at Canadian land) and on the border of Quebec and Ontario, Canada’s main regions at the time.

  •Lying on Nottawasaga Bay in Lake Huron, Wasaga Beach is the world’s longest freshwater beach, measuring about 14 kilometers (8.5 miles) in length.

  This statue of Flin Flon welcomes visitors to his namesake park.

  Manitoba

  •Flin Flon is probably the only Canadian municipality named after a science-fiction character. In 1914 prospector Tom Creighton read a copy of a pulp novel called The Sunless City that somebody had discarded along a wooded path. In the book, the genius hero whom everybody calls “Flin Flon” pilots his super submarine through a lake in the Rockies and discovers a mysterious underground world. Spoiler alert: After various adventures in the subterranean culture where women have enslaved the men, the good professor escapes through an inactive volcano. Creighton was impressed by the story, and the next year, while digging for gold, he made a joke that they’d discovered Flin Flon’s escape hatch. The name stuck to the area and was adopted by the town that grew up around the site.

  •After a long winter, you can see more sex-crazed snakes than you’d ever want to at the Snake Dens in the Narcisse Wildlife Management Area. Thousands of male red-sided garter snakes looking for mates writhe and roll into balls around females as they emerge from the cracks and holes where they hibernate.

  Polar bears play on the tundra near Churchill, Manitoba.

  •Halloween safety is a concern everywhere, but even the toughest neighborhood has little to match the dangers in Churchill, Manitoba. This “Polar Bear Capital of the World” warns its kids not to wear furry white costumes and to take cover if they hear the sound of “firecrackers” (a.k.a., gunshots), because Halloween takes place during the season that polar bears are hunting day and night in anticipation of winter. Conservation officers and Mounties ring the town and take to the air, keeping their eyes out for foraging bears. Traps are set with seal meat, and officers are armed with bright lights, tranquilizer guns, and shotguns loaded with “cracker shells” that go up 200 feet and explode.

  •When temperatures get down below freezing and stay there for months on end, romantic fantasies are one thing that can warm the body and soul…which may explain why romance juggernaut Harlequin Enterprises got its start in Winnipeg.

  Quebec

  •The Quebecois have been talking secession for years and maybe some people call that treason. But really, it’s just regional pride. After all, Quebec is the only French-speaking province in Canada (about 95 percent of the population is fluent), and it’s the largest by area. They just want some respect. Fortunately, in 2006, the House of Commons passed a resolution symbolically recognizing that the Quebecois “form a nation within a united Canada.”

  •On June 27, 1896, Frenchman Louis Minier screened the first movie ever shown in North America at the Palace Theatre in Montreal.

  A winning Trivial Pursuit playing piece shows all six wedges filled in.

  •The 1980s were a time when obnoxious know-it-alls ran free, and no other game better defined the decade than Trivial Pursuit. The game, invented when Montreal journalists Scott Abbott and Chris Haney couldn’t play Scrabble because some tiles were missing, eventually sold to Hasbro for $80 million U.S.

  •In 1663 the French government became alarmed by the number of English colonists settling near its New World territories. Concerned that the population of New France couldn’t keep up because most of the women there were indentured servants or nuns, the French government recruited about 800 Frenchwomen of childbearing age from Europe (nicknamed les filles de roi, the “king’s daughters”) to move from Europe to the colony. The country enticed them with paid passage, a dowry, and an almost 100 percent guarantee of finding a husband. Sure enough, 765 of the women married, many within weeks of setting foot on land.

  •Listen up, sports fans, it’s time to show a little love to McGill University. Without it, modern college sports would consist of fox hunting, bear-baiting, mumble-de-peg (it involved pocket knives and teeth), and golf. Case in point: McGill and Harvard football players negotiated the rules and played the first game of modern f
ootball in 1874. McGill wrote the rules of hockey and replaced the ball with a puck. And former McGill athletic director James Naismith invented basketball on a cold winter’s night in a Massachusetts YMCA.

