Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #245

Episode Date: June 22, 2017

Mike chats with Marc Weisblott of 12:36 about the current state of the media in Canada.

Welcome to episode 245 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. And propertyinthesix.com, Toronto real estate done right. real estate done right. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is Mark Weisblatt from 1236. What do you mean joining

you this week? You do this every day now, Mike. At least this week. Thank you for noticing because one time I missed a week and I got a sarcastic comment on toront TorontoMike.com about a weekly podcast. Eh, Mike? I think I more than made

up for it this week. You're banking the episodes here. I'm glad to be a part. There's another one tomorrow because Macko Jr., Bob Mackowitz Jr. is dropping by tomorrow. So that'll be, let me do this quickly. So, Hebsey came in late last week. Elvis dropped by Saturday.

Wilner, we're going to talk about this in a minute because your ears might have been burning. When Mike Wilner was here on Tuesday, Fred Penner was here yesterday. Now it's Mark Weisblot from 1236. This is Thursday. And Friday will be Bob Makowitz Jr. Yeah, good lineup.

I know Bob going back about 20 years when he was doing game with gentleman Jeff Merrick and George Strombolopoulos. So I'm glad to see Bob back into it with his Mako and Cause podcast. And yeah, what did you want to know about Mike Willner, who was here the other day? Well, first of all, when I was chatting with Mike, were your ears burning? Well, I know Mike going back like 30 years back in high school. I don't think we knew each other very well. And to be honest, if I knew he was going to turn out to be somewhat famous, I might have been nicer to him. So it's safe to say, did you hear his response when I asked him if he knew Mark Weisblatt? It was sort of ambivalent. I mean, I guess it's nice to be remembered.

He didn't really have a lot of deep thoughts about what I was doing, although he mentioned that he'd heard of it or something. That's usually the reaction that you get. Well, he knew you went to Ryerson. Yeah, I guess, University of Toronto. I'm sorry. CIUT, the radio station there. We crossed paths around that time.

But the thing that I found most interesting about his episode, kicking out the jams with his top 10 songs, is that he was completely unapologetic about his taste. There were no concessions in there to any hipsterism. He wasn't pretending like he was listening to Public Enemy back in the 1980s or whatever bour know, whatever bourgeois thing that you claim to have been into to make yourself see more culture. There was no Frank Zappa on his list. Let's put it that way. Yeah.

So totally shameless and completely honest. And in contrast to his brother, Norm Wilner, who I know has been down here, writes for Now Magazine. I'm sure he fashions himself a lefty downtown elitist. So we learned on that episode how Mike is the polar opposite of that to this day. You know, you're right. And I strongly believe you should never apologize for your favorite music. In fact, I try to, whenever somebody in the comments, oh, I don't like any of those songs, like those are weak, weak-ass soft, soft rock songs, like they're like CHFI songs, right, that's what

Wilner seems to be into, but, you know, good on Wilner, like you said, Gilner, no, Gilner, Wilner has no shame, you know, these are the songs I love, and here's why, and I'm glad he didn't have that moment where I gotta cool this up, you know, I need to throw, I have to have some clash in there. And maybe a Ramones tune, you know, like some obscure Zappa song nobody's heard of. No, straight up, that's Wilner. Like even in baseball, right, there are players who want to seem like they're woke, they're ahead of the curve in terms of their walk-up music or cultural references that they drop and things that they relate to. They just don't want to seem like another uncultured athlete who doesn't have the literacy level of the people that are watching the game.

So yeah, Mike Wellner, shameless suburban dad exposed here on Toronto Mike. shameless suburban dad exposed here on Toronto Mike. And if I may say, I love this new series. So we were only two in, but there's endless possibilities. One day you could come in with your 10 jams if you wish.

I love it. I love to sit down with someone, play their 10 favorite songs and hear why they love those songs. It's great fun. But you see, mine would be intellectually dishonest because I think I would go for that revisionism and try to make it seem like I had more contrarian taste than I actually did.

Well, I was deeply embedded. Look, all I did at one point in my life was listen to the radio, every station, every format. I was into everything. Before there was Spotify or any option to just flip around to whatever you wanted. I figured it out on my own. But I wonder if I would come off like a fraud trying to characterize my tastes at a younger age. Yeah. It's a great concept, though.

And one day we should do, if you're up to it, you'd be welcome. I think start with the people who are not so self-conscious about it. Don't forget when Damien Cox gets down here, I don't only want to hear his top ten all-time favorite songs, but we need to learn about

that tweet here. Yesterday was National Selfie Day, and it was a good day to commemorate Damien Cox's Twitter request. Just a selfie from right now is good. It's been over a year. We still haven't found out about it.

Right. I'm looking forward to the answer. If you heard the Elvis episode, we had a good laugh about it, but definitely that will come up. Okay, so that and Ann Romer are my most anticipated Toronto Mike moments to come. Absolutely.

And if Dalton Pompeii can never get healthy enough, I still want to come in and talk to him about his cowboy dad as well. But if you heard yesterday's episode, you heard for the first time in 244 episodes, somebody brought out a guitar and started strumming like it took 244 up i've had ron hawkins in here you know i've had some pretty good musicians and finally out of nowhere fred penner just took out his guitar and started playing and usually when someone breaks out a guitar at a house party that that's the time to shut it down right batting down the hatches. Send everybody home.

But this was Fred Penner, and I realize there was considerable nostalgia, right, from your wife Monica a lot more than yourself. Well, you know why? Because when Fred Penner's place debuts in 85, I'm already like 11 years old. That's a little old for...

My wife, though... You'd have looked a little old for, I realize, my wife though. You'd have looked a little creepy skulking around some kiddie concerts once you were 11, 12 years old. Right. But my wife is seven years younger. So this is right in her wheelhouse, you know, so it made sense. So yeah. And it was great to talk to, just great to talk to Fred because he's so down to earth and you seem to enjoy being here. I only had 45 minutes. At first I was nervous. I'm used to twice that length.

And then I sort of used it. I kind of skipped some fluff stuff and kind of cut to the meat. And it worked out pretty perfectly, I think, in terms of timing. Okay. Because you're always telling horror stories about these guests that you book through PR channels. stories about these guests that you book through PR channels and, you know, people who are a little more famous than ones that you're able to just get down here on their own whenever you want. Most of the time you've had horror stories, but it sounds like Fred was fully amiable and totally into it. And I did speak person to person with Fred before he got to my door, which I think is

my, that's most important to me is I need to have a, uh, some, some contact with the person directly just to know that they know what they're coming to and that they're into it and that it's going to happen and all that. Fred Penner, not a prima Donna.

