#caught cbc

[lonval71]

[someguywriting]

alright.. I think it's the right time to post this

[paulgrossaddict]

https://makeagif.com/i/_8nz2O

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The province's chief medical officer has signed a directive banning incarcerating someone under the Public Health Act, following an order from Manitoba's premier in reaction to a CBC investigation. CBC published a story Monday detailing what happened to Geraldine Mason, a 36-year-old from God's Lake First Nation who spent a month in jail after she was detained for tuberculosis treatment. The story caught the attention of Premier Wab Kinew, who described Mason's incarceration as "terrible" and said no else should ever have to go through that ordeal.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[whump-imagines]

Lunch Date Gone Wrong

Connor x reader

~1000 words

She walked into the ED and greeted Leah at the admit desk. “Hey. I just wanted to surprise Connor for lunch. Can I go wait in the lounge?”

“Of course. I think he went upstairs but you can check with Maggie.”

“Thanks.” She walked through the sliding doors from the waiting room and stopped at the nurses station. Maggie saw her and walked out from the desk to give her a hug. “Hi, Mags.”

“Hi, sweetie,” Maggie said. “I didn't know you were coming today.”

She laughed. “Neither does Connor. I needed to get out of the house. Figured I'd surprise him for lunch.”

“He just ran upstairs to check on a patient but he should be back pretty soon,” Maggie explained. “You can go wait in the lounge if you want. Do you want me to page him?”

She shook her head. “No, I don't want to bother him. I can wait.” She went into the lounge and made herself comfortable on the couch.

Twenty minutes later, she saw Connor by the nurses station. He was looking at a computer and Maggie was nowhere in sight so she assumed he didn't know she was there.

She smiled and stood from the couch. She swayed slightly, dismissing it as having stood too fast. Walking out of the lounge, she made her way to where he was.

He glanced up and locked eyes with her. He smiled. “Hey! What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to get some fresh air and different scenery. Thought I'd see if you had time for some lunch.”

He pulled her into a hug and kissed her as he pulled away. “I always have time for you. Did you want to go grab something quick or eat here?”

She shrugged, swaying on her feet once again as dizziness made her world spin.

Connor frowned, grasping her shoulders and stepping back half a step to look at her. “You okay?”

She started to nod. “Uh, yeah. I think.”

“You sure?” He moved his hand to caress her cheek.

“Honestly?” she asked. “I was starving when I left the house. Now, I'm a little nauseous and dizzy.”

He pulled her behind the desk to a chair. “Okay, let’s sit down.”

She let him guide her into the chair. She took a deep breath and shook her head trying to clear the feeling, but it only made it worse. “Whoa,” she whispered, closing her eyes tight.

“Just breathe. I'm right here,” Connor reassured. He took her hand in his and she felt him press his fingers into the pulse point at her wrist. Her eyes were still closed so she didn't see the look of surprise on his face. “Hey, Maggie,” he said quietly. “What's open?”

“Uh, treatment three and four are. Why?” She asked.

Connor glanced at Y/N. “I need an EKG. Her heart rate is way too high.”

“Okay. I'll meet you in three,” Maggie said.

“Wait,” said Y/N. Her breathing quickened with her anxiety. “Why? What's wrong with me?”

“Shh, shh,” Connor soothed. “It's okay. Just breathe. We will figure it out. Can you stand up for me?”

She allowed him to pull her up. As soon as she was fully upright she swayed before her knees buckled. Connor caught her before she could hit the ground and lifted her heading straight to treatment three.

“Y/N! Can you hear me, sweetheart?” He asked as he set her on the bed. He ran his knuckle firmly over her sternum and she moaned but didn't wake. “Open your eyes for me.”

Will joined them as Maggie finished hooking up the cardiac monitor. She wrapped a BP cuff around her bicep. “Need a hand in here?”

“Damn it,” Connor cursed as he saw the monitor reading. “She's in SVT.”

“Connor,” Will warned. “You shouldn't be treating her.”

“I'm fine,” Connor argued. “I'm going to try a carotid massage.”

Will stepped closer. “Maggie, CBC, BMP, lytes, cardiac enzymes, and a chest x-ray. Please.”

“On it.” She quickly ordered the x-ray before drawing blood for the lab tests.

“No change.” Will pointed out as Connor stared at the monitor as if trying to Will the rhythm to change. “We need to push adenosine.”

“Just one more second,” Connor said. About thirty seconds later, his head dropped to his chest as he took a step back. “Uh, okay. Will?”