  Olympic Highlights

  Canada has hosted three Olympics. Here are some of the highlights, lowlights, and even “relights” from the competitions.

  Nadia Comaneci competes in Montreal where she captured three gold medals.

  The Olympic rings gleam above Montreal’s stadium and tower.

  Montreal Olympics: 1976

  •Instead of carrying the Olympic flame across the ocean for the 1976 Montreal Summer Games, organizers “transmitted” it from Athens via satellite. An electronic signal generated by the flame’s energy triggered an electronic fire starter in Ottawa that lit the torch on this continent.

  •To the dismay of spectators, rain doused the Olympic flame along the running route from Ottawa to Montreal. They were shocked when, next, a “helpful” Olympic official whipped out his Bic lighter and relit it. After quick consultation, some other officials immediately doused the flame, and relit it with what they said was the official backup flame.

  •Canada won no gold medals, the first time in Summer Olympics history that the host country failed to do that. However, Canadian team members did win five silver medals and six bronze, placing them 27th in the overall medal count that year.

  •Taro Aso—Prime Minister of Japan from 2008 to 2009—was a member of the 1976 Japanese shooting team. The team won no medals in Montreal.

  •Montreal included women competing in Olympic rowing, handball, and basketball for the first time.

  •Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, just 14 years old, won three gold medals after scoring seven perfect 10.00s. But since Olympic officials hadn’t anticipated perfection, the scoreboard had room for only the first three digits, giving the first impression that she had scored a shockingly low 1.00.

  •Fearing that he’d be disqualified from competing on the horse and rings, Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto hid the fact he’d broken his knee during the floor exercise from everyone—including his coach. Fujimoto’s triple somersault dismount from the rings had to be excruciating, but he managed to hide the pain and stay on his feet. He scored 9.7, pushing his team to victory, before collapsing into the arms of his coach. An Olympic physician observed, “How he managed to do somersaults and twists and land without collapsing in screams is beyond my comprehension.”

  •Shirley Babashoff, an American competitor, accused the East German women’s swimming team of using anabolic steroids, citing their big muscles and low voices. The East German coach responded with sarcasm, saying, “They came to swim, not to sing.” (It’s since been proven the team was using steriods after all.)

  Boris Onischenko (left) of the Soviet Union was disqualified in 1976 for cheating in the fencing competition.

  •Russian competitor Boris Onishchenko was caught cheating during the fencing part of the modern pentathlon. His sword had been rigged to register a touch even when he missed. He was disqualified.

  •Although Montreal’s mayor boldly predicted that “the Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby,” the city proved him wrong. Montreal suffered crushing financial debt that took 30 years to pay off.

  •Thirty countries boycotted the Montreal Olympics. Twenty-eight were African nations protesting the presence of the New Zealand rugby team, which had toured apartheid South Africa earlier that year. The other two were bitter enemies—the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China. Neither competed because both were offended that the other was invited.

  Calgary Winter Olympics: 1988

  •The mascots for the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1988 were Hidy and Howdy, twin polar bears. Although they wore cowboy hats and western wear from the waist up, they were bear-bottomed.

  Leslie Feist performs on stage.

  •A thousand Canadian kids danced in the opening ceremonies, including 12-year-old Leslie Feist. Who? Nineteen years later, Feist (now a singer) was inspired to copy the ceremonies’ costumes and choreography for her award-winning music video “1 2 3 4.” (The song became a huge hit after it was used in an iPod Nano commercial.)

  •As in 1976, Canada won no gold medals in Calgary, making it the first country to host an Olympics twice and not earn gold medals at either competition.

  •Olympic organizers were worried about Calgary’s “chinook winds”—unpredictable, warm breezes from the south that can raise the temperature above freezing. Sure enough, the breezes arrived that year, requiring that snow machines run overtime. The worst problem came when some bobsled runs had to be repeated after sand blew onto the track.

  The 1988 Jamaican bobsled team springs into action.