You heard it here first Toronto Mike. And the man has a great, great beard, but we already know that. I urge everyone listening to become a patron by going to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike. Let's get that right. Toronto Mike and help crowdfund this project. I'm thinking if I get enough money

through the patron account, I might add some kind of a bumper or padding or maybe orange reflective tape or something to this low part of the ceiling. Because yesterday, even though I warned him three times coming down the stairs, I said, you know, I always say, Fred, you're going to have to duck. But it gets worse, I said, because right above the studio is an even lower part of the ceiling. And he's like, oh, yeah, don't worry.

I'm ready. I'm ready. And then he still kind of bumped his head a little bit. And I saw you bumped your head today. I'm sorry. This is my seventh time down here. So one out of seven podcast trips resulted in a bump. But just a little tiff, not a big deal.

So I do need more patrons. For that? So you're specifically raising money for that now. Is that what we're getting at? Because that might be the most important cause of all, right? You don't want your guests to get a concussion on their way in. Things aren't going to work out if you want podcasts with people who are showing up to be on the other side of the mic. Well, could you imagine?

Yeah, they can't bump their head on the way in. This isn't going to work. Dalton Pompei had some concussion issues. I just couldn't take the risk of somebody like Dalton Pompey having a concussion in my basement. That is not acceptable. Now, you, my friend, have another six-pack of Great Lakes beer in front of you. Yeah, and my thing over the last few episodes was that the only beer I was interested in drinking was my complimentary GLB from being down here. But I think this might be the summer that I actually, you know, go to the LCBO and spring for some GLB myself. Because I don't think this six-pack you're giving me is going to sustain me all through the summer.

Here's the pro tip. stain me all through the summer. Here's the pro tip. So I learned this by, I didn't know this, but you cannot charge at the Great Lakes Beer Headquarters, which is the head office is kind of near Royal York and Queensway area. You cannot buy the beer for cheaper than they sell it in LCBO. But the Blonde Lager, for example, which is my wife's favorite beer, they don't sell that in the LCBO. So you could actually pick up a can of cold Blonde Lager at for example, which is my wife's favorite beer, they don't sell that in the LCBO. So you can actually pick up a can of cold Blonde Lager at Great Lakes Beer for, I think it's $2.60. Which to me sounds so

reasonable for a tall boy can of good beer. That's a great price. You can load up on your Blonde Lager there. So here we've got Harry Porter. Is this a Great Lakes beer or a Ben & Jerry's flavor? I can't really tell.

Somewhere in there they plead, like, please don't sue us. I think that's somewhere on the can. And the Sunnyside Session IPA. So this is like a very Toronto-themed beer can. West Toronto, yes. Yeah, representing West Toronto. If the rain isn't coming down too hard, I might even sit by the Great Lake afterwards and drink this outside,

which I realize is illegal behavior. But, you know, here we are in a golden age. Well, they have a patio at the Great Lakes Brewery. Oh, I don't have to go all the way down there. I'm saying that public drinking is more accessible than ever, right? Because you've got all these varieties now that are being sold in Ontario at the liquor store. Heyer's Root Beer spiked with vodka. Oh yeah,

I've seen this. The Pop Shop flavors, a cream soda, lime, Ricky. So I think the entire premise is that you can drink this stuff inconspicuously, and nobody will ever notice that it's not a can of pop. You know, I've never actually felt the need to drink a beer in a public park, but if I had, I think it's very easy. It fits so perfectly inside a large Tim Hortons cup, for example. It's really easy to disguise. I thought if people had the good sense to stick your cold can into the Tim Hortons cup and then drink that. I think Rob Ford was fond of that tactic

in particular. I don't think any cop wants to bust you on a hot day for drinking a beer in a park. So just don't flaunt that you're doing so. Just be discreet. Put it in a paper bag or whatever and they'll leave you be, hopefully. Yeah, I mean, unlike smoking weed, you don't leave you be, hopefully. Yeah, I mean, unlike smoking weed,

you don't leave a trail of smoke behind you. You should be able to get away with it. I'll give it a try, and if I get arrested, I'll be sure to tweet something and let you know. Well, we'll talk to Pete Fowler. Maybe he has some connections. If you have any problems, let me know. PropertyInTheSix.com connections. If you have any problems, let me know. Brian says, Toronto's proposed registration

and licensing system for Airbnb style short-term rentals looks to get the go ahead. Key points will be that short-term rentals be legal for up to three rooms or an entire home in Toronto, as long as it is a person's principal residence. Of note, a short-term rental is defined as one lasting up to 28 days. Brian says all parties seem to be on board and expects it to proceed. So call Brian at 416-873-0292. That's 416-873-0292 to find out more about how this will affect the rental market in Toronto. Did you hear Fred Penner strumming along to this yesterday? That was fantastic. And then it goes a long time. I usually

fade it out when I'm done talking, which I'm going to do right now. But because Fred was so into playing, I wanted to let it like run its natural course. And I think at some point with like 10 seconds left, he's like, I think he was worried it might go on forever. Like what if this is a continuous loop and he'll be playing this for the 45 minutes. So, but that was fun. My friend, I'm going to play a different song, enough of our property in the sixth jingle, but let's start this off with an artist I've seen live in concert, Selena Gomez.

I was walking down the street the other day Trying to distract myself But then I see your face Oh wait, that's someone else Trying to play a coy Trying to make it disappear But just like the Battle of Troy There's nothing subtle here

In my room there's a king-sized space Bigger than it used to be If you want, you can rent that place. Call me and I'm an idiot. Even if it's in my dreams. Now this is not one of your jams.

I gotta remember what show this is. Look, it's Backing Track from the Talking Heads. Psycho Killer. Did you catch on to that? 100%. Yeah, you can't miss it. That's Psycho Killer in the back Heads, Psycho Killer. Did you catch on to that? A hundred percent. Yeah, you can't miss it. That's Psycho Killer in the back. Yeah.

Psycho Killer. So I have high hopes for this as a song of the summer, even though it's a little bit subtle. But I think when you want to talk about the music you were weaned on, I got into the Talking Heads mostly because of 1050 Chum listening as a youngster. When Once in a Lifetime was on the Chum chart. Same as it ever was. Really subversive thing to have at the time. Right.

But from the Remain in Light album, there was that. at the time. Right. But from the Remain in Light album, there was that. There was Cross-Eyed and Painless and later on the album Speaking in Tongues, which was also a big Chum one. So, you know, here we are like 35 years later

and the legacy continues. I noticed this Selena Gomez song entered on the Chum FM chart. So the radio station does not have very much to do with what it was three or four decades ago. Of course, Roger Ashby is still there going for the Jubilee year, right? You know, 50 years with the station. Long may he run. And the company, but not a lot of

lineage so i i think that that selena gomez song is a a great one for us old folks to kind of tether uh the pop music today with with what it once was i'm gonna play a clip of an old game show you call it a game show i guess guess it's like a family-oriented game show that people of a certain age, like yourself and myself, will know very well. But let's get a taste of Just Like Mom. Mom to get ready to

go out for the evening. An hour. An hour, she said. How about that? Right on the money. Oh, these kids were terrific. Moms, what terrific kids you have. You know what we're going to do? We're going to come back with a taste test,

and hopefully one of our families will go to Disney World in Florida, so don't go away. There's a flashback for you. I like the audience clapping, where very audibly you can hear it's like seven adults. That's Asian Court, right? We've learned that's Asian Court, the CFTO studio in Asian Court. A legendary place. I mean, this is like one of the great cultural monuments of Scarborough, among other things.