Will squeezed Connor’s shoulder before returning his focus to Y/N. “I got her, buddy.” He then turned to April who had joined them in the room. “Six milligrams of adenosine.”

Seconds later, April announced, “Pushing.” Almost instantly the monitor droned the monotone asystole sound before the fast beep resumed.

Connor’s hand came up to cover his mouth for a moment. His worry was really starting to shine through.

“Okay,” Will started. “Let's try another twelve milligrams of adenosine.”

Once again, April announced when she pushed the meds just before the monotone sound followed by the rapid beeping.

“Damn it,” Connor cursed.

“It's fine. I got her,” Will reassured. “We knew she was stubborn, right? Give me the paddles and charge to 75.”

Maggie handed them to him as April placed the orange gel pads on her chest. Will placed the paddles as Maggie stated, “Charged.”

“Clear!” Will verified everyone's hands were off before pressing the button. Her head shifted with the small jolt. Suddenly, the fast paced beeping slowed. “Back in sinus. Rate 86.”

Connor breathes a heavy sigh of relief. “Oh, thank god.”

A few minutes later, she moaned. “C–Connor?”

He was sitting beside her holding her hand as Will performed an echocardiogram.

Squeezing her hand, he spoke, “I'm right here, honey. Will is here too.”

She pried her eyes open slowly, shying away from the bright lights. “What happened?”

Connor ran his free hand over her head, pushing hair from her face. “You had a bit of an arrhythmia. We had to give you some meds and shock your heart to get it back to normal rhythm. Will is just running some tests now so we can figure out why it happened.”

She blinked slowly. “I'm so tired.”

“Well your heart just ran a mini marathon,” Will said.

“You can go ahead and rest,” Connor suggested. “You're going to be here at least overnight.”

She let her eyes flutter closed. “Mmkay.”

Connor continued to run his hand gently over her head until she was sound asleep. He knew it would be a long few weeks of tests and possible medications but for now, he was just glad she was okay.

[theanticool]

One thing I've noticed about this whole Imane Khelif "controversy" is that the same people screaming about protecting women's sports from the "trans Boogeyman", they never ever ever mention women's sports at all. At no point have they tried to highlight other women boxers, or mentioned any other event in which a woman competes or does well in. It's very strange to scream about protecting something they clearly do not care about. This isn't even necessarily about the grifters and talking heads (I expect it out of them) but random people on my friends list that caught me off guard

That's the main thing that kills me about all this nonsense. Putting aside the fact that Khelif is a woman and this war between the IOC and the IBA, the people screaming about how a woman is going to die fighting her are so disrespectful. Because women do die in the sport fighting other women. And there are things we could do to stop that and nobody fucking cares enough about the sport except for like 30 people to even talk about it.

Last year, an 18 year old from Mexico was flown up to Canada to be a warm body for a former amateur standout Canadian boxer. Jeanette Zacarias Zapata died after getting knocked out. Had 0 business being in that ring with someone so much better than her, 15 years her senior.

But this is a normal practice. Go look at some of the women from Mexico and Colombia and their records. A lot of American, British, and Canadian talent go down there to go beat up on boxer-cize moms who are literally half their size to inflate their records. Imagine walking into a CKO Kickboxing gym and telling them they have to fight someone who was fighting for amateur world champions or are top professional contenders. And this isn't a problem for just women. It's super common practice in the US to have your recent amateur stars just spark gas station attendants or mechanics for years before they fight a proper pro.

But like you said, none of these people actually care about the sport. They don't care about the Jeanettes of the world. They don't care about how there's so little money and resources put into it, so massive corners get cut. They don't care that there's rampant grooming (by cis men gym owners) going on in a lot of these gyms. And it's not just boxing. It's not just combat sports. It's in basketball, gymnastics, soccer, etc.

Because it's all virtue signalling. They need boogeymen. They need to pretend they care about these sports. If they're so scared of opportunities being taken away from "real women", maybe they should raise the floor on support for the actual sport and all the women it in. But these people didn't know enough about the sport to talk about Kellie Harrington or Amy Broadhurst, women who had fought and beat Imane Khelif before. Yet they feel so confident saying nonsense with their chest.