  •The Calgary competition was the one in which Jamaica fielded a bobsled team for the first time, as immortalized in the movie Cool Runnings. They came in last. However, they did go on to make a stunning advance at the 1994 Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, finishing 14th…ahead of the Russians, French, and Americans.

  •Another underdog favorite was long-shot ski jumper Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, the sole applicant from Great Britain. Edwards got the public’s attention with his unassuming manner, low-budget self-financing, beaklike nose, lack of experience, and extreme nearsightedness, which required thick glasses even when jumping. Because he was 9 kilograms (almost 20 pounds) heavier than the nearest competitor, an Italian paper called him a “ski dropper.” But the fact that he came in last in both of his ski jump events seemed to make him even more beloved by the public because he represented the Olympics’ original ideal of congenial amateurism.

  •Another highlight of the Calgary games was the “Battle of the Brians”: Canadian figure skater Brian Orser versus American Brian Boitano. The two had known each other for years and had also dueled at the 1984 games, where Boitano placed fifth and Orser won a silver medal. The pair were to face off again in Calgary, but this time, Boitano took the gold and Orser won silver—again.

  Calgary gold

  •The medals featured the official emblem (a stylized snowflake/maple leaf) on the front. The back was a First Nations member with a headdress consisting of skis, skates, a luge, a rifle, a bobsled, and hockey sticks.

  •Perhaps as a bow to the host country, curling made its second appearance as a demonstration sport in 1988. (It also appeared in 1932.) Curling didn’t become an official Olympic sport until 1998.

  •Calgary was the first smoke-free Olympics. Cigarettes were banned from all spectator areas, even outdoor venues.

  •Mindful of the uproar when Montreal lost money, the Calgary organizers claimed the games had turned a $90–$150 million profit—but an audit by the Toronto Star disputed that, noting that the organizers had not included government subsidies totaling $461 million.

  •The Calgary closing ceremonies gave Alberta singer k.d. lang her first international exposure.

  The snowy hills above Howe Sound hosted the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events during the Vancouver Olympics.

  Vancouver Winter Olympics: 2010

  •The 2010 Winter Olympics torch arrived in Victoria from Athens on October 30, 2009…and got to Vancouver 106 days later. Rather than traveling by ferry and arriving in Vancouver later that same day, the torch took a circuitous path of 45,000 kilometers (27,961 miles) all over Canada, making it the longest one-country torch relay ever.

  •Celebrity torchbearers included the expected Canadian sports, entertainment, political, and media people, but also one non-Canadian: Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California.

  •The Olympic Flame looked impressive on TV but from the ground it was obscured by a high chainlink fence that kept spectators 100 meters (328 feet) away from it. The visual impact of the elegant cauldron and flame surrounded by a prison-like enclosure led to outraged newspaper editorials and online petitions. Eventually, the Olympic Organizing Committee adopted a solution: they covered the cauldron with a sheet
of plexiglass and moved the fence so spectators were kept only about 30 meters (98 feet) from it.

  •During the games, news outlets reported the supply of 100,000 condoms provided to the Olympic village was running low. (That figure averaged to about 14 condoms for each of the athletes, officials, coaches, and trainers.)

  •These games were the first Olympics to charge money ($22 to $50) to attend the nightly medals ceremonies. That used to come free at the end of the competitions, and spectators complained. As consol-ation, each ceremony was capped with a concert by a Canadian celebrity, including Alanis Morissette, Nickelback, Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies, Nelly Furtado, Hedley, and Loverboy.

  •Nearly 30,000 people who went to the snowboard-cross and ski-cross events discovered that their tickets had been canceled at the last minute because rain and warm weather had created “unsafe ground conditions.” It wasn’t just the ankle-deep mud, but also the fact that the course had been constructed of hay bales and snow imported from Yak Peak, two hours to the east. The fear was that spectators would start falling through the cracks of the exposed hay bales.

  •Women’s hockey teams from Canada and the United States outscored their non-North American opponents by a total of 88–4.

  •Three Canadian-made ice-resurfacing machines failed one after another, delaying the speed skating events until an American-made Zamboni could be flown in from Calgary.