The movie Network was filmed there. The scenes inside a TV station, as the story goes. Uncle Bobby. But it was partly because with Network, right? You're familiar with Network? I mean, did you ever see it? Yeah, I was a bit young for it, but I believe I've seen it. I believe I caught up lately.

Yeah, so, I mean, it's such a seminal movie that there was an entire book about it written a couple years ago by Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times. But, yeah, they filmed the studio scenes from the movie, right? It's at the Agent Court television temple. And the reason they did it is because it was such a provocative movie that they couldn't find an American broadcaster that would give their studios over to this. I mean, you know, scenes that ended in suicide and everything,

mad as hell and can't take it anymore. I thought you you know, scenes that ended in suicide and everything. Mad as hell and can't take it anymore. That's the famous line. I thought you might do the impression. Not quite there yet. That's the line I think from this movie that perseveres and you still see in various memes or whatever you still see it referenced

I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore. Okay, but yeah, Uncle Bobby you mentioned. Only because Retro Ontario told the great story of the trailer where Uncle Bobby would go into the trailer with the mothers of the children who were coming to see Uncle Bobby, which is good because I've heard stories of the UK and stuff where maybe it might be the kids, so I'm kind of glad it's the moms going in the trailer with Uncle Bobby.

Uncle Bobby didn't have a happy ending, right? I seem to remember we talked about it here a few episodes ago. He ended up being a school bus driver, right, and moved to northern Ontario. And here was a guy that certainly contributed to making, like, millions and millions of dollars for Baton Broadcasting, the Bassett family, the whole thing that was eventually folded into CTV and Bell Media. And there were no residuals, right? There was no compensation for everything that he ever did. There was really nothing left for him once it was over, when his kiddie show host thing

came to an end. So in Agincourt, that building was a bit of a destination for my family, some outings. I remember a taping of the Bobby Vinton show that was out there. Did you know there was such a thing as a Bobby Vinton show taped in Agent Court? A series of variety shows that were all produced by the same people. Sonny and Cher, that might have been the biggest one. There was also the Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show. What these programs had in common was not only the same production team,

but also the supporting players were mostly the same cast of characters. So Billy Vann, a name that seems to come up down here a lot. He was a regular player in all these shows that they produced out of there. Glenn Warren Entertainment and, you know, got some degree of American exposure. So a pioneering place. Super Dave was taped there to some degree, I think. Super Dave. And wasn't he degree, I think. Super Dave. And wasn't he on Bazaar?

Bazaar also, yeah, with John Biner. Can't forget that. Just a heads up, Ziggy's coming over next week, and she's got a story about her short-lived career on Bazaar and an issue she had with John Biner. Okay, well, Circus was another show. Do you remember Circus? that was like the opposite of bizarre in terms of the style of the show right where they had a whole big top effect going on

there with a couple of hosts who were doing a a really lame canadian donnie and marie impression can i tell you what i remember from bizarre inar in addition to Super Dave Osborne? I remember a curvy young woman, a blonde curvy woman, would take off her t-shirt, but she had many, many t-shirts on. And I remember this. The gag was she'd remove a t-shirt and she'd have another one underneath.

And this would go on like 18 times. She would keep removing shirts but have one underneath. And young Mike found that very titillating. Very titillating. Yeah, I guess before the age of being able to see anything you wanted on the internet. Very Benny Hill for me. Try to explain this today to a teenage boy.

Oh, yeah. See if they understand how this managed to excite you. Okay, but the reason we're talking about Just Like Mom is because there's talk of a return of Just Like Mom. Yeah, not talk. I actually found it in a roundup of programming that was getting money from Bell, right? They have to allocate a certain amount of money to Canadian productions. And they are on the list of programs with some funding

for a show called Just Like Mom and Dad. Right, because you need to be inclusive now. You can't just say Just Like Mom. Gender parity, maybe even beyond Mom and Dad. Right, because you need to be inclusive now. You can't just say just like mom. Gender parity, maybe even beyond mom and dad. Maybe there's other parental designations that haven't been invented yet. But this is not some sort of progressive leftist program here. In fact, it's being produced for Yes TV.

Oh, and that's the old Christian television. Owned by Crossroads Communications, so it's going to air there. Also, the channel, I didn't even know there was such a channel, for the Brigham Young University TV station, cable network. That's Mormon, right? Yeah. I think so. Steve Young went there anyways. We can access that channel around here, but it's just as well. And it begs the question about who's going to want to sit and watch a show just like Mom in 2018? Is there a constituency for this kind of program where you uh kids that you've never heard of before and their

their parents uh you know competing in little challenges maybe having that bake off i think it said something about about trivia the whole premise of the show rip off of the newlywed game um and i'm sure that was a ripoff of something else. Something, sure. A question would be asked by the host from the mother or the child about what their preferences were, any quirks or habits or thoughts that were in their mind you would answer, and then the other person would come out and see if they had the matching response. Now, were you on just like Mom? Were you one of those kids being asked the questions by Fergie Oliver?

Yeah, I was a contestant on the show in 1981. Wow, did you win? The second season of the show. No, I lost it. And here's the thing. My mom was on the show twice. So my brother, a couple years younger, was on the year before.

And Fergie Oliver was the producer of the show, but it was a different host. Oh. A guy named Steve Young, who was... Coincidentally, not the Brigham Young Steve Young. No, no, no. He is like a sticky Canadian actor. So you're telling me

there's a host other than Fergie Oliver? In the first season, the lost tapes, but Fergie was definitely there. He was the announcer at the time. Because it was his wife who was Miss Canada. He was a creator of the show.

Yeah, his wife, Kathy, she was involved from the outset, but Fergie was not the original host. Am I revealing something to you that you didn't know anything about? I had no idea. But you saw Just Like Mom for years and years and years. And I saw Fergie all the time. And what was the appeal of the show?

Why would anybody sit there and watch this thing? I don't know. Do you remember? I mean, why? Why? Because the kids on the show, speaking for myself, were like completely incoherent. What do you have to say as a 7, 8, 9, 10-year-old that needs to be broadcast on television, especially in this unscripted kind of context? kind of context. And I think it's because of that, that the premise was so awful,

that we ended up with a situation a few years ago where Fergie's archives were dug up, and somebody put together a montage, a super cut of great Fergie moments, cuddling up to the contestants on the show, and put all together, I don't think he came out looking quite as credible as he wanted his legacy to be. You remember that, right? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Is it on your blog even?