[fatehbaz]

Seventy-five years after two nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan — killing hundreds of thousands of people in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — one small community in the Northwest Territories is still haunted by its connection to the blasts. Across Great Bear Lake from the 533-person hamlet of Délı̨nę sits the historic mining site of Port Radium. [...] [T]he Canadian government quietly called for uranium production as part of the country's involvement in the Manhattan Project. That uranium was sent south to help the United States with the race to build a nuclear bomb. [...] [N]ear Great Bear Lake, workers would eventually wonder about the risks they took delivering sacks of ore on their backs as they sent it south — without being told what they were about to be complicit in. [...] Days after the blasts, the Canadian government announced the country's role in the explosions, citing the Great Bear Lake mine's uranium as a key ingredient for the project, said Geoffrey Bird, a professor at Royal Roads University in Victoria who studies tourism and the history of remembrance. An English-language sign connecting Port Radium to the atomic bomb was photographed in Délı̨nę in December 1945. [...] While the Canadian government hasn't apologized to Délı̨nę, the community has apologized to Japan. [...] Locals in Délı̨nę say many ore workers and their family members developed cancer later in life. [...] In the book If Only We Had Known, which tells the story of Port Radium from the eyes of the Sahtúot'ine, elders remember workers' clothing covered with dust, windy days when ore was caught up in the air and children playing games in mine tailings.

Text by: Katie Toth. “Spectre of atomic bomb still looms over N.W.T. community 75 years after Hiroshima.” CBC News. 5 August 2020.

---

[O]n 6 August 1998, 10 members of the small Sahtugot’ine Dene community of Deline (Fort Franklin) in the ‘Northwest Territories’ apologized in Hiroshima for the atomic destruction of that city – and the death of over 200,000 civilians – exactly 53 years earlier [...]. Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd. [was] placed under state control during World War Two. They [the Dene] were allowed only to help it [uranium] on its long and winding way, 3,000 miles by river, lake, road and air, from Port Radium on Great Bear Lake to Port Hope on Lake Ontario, where, from 1942-45, the suddenly precious ore – the ‘new gold’ of the atomic age – was, together with ‘Belgian’ uranium from the Congo, refined and dispatched to Los Alamos, the desert lab in New Mexico secretly building the new, city-smashing Superweapon. [...] Beginning in the 1970s, and spiking sharply in the 1980s, many of the men who had handled and carried the ore – and the men who had mined it – began to die from cancer [...]. The “Dene,” the CBC ‘revealed,’ “were never told of the health hazards they faced, even though the government knew … as early as 1932 that precautions should be taken in handling radioactive materials”. Instead [...] “workers [were] dressed in casual clothes and uranium dust [...] covered the men like flour.” [...] [A]s detailed in a December 1998 article [...] in First Nations Drum: [...] [T]he mine was kept running at a very high pace [...]. The Dene were employed as ‘coolies’ packing 45-kilogram sacks of radioactive ore for three dollars a day, working 12 hours a day, six days a week. This at a time when the ore was worth over $70,000 a gram. [...] In 1998, the Déline Dene Band Uranium Committee released a 160-page [...] report, “They Never Told Us These Things.” In a 2011 article in Maisonneuve, Salverson recounts a community meeting in Deline to discuss the report, “where [non-Dene] lawyers delivered a year’s worth of uranium-impact research from the archives in Ottawa,” revealing that in “the mountain of papers we dug up … there is not one mention of the Dene, your people.”

Text by: Sean Howard. “Canada’s Uranium Highway: Victims and Perpetrators.” Cape Breton Spectator. 7 August 2019.

[writeonthrough]

Namy Nuggets (13/13)

A fanfic collection of Amy and Nathan scenes from CBC’s Heartland. (Catch up on the series here) A big special thank you to @heartlandians, @1299sblog, @smokinholsters, @kvanbooven, and @scoutbooradley for being so supportive and enthusiastic towards me and this story. It means a lot. I shared this story because I was incredibly fun and enriching for me to write and—after many months, I finally decided that other people would/could enjoy it. Even though this last 'nugget' is more stressful than fluffy, I feel like it properly concludes the arc that I was trying to tell and leaves them in a good, strong place. I thought/was hoping another arc for Nathan/Amy would come to me before I finished posting all the completed chapters. It hasn't. One reason is probably because the show's season 18 is unusually stressful this year. So, we'll see if I come up with another arc for Amy/Nathan during the show's next long hiatus. Thank you so much to all who have enjoyed this story. Without further ado: Nugget #13: Across the Fence

“Come on, Shadow,” Amy leads him out the Heartland barn and out to the fields on a gallop. The fast pace helps clear her head after a going the entire weekend without hearing from Nathan once. She busied herself with Lyndy and client horses, trying to convince herself everything was fine with Nathan and his own ranch work kept him busy.