No, because I didn't think it was fair, because you do these super cuts out of context and they even had parts where they would slow down Fergie's voice a little bit to make him sound like really like,

well, the title, I believe, is like Canadian Game Show Pedophile or something like that. Like, it seemed really unfair so I didn't share it.

I think Fergie Oliver got a raw deal with that. And he had such a legacy, too, with CTV. And how about those Blue Jays? Sports, broadcasting. Now, Fergie's daughter, I think, I would guess it's also Kathy's daughter. One of the things that happened to them, like so many showbiz couples,

is they couldn't make it work. And I know at one point they were divorced. At least that's what I heard. Anyway, I'm trying to remember where I would have gotten this information from. But Fergie's daughter, Carrie Oliver, is a host on the Canadian Shopping Channel. I did not know that. The one owned by Rogers. So if you look through Carrie Oliver's social media, there are, in fact, photos of Fergie from the last couple of years, including at the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame last summer.

So Fergie looks alive and well, just like Fergie. It looks like he survived his little YouTube scandal. As for me, I'm not sure I came out of the experience unscarred. For me, I'm not sure I came out of the experience unscarred. As far as I can recall, I mean, it was the only time that I was ever like front and center on television. If anything, I found the experience a little bit too traumatizing. I don't remember all the questions. Game TV, a Canadian channel, that's the one that the YouTube clips of Fergie came from because they have the little logo, the bug in the corner. So they had a bunch of episodes that they were rotating.

I managed to figure this out looking at the schedule. It was only like 50 episodes that they were showing. But one of them was my episode. And I wrote to them and I said, can I get a DVD or something? Is there any way to get a copy of this without having to go through the trouble of, I don't know, subscribing to the channel and recording and all this stuff? And they said, no, no, they couldn't do that. But I do know for a fact that at least in this century, the Just Like Mom episode that I am on has aired at least several times on Canadian television.

But I haven't been able to see it. So there's the bake-off section towards the end. You remember this, right? The kids would cook something. You had to guess which one was your kids. I seem to remember tuna boats as the recipe that was made, although I might be confusing that with when my brother was on. On top of that, the big prize at the end,

you'd spin a wheel. And we heard it in the clip, right? A trip to Disneyland, Disney World, one of the above. And that was a big prize, except you weren't guaranteed to win it. You only won it if you spun the wheel and it landed in the right place. So I guess they figured out the odds in the Canadian game show tradition to have to give away as few prizes as possible. But somewhere in there, the consolation prize was a page of coupons—I still remember this—to get free pop from the pop shop. Like, that was what they gave you to take home, right? These cases of 12 bottles of pop, which in the early 80s probably cost, I don't know, like $3 maybe?

Maybe $2.50? I don't know, whatever they charge. And the pop shop was really a great innovation in the sense that people remember it fondly. As I said before, I mean they're making this spiked pop shop drink and advertising it on billboards. So it must have some prominent place in the life of people in southern Ontario. So that's what I was left with. For all the trouble I went through, just like, you know,

12 cases of 12 bottles from the pop shop. That was what they were willing to give you to take home. And now you get beer for coming on. I've gotten more beer from coming on this podcast than a CTV game show was able to give me in pop. I almost forgot. There's a pint glass from Brian Gerstein at propertyinthesix.com.

So that also goes home with you. I should have given you that right after I gave you the beer, but better late than never. Oh, yeah, this will be good when I go to drink illegally by the lake after. And if you play your cards right, if you play your cards right and you come here every quarter, as you have been, you can get the whole set. Like every time you get a new pint glass from propertyinthesix.com.

By the way, we're going to move on to print, and then I have some music. Some more music. We did some Selena Gomez. I have some Weekend and some more music we're going to play and talk about. But first, I ask you this. Have you heard about Casper Mattresses? You listen to a lot of podcasts, right?

I listen to every podcast. I have a thousand podcast subscriptions going on right now. It might actually be more, but I mentioned here on a previous episode, I mean, I'm trying to parlay this into something to be like the most prolific, prodigious podcast subscriber in all of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the world. It's constant. It's never ending.

And for me, a media junkie, this is like the greatest thing that's ever happened. On top of it all, endorsing the Overcast podcast app. You can hear three times the speed. For iOS. Yeah, they did an upgrade, and now you get three times the speed. And if you do it on smart speed, it goes up to three and a half times the speed. And then I sound really funny. Yeah, but not every show works at that length.

So it's usually double. And then Wilner's tunes and Hebsey's tunes sound like the chipmunks. Yeah, but you get used to it somehow. So this is how I can, like, wake up in the morning and roll. And, you know, like in eight minutes, I've absorbed everything Jesse Brown has to say about the state of Canada land. So yeah, I need to take it all in. And this is the golden age of all of it happening.

Now, let me tell you about Casper mattresses. An in-house team of engineers spent thousands of hours developing the Casper. It combines supportive memory foams for a sleep surface that's got just the right sink and just the right bounce. Plus, its breathable design sleeps cool to help you regulate your temperature through the night. The Casper is an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. And buying a Casper mattress is completely risk-free. Hear this. From Casper, you get free delivery and free returns. So they'll deliver to anywhere in

Canada in the U.S. for free. And you can try it for 100 nights. They call it the 100-night home trial. And if you're not satisfied after 100 nights of sleeping on the Casper mattress, they come and pick it up at your place for free. So if you don't love it, they pick it up and refund you every penny. If you want to get $50 off, $50 towards any mattress, go to casper.com slash Toronto Mike and use the promo code toronto mike terms and conditions apply that's your first terms and conditions apply on this podcast isn't it once in a while there's a small print but in podcasts it just means saying it when you hear these ads on the radio where they have the legal and they do it really fast you can hear they're saying how is that legal or on tv you see the terms and conditions are in a font size.

Like it's impossible to actually read. How is that legal? Okay, well, when I'm listening back to this, I'll speed it up to four or five or six times the speed and we'll be able to get that effect. Okay, we covered radio briefly with Selena Gomez and we covered television with Just Like Mom. Let's talk a bit about print here.

Now, again, as is always the challenge with your episodes, getting through everything in our allotted time is difficult. So I'm going to ask you to speak twice as fast in real time. So we've got to zip through this. Let's talk first. Please tell us about the appropriation prize controversy, which I read all too much about. Did you read too much about it?

On Twitter. This is something that I learned from coming over here. To what degree did any of this stuff register with you, right? You'd see references to it all over the place on social media. Well, I follow you. That's the thing. Okay, but you're not

fully embedded in the downtown Toronto media elite. Neither am I. But I know who the players are, and I follow all of them. And it's part of the job putting together the 1236 newsletter every day, right, that I essentially become sick and tired of everyone with all of their political posturing, no matter what perspective they have on things. But I would say that appropriation prize was kind of the key word for everything that went down in the Canadian media during the spring of 2017.