Perfectly understandable, she tells herself as Shadow races down a sloped hill, he has a big ranch to run, and, she shakes her head, we don’t have to talk every day anyway. We don’t have to be that type of couple that talks all the time, do we? She slows Shadow to a canter and takes a turn, we don’t…but we have been ever since we’ve got together.

The fence that separates Heartland from Nathan’s land appears before her. Shadow continues his forward path until he reaches the barrier and naturally turns to follow the fence line. As he does so, Nathan’s truck comes into focus. Amy’s heart patters at the sight, at the opportunity to see him.

She slows Shadow to walk and takes her time to approach. The truck door slams and Nathan appears, carrying fence posts in his arms and his hands full of tools. Before he reaches the truck’s flatbed to put everything down, though, his gaze falls on Amy.

She smiles warmly at him, “Hey.”

He nods before turning to set down the posts and the tools on the flatbed. Now with free hands, he takes a deep breath and turns back to her. “Hi.”

Amy waits for him to say more. He doesn’t. So, she tries, “How’s it going?”

“Busy,” he leans against the truck’s flatbed, half-sitting on it. “Just busy.”

“Yeah, work must have been piling up,” Amy softly offers him an out before adding, “I didn’t see you all weekend.”

“Yeah, I know,” Nathan sighs. “But Heartland always seems to be bustling with visitors, so I’m sure you were busy too.”

Amy retreats at the snide remark, so out-of-character for him. She takes a beat to decide what to do, and then pulls her leg over to hop off Shadow. She stands across the fence from him. “You’ve never been one for flippant insinuations,” one eyebrow raises with the observation. “You want to try being straight with me?”

Outwardly, he shakes his head and scoffs in disbelief. Inwardly, he layers the disbelief with amazement at her forthrightness and maturity, all of which add to the fear that he spent all weekend trying to avoid.

He crosses his arms. “Why didn’t you tell me about Scott and Ty?”

“Scott?” she repeats, incredulous. “Are you kidding me? You’re mad because I didn’t tell you Scott was close to Ty?” When he doesn’t respond, she questions further, “Why does it matter?”

“It matters to me, Amy,” he states stronger. “And I’m not mad. I just don’t think it’s fair to me to be caught off guard like that.”

“Caught off guard by the fact that Scott was a sort of mentor to both of you or that Scott and Ty were close at all?”

He shakes his head again and uncrosses his arms to gesture down the field. “You told me half the story. You said he dated Lou and conveniently left out the fact that he was mentor to Ty.”

Amy gapes at him. “We were in the middle of dinner with your friends!”

“And you didn’t think to tell me about it later?”

The question surprises her, quelling her defensives. “No, honestly,” her tone softens. “I don’t think about Scott that much.”

Nathan scoffs. “You put me in position where I was out of the loop at dinner—with Scott, with Lyndy—”

Amy retracts. “With Lyndy?”

“Yes!” He stands from the truck and takes a step closer. “You should have seen the way Scott was looking at Lyndy—interacting with her—it was so delicate, like she was so precious to him and he was trying to soak up every moment with her…like,” Nathan cocks his head, emphasizing his point, “Like she reminded him of someone that meant a lot to him—and I watched them together, and I totally didn’t get it.”

“Okay. So,” She works hard to keep her body calm and her voice soft. “What would you like me to tell you Nathan? Should I go around the ranch with you, pointing out people and places that meant something to Ty?” She raises her flat palm as if she is presenting something, her voice changes to mimic a tour guide. “‘This is the truck that meant the world to us and here’s why,’ oh and ‘this is Clint, here’s why he’s so important to Ty,’ and oh ‘here’s where he—’”

“Okay, Amy,” he puts his hand out. “I got it. I only meant that Scott already came up between us and you didn’t say anything.  You knew my history with Scott and you didn’t mention that it was similar to Ty’s history with him during or after the dinner with Josh.”

She shakes her head. “It’s really not that similar.”

“Amy…Come on…” he warns incredulously before turning his back to her and returning to his truck.

She follows him. “Why does this matter so much to you? Please tell me why you’re picking a fight with me just because I didn’t tell you that Scott had a history with Ty.”

He turns back to her and they stand facing each other parallel to the truck’s flatbed. “It matters to me that Ty and I have something in common other than you and Lyndy. And it matters to me that you left me out of the loop at dinner with Lou and Scott.”