It started because of an editorial written in the Writers' Union of Canada magazine, something that you and I would never read. Not only that, we wouldn't even know there was a Writers' Union of Canada magazine. We wouldn't have even known there was a Writers' Union of Canada. But they put out some sort of periodical, sent to their members. But they put out some sort of periodical, sent to their members, and the editor-in-chief of the magazine, a guy who I've known of for a long time, Hal Needs Vecchi. And as the editor of the magazine, he had to write some sort of overture, preface, foreword, editor's note. And this was an issue dedicated entirely to indigenous writing. So, you know, he tried to bring his own voice to what he was writing. I guess that's what he usually would do in these opening notes. But he made a bit of a mistake by characterizing his

point in terms of cultural appropriation. And here he was introducing all these writers. I mean, here's a guy who was absolutely benevolent. He's the guy reading through the slush pile of all these up-and-coming fiction writers. I mean, you've got to wade through a lot of crap to put together a magazine like this, you know, people's fictional stories. I wouldn't wish that on anyone except for him. Hal was like the person in town who was the most enthusiastic about doing this sort of work, you know, supporting supporting absolutely everyone.

He's been running this thing, Broken Pencil and these canzine festivals. He's been running this thing Broken Pencil and these canzine festivals. Every outsider, every freak, every weirdo, an absolute champion of self-expression no matter where they were coming from. This snarky angle that he brought to his editorial suggesting that everyone should use their imagination and try to win the appropriation prize. Right. This stirred a bit of outrage all because of his bad choice of words in what he was saying. And what it was was just him encouraging people to be creative and expressive. You're reading the Writers Union of Canada magazine. You know, if you're looking at this thing, you're in the business of making stuff up. And here he was trying to promote the idea of exploring all of this.

But again, bad choice of words. He admitted it himself. He resigned from his position. So he bad choice of words. He admitted it himself. He resigned from his position. So he resigned. He resigned. He admitted it. And because of that, there was a thing on Twitter, you know, about, well, initially, whether or not it was appropriate for him to have resigned, whether there should have

been that sort of firestorm. Did he really do anything all that bad? You know, was he really, you know, some sort of evil racist in the ranks who was, you know, looking to cause people harm? Anything but. Nonetheless, there was an equity task force. You know, they put out all sorts of demands, representation in the Writers' Union of Canada. We can't have somebody like this breaking through with their colonial beliefs.

from the right wing of Canadian thought found this all pretty ridiculous and an affront to free speech because isn't this really the sort of thing that becomes like a totalitarian outlook on everything? And they were on about it on Twitter to the point where Ken White, the original editor-in-chief of the National Post, proposed that they should actually raise money for a real appropriation prize. So he managed to wind up a lot of his National Post associates on Twitter to contributing to this idea of an appropriation prize. And this was happening in public and everybody could see it. Prize, and this was happening in public and everybody could see it, and a lot of people found this sort of offensive and ridiculous, out of bounds. What exactly—what's he advocating here? There's only room for so many voices. Are you saying that you want to encourage and promote the idea of stealing other people's

culture? Is this what you're in for now? That wasn't the intention at all. It was just another bit of snark that was misread through the fog of Twitter and interpreting everything, the glibness that ends up happening on there. It ended up making a bunch of people look really bad because they all agreed to contribute to this appropriation price. So as a result of that, we got somebody at the CBC, Steve Latterante, who was demoted from a role that he had in the new national newscast where he would be the managing editor because he said,

I'm in for $100. I'm contributing to the appropriation price. And this was enough for him to be admonished in the workplace and to be called insensitive at the CBC for what he was doing. He himself admitted that it was inappropriate and out of bounds to go along with this thing. Jonathan Kaye, editor-in-chief of The Walrus, who was in charge there and based on documentation, was getting into all sorts of conflicts with the publisher over there. He also was tweeting against the whole thing that had gone down, that cultural appropriation was maybe not so bad as people were making it out to be. And he decided to use that as his opportunity to step down from the walrus. So that was another

incident that happened. Then we had some executives at Rogers Publishing, where Ken White used to work, who also offered to contribute to this appropriation prize. People involved with Maclean's Magazine. And then they had to get on their knees and apologize about the fact that maybe they shouldn't have treated this like a joke. So now at Rogers, where you've got these magazines that are trying to figure out how to navigate, you know, the modern media age and executives over there who've now got to wear this thing. So just a mess all around. I don't know if you could follow any of that, but that was my got to wear this thing. So just a mess all around. I don't know if you could follow any of that, but that was my attempt to sum it up.

It sounds to me like a bonafide clusterfuck. I think that's what that is. Okay. Yeah, that would be it. So appropriation prize, the word of the moment for spring 2017 in the Canadian media. And as a result, a lot of huffing and puffing about representation, right? And who gets to have a voice? Nowhere else do you see this played out in so much detail as the Toronto Star.

I mean, they absolutely fall for this stuff over there. Column after column after column after column. Compounded with the fact that Desmond Cole, columnist at the Toronto Star, announced his resignation, that he was no longer going to be writing for them, right? Because they spelled out these terms and conditions that he couldn't be an activist at the same time he was a columnist in the Star. You followed some of this, I guess. I did, yes. So, you know, not only does Desmond step away from the star

of his own volition, and he's got other things on the go, a lot of his activism to do with the police board. But he's involved with Black Lives Matter. Yeah, I mean,

he says he's not a member, right? But I heard him, I saw him chanting at a police, the discussions about having the police presence in the schools.

I saw him protesting that meeting. Yeah. And he would say he's not doing it on behalf of Black Lives Matter, that it's his own cause. It's his own thing. And he's got a book coming out. But just column after column after column in the Toronto Star, you know, living the fantasy, I think, of what at least some people in the Canadian media think that like a newspaper should be, right? That you just like, it's like a big brother house where you incubate all of these writers together. And instead of, you know, finding things out, going different places, talking to people,

you just kind of, you know, turn into a feedback loop where every column is about another column. Every, you know, every action is a reaction, that nothing gets published that really means anything to anybody because in this time of all these layoffs and cutbacks and losing money everywhere, advertising revenue not being what it used to be. This seems to be like the platonic ideal about what media is and what it could be. We just write about ourselves. We just ruminate about one another, right? We just tell each other how woke we are, and we don't step out of our comfort zone to think about anything.

So tell me about this $350 million handout that newspapers are looking for. What does that mean? Well, maybe it means a little bit more reporting and journalism that involves leaving one Yonge Street once in a while because the whole thing that happened over the course of the spring was Post Media, other newspaper companies, having to make it clear that they needed a handout to survive, that they weren't going to stick around if they didn't get some sort of stimulus, some cash infusion from somewhere. if they didn't get some sort of stimulus, some cash infusion from somewhere. So there was a report from a public policy forum called The Shattered Mirror,

and it outlined different recommendations about how the federal liberal government can keep the media alive in Canada. So the other day they made the official ask, and they said $350 million a year is what it will cost to keep all these status quo media organizations sustainable. That, you know, we'll do something on par to what you have now in other Canadian media industries. Even Canadian magazines get this kind of subsidy. And now let's extend it to newspapers. We can no longer count on classified ads. The print advertising just isn't there. We're going to define this more as a public service. What do you think of that? The whole idea of government money propping up newspapers, and if you're writing or editing for one, that you will at least indirectly be getting paid by the government.