“Okay,” Amy relaxes and surrenders. “Okay. I hear you. I’m sorry.” Nathan nods his acceptance of her apology. “I just—” she surprises them both by continuing what seemed like a finished conversation. He places a hand on his hip. She takes a deep breath, “I thought we just agreed the other day that we were talking too much about Ty. Nathan, I don’t want us to talk him all the time.”

“For who?” He challenges her lightly. “For you or for me?”

“Honestly, Nathan,” she speaks gently. “For both of us…and he’s been coming up a lot lately—and I’m happy to tell you about him and give you a few key points in my history with Ty—but not everything. I don’t want to live in the past, I don’t want to be in that headspace all the time. I want a relationship with you and I want to build our own history together.” She lets the words sink in for a moment. “But look at us—we having our first fight—and it’s over Ty.”  She steps back in reflection. “Really? I don’t want that.”

He shakes his head. “This isn’t about Ty,” he clarifies with confidence. “This is about you not telling me relevant information.” He pauses to make his point. In the silence, he figures out the best way to express himself. Softening, he starts, “I meant what I said when I told you I want you to feel like you tell me things. Amy, I want to know what’s important to you, what you’re thinking about when things come up—and not be out of the loop, lost on the important subtext or implications in a conversation.”  

“Okay,” she agrees softly. It takes her a moment to realize Nathan’s concern over her withholding information from him is something Ty would repeatedly get upset with her about. She takes a single step closer. “You’re right. That’s fair.”

“Thank you,” he reaches out to touch her for the first time that day, resting a hand on her shoulder. “And for the record, I never minded hearing about Ty.”

“Why?” She asks, amazed at his kindness and empathy. “Why don’t you mind it?”

“Because,” his thumb strokes her shoulder and he smiles. “I love hearing about your life and I love getting to know you. I don’t think you know how incredible you are, but I do know that Ty is a big part of that, so that’s okay to acknowledge.”

“You’re pretty incredible too, you know.” Unsure, Nathan gives her the side-eye, but she nods, reaching for him, and closing the distance between them. She wraps her arms around his torso and leans further into him. “Yes, you are,” she nods and brings her lips to his cheek for a meaningful kiss. “Thank you for being so kind and understanding,” she whispers.

[natlacentral]

'I've got to pinch myself': Paul Sun-Hyung Lee on playing Iroh in 'Avatar: The Last Airbender'

Presumably the people outside a local car dealership a couple of years ago who heard Paul Sun-Hyung Lee let out a “huge whoop” during a phone call with his agent didn't fully grasp the significance of that celebratory sound.

The Toronto actor beloved as the internet’s “Appa” thanks to “Kim’s Convenience” and a popular part of the “Star Wars” universe, too, was about to become the internet’s favourite uncle.

Lee had landed the role of Uncle Iroh in “Avatar: the Last Airbender,” Netflix’s much anticipated live-action reimagining of a well loved animated series (not to be confused with James Cameron’s “Avatar” films).

“Honestly, I have moments where I think I’ve got to pinch myself because, even as a youngster, I never would have believed that I could be a part of these things, because I never saw anybody who looked like me reflected in any of these shows,” the Korean Canadian actor said, reflecting on his roles in “Airbender” and the “Star Wars” spinoffs “The Mandalorian” and “Ahsoka,” in which he plays the popular Captain Carson Teva.

As Iroh in “Airbender,” Lee has stepped into the robes of another fan favourite character.

First, a bit of a primer: “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” which debuts Thursday, is about a 12-year-old boy, the “Avatar” of the title, on a quest to save the world from the rapacious Fire Nation, which has gone to war with the Earth, Water and Air peoples. Despite his youth, Avatar Aang (played by Vancouver actor Gordon Cormier) is a powerful “bender,” honing his ability to manipulate air, water, earth and fire.

Aang and his friends — Katara, a water bender (played by Indigenous Canadian Kiawentiio), and her brother, Sokka (American actor Ian Ousley) — are being hunted by fire bender Prince Zuko (American Dallas Liu), who’s accompanied by his wise and compassionate Uncle Iroh, himself a fire bender and a former Fire Nation general.

If that all sounds kind of geeky, well, that’s right up Lee’s alley.

The 51-year-old has well-established nerd bona fides as a fan of “Star Wars” and other science fiction (he shares his love of the genre on his Bitterasiandude Inc. YouTube channel). He caught up with the original “Avatar: The Last Airbender” (which aired on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008, then moved to Netflix) while he was still working on the CBC comedy “Kim’s Convenience” (2016-21), in which he played a South Korean immigrant who runs a convenience store in Toronto. 