Well, I can hear loose skeezes in my head right now. It's like you've got to let, sometimes with these things, you need to let nature take its course. And if things need to move online, the National Post, you know, is cutting Mondays in favor of being more online. It's called evolution, right? This is evolution, baby, as Pearl Jam once sang.

Okay, well, if it's a level playing field of the Canadian media, if people who are producing television, radio, magazines, any sort of artistic expression out there, Canadian books, Canadian theater, if there's always some level of a government subsidy involved, then why shouldn't those behind the newspapers go along with it? really able to sustain itself without that assistance, is a certain editorial freedom being taken away if you bring the government money into it more than before? Will this government money mean more columns by Lee McLaren on breastfeeding other people's children? That's all part of the package, right?

A lot of people that have taken money from government agencies, especially in music, say that. If you don't have proof that what you're putting out there is popular, if the stimulus money doesn't go to things that people actually want to consume, then there's really no point in giving it out. So I think those editorial products, the journalists, the columnists, the personalities that are already out there, they're probably also going to want to benefit from this because that's

what people are going to click. Those are the personalities that attention is being paid to. So, you know, Liam McLaren, which you mentioned, I mean, that was something else from the spring. I think that was also a very curious example of where things are at in the newspaper industry. Do you remember that column? I did. I think you might have shared it because it got deleted quickly, right? party. She ended up in a room upstairs where Michael Chong's baby was in a bassinet, and she had some curiosity about what it would be like to breastfeed. She, at the time, didn't have any children of her own, and that she actually gave it a try, but then she was startled when Michael

Chong came into the room and noticed, and she had to kind of readjust herself and apologize for the incident. So the fact that this made it into the Globe and Mail. Yeah, it was published and then pulled quickly. But of course, once it's published, even for a couple of seconds, somebody's got to archive some cash copy or something because I did see it.

You linked to it and I read it. I've read this. My first thought on this, by the way, is that that's not called breastfeeding. Like breastfeeding. Well, and I read it. I've read this. My first thought on this, by the way, is that that's not called breastfeeding. Breastfeeding... Well, yeah, I know, but the headline of the column was, I tried to breastfeed. And, yeah, as soon as something...

I mean, she's not lactating. Yeah, as soon as something like this happens, you've got a few characters on Twitter who are insisting that there's something misogynist about the way this was being portrayed. No. This was a regrettable thing

that managed to be published online for a little bit. I mean, it got so much attention that you would think it was on the front page of the print newspaper. Was there any fallout for her? Was there any fallout for her, I guess is what I'm wondering. Yeah, they said she was suspended for a week. These things do blow over, and they're generally forgotten.

I think if your job is to create content, right, you're guaranteed to come up with the occasional misstep. about what was happening here, was the fact that the Globe and Mail, which presents itself as a transparent operation with its own public editor and different standards and practices that they like to apply to journalism, that they would print something like this or at least get to the point where it showed up online for a few minutes without somebody intervening to ask the question about whether this is a little bit out of bounds. Maybe this is confessing to some sort of illegal behavior that's a lot more antisocial than drinking

in the park or something like that. As a parent, I would be angry if somebody picks up my baby and decides to have the baby suckle their breasts. Like, this is a very bizarre thing to do, but it's even more bizarre to write about it. I think if it happened and Michael Chong and you are okay with this or whatever, it's very interesting. Not only does she write about it, but it actually did get through all those layers

and was published. Yeah, I don't think anybody was okay with it. The baby in question would now be like around 13 years old. I think it was figured out. And here, you know, Michael Chong, he was maybe the most earnest of all the conservative leadership candidates. You know, he was certainly seen as like their greatest hope as far as being sort of centrist

to move the party, you know, away from Stephen Harper. So, you know, at the same time, he's trying to make this run for political prominence. He probably doesn't want to distract. He's got this hanging over him. So he, you know, there was silence from Leah and you heard nothing from the Globe. And, you know, publicly they didn't really explain anything that was going on. And, you know, it leaked out a bit about the suspension, but there was no statement made. Just a strange situation.

Needless to say, I loved every single minute of it. That was the one 1236 newsletter that I put out when this happened where the entire newsletter was dedicated to this. Like every item in there, I had seven or eight different stories that were focused on how people were reacting to Leah McLaren's breastfeeding column. So look, I mean, I'm trying to make some sort of moral judgment, but I think it ranks way up there in spring 2017 as one of those incidents that just people couldn't stop talking about. And how did this thing happen? You know, how do we stumble into this? How do the parties involved deal with it? What's the fallout? What's the aftermath?

involved deal with it? What's the fallout? What's the aftermath? I mean, Leah is still writing for the newspaper. She's been there for, I think, 17, 18 years at this point. And there seems to be enough people who expect to read her in there. So, you know, all this judgment and, you know, this outside Twitter ranting and raving about who gets to be a columnist and who deserves a voice. Well, a lot of it is based on a kind of incumbency. So at the same time, people are wondering, why doesn't the Globe and Mail have like an indigenous columnist? Why isn't there a face, a voice in there, right, that's reflecting what's going on here? Like, why is there, you know, nobody completely dedicated to covering this stuff that you can think of?

Instead, we end up with Liam McClaren writing about breastfeeding a politician's baby. Sorry, attempting to breastfeed a politician's baby. And, you know, how does this happen? How does this work? What is this for? Here at a time when there was so much indecision about where everything is going to go, that this kind of incident can occur and make people wonder, like, what is the worth of this kind of columnist?

Why does somebody get paid for doing this sort of thing? And we realize to some extent it's because they're a familiar face in the newspapers. They do surveys, right? I mean, they find out people want to read this. Liam McLaren column. So they keep on coming. She's still there every week doing her thing in the Globe, writing elsewhere, and as far as I know, not commenting any further on this unfortunate incident. Well, speaking of articles that kind of cause a stir in the Twittersphere, if you will,

we bought a Crack House article, which I read. That got, I mean, that's still going, right? It was going at least until yesterday. So the entire month that it was on the newsstands, because there's a new print issue of Toronto Life out today. So we bought a crack house. Yeah, it was originally printed in the magazine. And full disclosure that I work with St. Joseph Media, which publishes Toronto Life.