In 2018, as new fans were discovering “Kim’s” worldwide after the series moved to Netflix, the streaming giant announced its remake of “Airbender,” setting in motion Lee's ascent into another dream role. 

“Almost immediately I got fan casted (as Iroh) by all these people on the internet,” Lee said in a Zoom interview. “I was very, very flattered, but I was doing ‘Kim’s.’”

A few years later, though, “Kim’s” had ended and Lee got an audition for what was billed as a basketball movie called “Blue Dawn,” as a coach who had come out of retirement to guide his nephew.

Although he’s “more of a baseball, hockey guy,” Lee taped the audition and then forgot about it, until a callback a couple of months later. Except now, the retired basketball coach Howard was named Iroh.

“There’s only one Iroh that I know of,” said Lee. “And so I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is for “Avatar”’ … right away I got super nervous. The stakes went up and I really wanted this part.”

But, after doing a chemistry read with Liu and not hearing anything for a couple of weeks, Lee assumed he had missed out on the role, which is part of the lot of an actor … until his agent called just as Lee and his wife were about to sign a lease on a new vehicle.

“So I excused myself, leaving the salesman completely befuddled. I went outside and that’s when I learned that I landed the role. And immediately let out this huge whoop. I had forgotten that I was in a public area and there were lots of people outside, and they all suddenly looked at me and I said, ‘It’s OK. It’s good news. It’s great news.’”

There was one more hurdle to overcome, though. 

“Airbender,” which shoots in Vancouver, overlapped Lee’s schedule for “The Mandalorian,” which films in Los Angeles. And playing Iroh meant shaving off the middle part of the moustache that Lee sports as Captain Teva.

“Luckily I was able to have my cake and eat it at the same time,” said Lee. “Lucasfilm was like, ‘Oh, we’ll just build him a little fake moustache to put on while he’s shooting (“The Mandalorian”).’”

Lee isn’t certain how familiar the producers of “Airbender” were with his work on “Kim’s Convenience” — it's an established fact that “Mandalorian” producer and director Dave Filoni was a “Kim’s” fan before he cast Lee — but he considers his latest job to be another of the many blessings accruing from the CBC series.

“‘Kim’s Convenience’ was such a wonderful launching pad for my career,” Lee said. “I mean, that show was kind of my coming out party in terms of the film and TV world.”

Lee, who was born in South Korea but immigrated to Canada with his parents when still an infant, struggled to find good film and TV roles as a young actor in the 1990s and early aughts. 

After graduating from drama school at the University of Toronto, he did a lot of theatre work, but onscreen “I played a lot of doctors, a lot of store clerks, a lot of window dressing-type caricatures, not characters.”

And yet, he persisted. 

Despite not seeing himself reflected in the television he devoured as a kid and from which he developed his love of storytelling, “I thought, well, heck, if there’s nobody (else Asian) out there, maybe there’s a shot for me to get in … that was kind of foolish thinking because maybe you’re the only one because a lot of people have tried and haven’t been able to get through. But I was just too stupid and too stubborn to quit, so just kept at it.”

Now Lee hopes to provide inspiration for the young Asian actors coming up behind him.

On the set of “Airbender,” which has many Asian actors in its cast, Lee became particularly close with Liu, the 22-year-old Chinese-Indonesian-American actor playing his beloved nephew. Just as Iroh is protective of Zuko, for whom he becomes a surrogate father, Lee said he wanted to nurture Liu.

“Every chance that I got to just sort of give him little pearls of wisdom based on my experiences … I couldn’t help but want to see him succeed,” Lee said. “This kid is a superstar,” he added.

Now that Lee himself is part of two much-loved pop culture franchises, “my cup runneth over,” but he still has entries on his acting bucket list.

“Not to sound greedy, but I’d love to do ‘Star Trek’ because that's filming right in our backyard. I’d love to do a ‘Ghostbusters.’ All those geeky playgrounds I never got a chance to play in. I want to be in a rom-com. I want to be in a Western, the genres that I grew up watching …

“But I’ll take it as it comes and I’m grateful for what I have. And if this is the only thing I ever do again I will be thankful for it because a lot of people don’t get these opportunities.”

[nitewrighter]

While maybe not exactly what you're looking for as it's not really "spooky," a Christmas ghost stories we always listened to when I was growing up was one called "The Shepherd," as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) would always run a recording of it on the radio on Christmas Eve. Both my mom and dad's sides of the family had relatives that served in the airforce in WW2, so they made listening to it a Christmas tradition.