And with 1236, there's some overlap in terms of who is involved. So, you know, they print this article in the magazine, and it gets no particular attention online, right? It's just in print, you know, delivered to subscribers. You know, people are reading it at home on their own, outside of social media. And about two and a half weeks later, it made its internet debut. It showed up online, the whole text of the story, which itself was fascinating because you would think if something like this was published, if it was out there in print, that there would be enough of a critical mass that you would have heard a little something about it. But I think it goes to show you that there are entirely different audiences

reading a print magazine these days compared to the ones that see it on the website. So, you know, if it's not digital, it's not designed to go viral. You can't get the Reddit links. You can't get the Twitter links. Like the whole concept, like you got to read this, click, see it kind of. Yeah. And here's what you also don't get.

You don't get the hate reading. You don't get people that are looking through the story and dissecting it, you know, completely on the premise that it's a ridiculous piece of work. Like, tell me if I, maybe I missed it, but is the kerfuffle because they're going, wah, wah, poor me. the kerfuffle because they're going wow wow poor me meanwhile you know they were able to they had they owned another property downtown like a oh it's it's a smaller us and the two kids whatever had to go to the condo we have downtown while we fixed up this crack house we bought like is it essentially like dude i got like i got real problems i don't i can't go live in my downtown condo while you renovate my Parkdale crack house. I just bought it on the cheap. Yeah, I think there was that, a little bit of

a perception that the people that were featured in this story, this woman, Catherine Jayhon, that she wrote something for Cottage Life magazine that was a similar kind of story about buying a fixer-upper cottage. And this couple had different real estate holdings. But yeah, it was the husband, Julian Humphreys, like his dream that he found this cheap mansion in Parkdale that came with a catch. And the whole idea is that it was currently being used as a crack house. So it brings up all sorts of issues about how do you treat the fact that there are marginalized people who are living on a property you just bought? Like how do you react to that? How do you have to show by the fact that you're moving in, that you want to turn this into your gentrified estate for your upper middle class family? So there was an element of that, I think, being cruel to the history of Parkdale, which was once a place that a lot of people in Toronto totally dreaded,

right, through the 70s, 80s, 90s. Yeah, absolutely. It was just an area that you wouldn't go to. It was sketchy. It was the wrong side of the tracks. Now we'd like to think that there's a lot more compassion in society for people who are dealing with addiction and mental health, and that maybe if you acquire a property with the idea of renovating it,

that you should be a little more civilized in how you treat the people who were renting it out before. These guys are tone deaf, essentially. Yeah, so that was definitely a part of it, and along with that was the details that were chronicled in the story about having to deal with these different contractors who were working for cash, and you'd meet them in a coffee time and have to negotiate different things with them, about how the whole dynamic of the neighborhood was responding to the fact that these people wanted to move in. And then I think in the end, they wrote it was like happily ever after. And, you know, they're very excited about the fact that their house has like tripled in value from the point where they bought it. So there were all sorts of things to pick on here with the story.

And it escalated to the point where like the couple in the story had to respond. So it was like two or three weeks later, the husband portrayed in the story, this guy, Julian Humphreys, a life coach, decides that now he's going to have his say. What he posted on his website was 10,400 words, like triple the length of the original article, detailing every little thing in his head about what happens surrounding this story. And a lot of it was him being defensive about the fact that, you know, he doesn't come from privilege. I mean, I left out before part of it, again, that people were ranting about, you know, assailing this couple for the fact they inherited some money, you know, so he has to

outline that, you know, he doesn't come from privilege, that they worked their way up to do all of this, and, you know, they're well-meaning, and, you know, they weren't out to hurt anybody, and at the same time, he went after the editors at Toronto Life, claiming that they changed the tone of the story. They rewrote what his wife, Catherine, had to say about things. They made her out to seem more demonic than she actually is. And anybody involved with Toronto Life magazine knows that this could not be entirely true because they have pretty rigid standards over there about how they fact check and do things journalistically. I can say this firsthand. So, you know, the accusations he was making that like they conspired to make his family look bad. It didn't really play very

well. I mean, you know, you submit an article that goes through an editing process. And if it's in a magazine like that, you know, it's pretty rigorous, like rewriting sentences and paragraphs. You know, the assumption is if somebody is a professional writer, that they understand how this works and that it's not about manipulating their words or making them out to be different than they actually want to be. And the author tweeted something saying that she was so excited to get her first marquee story in a major magazine that she was blind to the fact that they were changing around the meaning of what she wanted to write.

A lot of this is really hard to believe because they didn't react like this when the article originally came out in print, right? Right, right, right. As I said, nobody commented on it online until it showed up in a digital form. And when it finally did, here they had to be on the defensive and they were trying to spin this thing. This guy, Julian, getting into all these Twitter fights. Just like, no wonder he's a life coach, right?

He seemed to enjoy all the masochism of getting in the ring with all these people who were taking shots at him. And then the story came to an abrupt halt somewhere between Wednesday and Thursday. Julian deleted his website, not just the post, the entire website. Catherine took her tweet offline, and I think they would just like to live happily ever after. They're going off the grid. Not in a world where they're fighting all day on Twitter about their

article that's now off the newsstands, probably forgotten about forever, although people will, I think, remember that ridiculous article in Toronto Life. It'll be part of the Toronto Tour. This was the crack house that was bought in the article. Yeah, well, I mean, gentrification is a big issue

in the fact that it creates a lot of clashes. At the same time now, we've got a rent strike going on in Parkdale with tenants alleging that their landlord is, you know, going through different hoops to try and make people move out. Yeah, get them out so you can triple that rent. Yeah, not making repairs and how this is really an affront to the whole legacy of the neighborhood that they're in by the fact that this was a safe space for people that were on the outside of society. At the same time, though, what do you do?

People want to live there. They want that proximity, right, to the urban life. It's a good location. I was born at St. Joseph's Hospital right there on the cusp, if you will, of Parkdale. And I know the area quite well. My kid played softball at Sorenen Park for a while. Like, it's really close to downtown. It's a great part of kind of you're close to the waterfront.

Like, it's a really cool location close to Hyde Park. But you end up with these arguments from people that say, you know, we want to live in Toronto when it's becoming more and more expensive. Well, Parkdale is not all of Toronto. No. I mean, if you just fell off the turnip truck and you believe that a city

is supposed to be this specific thing, then maybe you'd get a nosebleed if you went to a different part of town. I fully support the rights of people to live where it's desirable, where they get the amenities that they like and they are able to live around the other stereotypes that they are friendly with and everything is at their doorstep.