The TL, DR: of it is that an RAF pilot is trying to fly home to Britain from Germany in the 1950s on Christmas eve, but gets caught in heavy fog and his instruments/radio stop working, but then a mysterious other plane appears and "shepherds" him home.

I can't seem to find a pure text version, but here's a youtube rip of the radio recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2_bLEqmBi0

And that mysterious pilot... was Santa.

#SantaTruthers

[productofnfld]

Ghostly Fires in Flatrock

“If I were asked to name my choice of the most fascinating news story of the month,” wrote Western Star columnist Ed Finn, Jr, “I would unhesitatingly nominate the yarn emanating from St. John’s last week concerning the “ghostly fires” which have been plaguing a family in Flatrock.”

The story that piqued Finn’s interest appeared in The Evening Telegram on December 1st, 1954 and concerned the experiences of Mr. & Mrs Mike Parsons, and their 19-year-old daughter Josephine.

According to the Parsons’ reports, objects around the home began to spontaneously combust. In the preceding two weeks a dictionary, a doll, a sack of sugar, a box of books, and more burst into flames.

All of the fires were unexplained; there seemed to be no source of ignition. It got so bad the Parsons family were afraid to sleep at night, not knowing what blaze might confront them next.

The first item to burn was a dictionary. Mrs. Parsons smelled smoke and traced the source to the wood box where she found the burning book. “There were boughs there, too, and dry sticks,” she recalled, “but they weren’t burning. We were puzzled but let the thing go at that.”

‘Letting it go’ proved to be impossible — the fires kept ignighting.

Next to burn was a sack of sugar.

“Mom and I were in the kitchen and I was washing the floor,” recalled daughter Josephine. “Daddy was in the barn milking the cow. Mom and I smelled smoke…I called out to Daddy and Uncle Jim, and they came running running and searched the the house.”

In the corner of the front room they found it. “Our sack of sugar,” recalled Josephine, “Burning. Half-burned away. It smelled. And flames were already at the wall.”

Here, the story gets even stranger.

Vanishing Flames

“And here’s the mysterious thing about it,” Mike Parsons told The Telegram, “I touched the sugar sack. Just touched it with my hands, I tell you. And the fire went out.”

Next a box of religious books burst into flames, damaging the bureau it was resting on. Then a doll owned by the Parsons’ grand-daughter caught fire and scorched the bedroom floor.

The fire department and the RCMP paid a visit to the house.

“I know they have suspicious feelings,” confessed Mr. Parsons, “but they are all wrong.”

“Before you draw any conclusions,” he continued, “I want to tell you this: Nobody is trying to burn down the house. We have not a red cent of insurance for us to collect. Furthermore, I have a basement full of potatoes and turnip representing a hard summer’s work I wouldn’t want destroyed.”

A Poltergeist?

Seemingly convinced, The Telegram’s writers pulled the Encyclopedia Britannica off the shelf and asserted, “Poltergeists (a German term meaning “racketing spirits”) is the thing the Encyclopedia refers to which is the closest to the alleged mysterious breaking out of fires at the Parsons’ home.”

“It can almost invariably shown,” The Telegram quotes, “that there is some agent or person whose presence is essential for the production of the phenomenon.”

The RCMP Report

Ten days after The Telegram’s initial story, a brief follow-up appeared stating “RCMP have concluded investigating the ‘mystery house’ at Flatrock… RCMP’s Inspector Porter have told The Telegram his men have found no proof of the fires’ origin, though they have come to some conclusions.”

If those conclusions were ever reported in the media, I haven’t found them.

More ‘Poltergeists’ in the Press

Strange as it may seem, the ‘Flatrock Incident’ is not the only case of poltergeists appearing in the Newfoundland news.

In December 2013, CBC published a story, “Poltergeist behaviour haunts St. John’s family.” The story relates how a family moved into a 1970s-era home in the east end of St. John’s only to discover strange happenings in the residence. It started with a doll that moved around the house and graduated to jiggling door knobs and self-arranging furniture.

You can read the whole story at CBC.ca.

[secreteviltwin]

im getting pissed with the thing where the CBC insists we should all feel sorry for TFWs who bought their way here by paying for LMIAs that companies are fraudulently submitting at the cost of canada's economy. that's not being scammed that's being the scammer. it's straight up bribery. we are importing a culture of corruption. anyone caught paying for a LMIA should be banned from the country forever actually and anyone selling them should be behind bars

[beigetiger]

So I was at a museum archive and came across a piece of Canadian history that seems actually pretty big??? And I have never heard about it in my LIFE before. So naturally I went straight down a rabbit hole to learn about it.

It’s a show called The Beachcombers and from what I can gather it was about some guy living on the Sunshine Coast and collecting logs that fell off barges and stuff, with him and his buddy trying to outcompete their main rival. Which is such a random thing for a show to be about, but alright.

It had. 19 SEASONS. 387 EPISODES. And each episode was 30 MINUTES LONG. That is 193.5 hours of total runtime. It ran from 1972-1990 where it was discontinued despite its popularity because of budget cuts to CBC (where it was airing). Because it WAS popular, it apparently ran in sixty different countries? Despite being EXTREMELY specific to Canada??

And from WHAT I CAN GATHER, the series actually starred multiple Indigenous characters and was actually not really racist? I’m looking at the cast of characters on Wikipedia and apparently they had Chief Dan George playing someone. This in particular is what caught my interest in this series, because it was really rare for media back in the seventies to not be incredibly racist about indigenous people. I’m going to have to do more research on this, I am FASCINATED.

There was also this little cafe that only existed as a set in the show called Molly’s Reach that I’ve only ever known as an actual cafe, but apparently it only BECAME an actual cafe after the series ended. And it’s still there. It’s been shut down, it’s been on lease for years, but IT’S STILL THERE. And apparently lots of other things related to the show have been spread around the Sunshine Coast.

Like, Canada is a bit of a nothingburger country today. We were even MORE SO then. Vancouver was even more so then. And the SUNSHINE COAST? Don’t even get me started. But somehow, for some reason, this random show about loggers trying to showcase what they can’t about BC Canadian culture got really, really big. And then utterly forgotten about. I need to do more research on this. I have no idea WHERE is a good place to find more information on this, but I have to try.

This was also how I found out that Chief Dan George was an actor.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

When you need to drop off your tech devices for a repair, how confident are you that they won't be snooped on? CBC's Marketplace took smartphones and laptops to repair stores across Ontario — including large chains Best Buy and Mobile Klinik — and found that in more than half of the documented cases, technicians accessed intimate photos and private information not relevant to the repair. Marketplace dropped off devices at 20 stores, ranging from small independent shops to medium-sized chains to larger national chains, after installing monitoring software on the devices. In total, 16 stores were recorded. (At four stores, the tracking software didn't log anything, or the stores didn't appear to turn the devices on.) Technicians at nine stores accessed private data, including one technician who not only viewed photos but copied them onto a USB key. "These results are frightening," said Hassan Khan, associate professor in the school of computer science at the University of Guelph. "It's looking through information, searching for data on users' devices, copying data off the device.... it's as bad as it gets."

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Scanners II: The New Order (Duguay, 1991)

Decided to celebrate Canada Day not by watching a beloved Canadian classic or, god forbid, a movie about Canada (*vomits*), but a not particularly well regarded DTV sequel to a much more famous Canadian movie. If you want to get a sense of exactly how Canadian this is, let us say that if you trimmed the blood and gore from this, it would not look out of place had you caught it on one of our major networks. This has CBC production values. Maybe Space, if you had cable.

To rub in the Cancon factor, the big conspiracy plot here centres around using the Scanners in a dastardly scheme to become… the mayor of Montreal. Okay, they don’t actually say it’s Montreal in the movie, but it was shot there, and the ambitions of the villain palling with municipal politics got a good chuckle out of me.

This time the lead is played by David Hewlett, who has a much more luxurious mane than he sported in his better known (to me) role in Stargate: SG-1 and its follow-up Stargate: Atlantis. So this is the level of star power we’re dealing with. Again, extremely Canadian. On the level of pure expressiveness, he’s certainly an upgrade from Stephen Lack, although one must concede that David Cronenberg made more interesting use of Lack than the fairly conventional portrayal Hewlett turns in here.

Anyway, it sounds like I’m dumping on the movie, but I found it reasonably diverting. I’ve enjoyed other movies by Christian Duguay, and while he doesn’t make this look slicker than its DTV production values, he does direct with a decent amount of verve, especially once he starts piling on the action elements, even if the meager amount of ‘splodin’ heads suggests he was trying to keep costs down. And as I’ve already made comparisons to Canadian TV, this definitely played on the Scream Channel back in the day, so I can’t help but feel a bit of warmth towards this.