But sprawl is a genuine thing. It happens to everyone. So when you hear somebody ranting about the fact that there's nowhere affordable in Toronto to live, you have to wonder what their concept of Toronto is. Because there are plenty of apartments on different subway lines that are a whole lot cheaper than what these landlords in Parkdale want to charge. Absolutely. You're right. It all depends on what you define as the city. So you're invested here in New Toronto, right? And, you know, on Lakeshore, there's a lot of cheaper rental units along Lakeshore,

as you see these. And I know for a very brief period of time, I lived near Eglinton and, like, Eglinton and Islington, Eglinton and Kipling area for like two years of my life. And there the rent was very reasonable. So when you hear about these rents, it's these downtown core prices. But if you actually don't mind, you know, jumping on a TTC bus or whatever, it can be far more reasonable. But look, I mean, we really get a vision here about what people value within a

city, right? So Hamilton is now being lauded as a place that you might want to move to, because they've come up with all the different accoutrements that people value, consider, you know, to be part of the gentrifier experience, right? So we need that place where we can get like a activated charcoal soft serve ice cream that makes us feel like we're part of something by being around here. We need like an artisanal coffee shop. We'll line up too, damn it. Yeah, going to be the kind of place where we can go for brunch and hang around. So the more of those places that sprout up, I mean, you know, the other side of that is the higher your rent is going to be because that's what happens within a big city.

And, you know, Parkdale this past spring has become a flashpoint for a lot of that activity. So I think this couple in Toronto Life had a bit of bad timing, too, that their story showed up at the same time that there were all these clashes going on in Parkdale. Now, speaking of digital trouble, let's do some quick hits on these, because I want to get into that weekend song. So a couple of quick hits. Firstly, because I want to get into that weekend song. So a couple of quick hits. Firstly, and I've never been a fan of the at Norm Twitter phenomenon,

but he's in a bit of trouble for a tweet. Yeah, to me, this is one of the great stories of the last few weeks. And I don't know if enough people out there really appreciate it. We watch Norm Kelly on Twitter, at Norm, turn into this pop culture phenomenon. I think in considerable part due to a specific assistant in his office, a 25-year-old, Jerry Nassar. His name has come up a lot.

Oh, so we have a name now because I always suspected this. The name has always been out there. Whether or not he's the one doing the actual tweeting, I mean, look, there's not a lot of glamour working for a city councilor. There's not really a lot of showbiz going on behind the corridors of City Hall. So anything you can do to distract yourself from the drudgery of working for a city councilor, I guess you're going to go for it, right?

So they came up with this idea after Norm Kelly's term as deputy mayor under Rob Ford after that came to an end, and he was just back to being a regular Scarborough city councilor again of branding Norm into a whole Twitter thing. And I think the company Twitter was all for it too.

Well, they gave him that name. That was somehow delivered to him. He didn't pounce on at Norm and secure it through legitimate channels. He was somehow gifted at Norm. Yeah, because before it was like D. Mayor County or something. I remember being shocked. He was somehow gifted at Norm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because before it was like D. Mayer Kelly or something. I remember being shocked.

Like, he got that. Like, oh, he got at Norm. You'd think maybe it would go to, I mean, there must be a bigger Norm. And then he went from 3,000 followers to 300,000 followers. So the recent story involved the fact that Norm on Twitter

trying to appease some kind of public service function, trying to do the occasional tweet that just wasn't a plug for six dad merchandise or these ridiculous postings about how I'm making a mixtape. And do you have any new fire hip hop tracks that I should add to my playlist over here? I always said this and I'll say it again.

I always felt sorry for like the actual people in his. Is it called a riding? What's the term for your jurisdiction when you're a counselor? Is that your ward? That's what I'm looking for. I always felt sorry for the people in Ward 40 because at least like I had a bike lane issue, believe it or not, and I tweeted it at my counselor. I know I didn't vote for the guy, but he's my counselor,

and I tweeted at him, and he pointed me in the right direction, and we had a discourse on Twitter. There's no way you could ever, you know, communicate with your counselor if it's Norm Kelly. Right? Well, so the tweets just kept getting more and more over the top, and I think there was a point this past spring, like I mentioned that one that sticks out of my mind about like, you know, do you have any bangers that you want to add to my playlist here? I'm too lit to politic.

Yeah, too lit to politic here. You know, I burned out on the new— Or all the Meek Mill stuff, and Drake, he got right in on that. Yeah, that too. I've burned out on the new Kendrick Lamar album. Is there anything else you think I should be listening to here? Any up-and-coming rappers? Curiously, very little concession to rappers from Toronto, by the way,

beyond Drake and his associates. So a concession to to public service on Twitter. The Norm account posts some sort of a wanted thing from Toronto police that they were looking for some suspects, and there was a picture of them attached to the tweet. It turned out that one of the suspects was under 18, a young offender. So whether you agree with the law or not, you're legally not allowed to publish his picture. The police recognized the fact that Norm had his photo on the account, whether they could search that,

maybe they even just remembered that it was on there. I mean, this picture outside of official police accounts would not have shown up in too many other places on Twitter. And they sent a direct message to at Norm saying, can you please take down this tweet? Legally, you're not allowed to have it up there anymore. They made a public tweet about it. And amidst the barrage of messages to Norm, you know, hailing the sixth dad, you know, recommending what sort of mixtapes he should listen to,

was this orphan tweet from the police that whoever was behind the account didn't manage to see. As it turned out, they had to send him this direct message instead, requesting him to take down the tweet. And even then, they didn't get that rapid a response. It was two weeks, right, Between posting and removal, two weeks? Yeah, whatever it was, even if it was up there for one second, it wasn't supposed to be there. And the point was is that the AdNorm account

is not capable of responding to anything serious. No. So don't even take this thing seriously. There was a Toronto Star article about it that was very dry and very wry. But the one thing that they didn't manage to do was get a comment from Norm. Like, what's happening to your account here, Norm? Do you realize that technically you could go to jail for what you just did and what's happening here. So that is the closest that we have come in the past three years of the Norm Kelly Twitter account

to actually having to expose and reveal who was behind it because of this misstep. People have asked if you can complain to the integrity commissioner about the Norm account. They said, no, it's not our jurisdiction here at City Hall. What's happening on this account is considered his own personal thing. And that itself seems to be a misinterpretation of what this thing is. Because like you said, you assume that if your city councilor is on Twitter, that he's there to respond to things related to his job as a city councilor. So since this incident last week with the police tweet that was taken down,

I noticed that the Norm account on Twitter has gotten a lot more tame. No more of these hip-hop shout-outs, any of these attempts to be clever as the sixth dad. I'm not sure where we're at with promoting his merchandise on there. So he put something up today wording to the effect of, oh, what was it? I'm even going to go so far as to look it up because it's worth it.

It was Norm on Twitter, forget the mistake, Remember the lesson. Words to live. That's more of a Norm Kelly tweet, I think. Je fais le même rêve tous les soirs. We're playing some tunes today, Mark. My love, I ask you what your heart desires. We're playing some tunes today, Mark. It's a slippery slope. You do a couple of kick out the jams episodes,

and then you just want to be like a deep music DJ. It's a love, a love. I catch you every time And this is The Weeknd. In your love The Weeknd with only two E's, though. Every time you close your eyes And this song is called Secrets.

Here comes the romantics part here. When you're talking in your sleep And you know what that other sample is there so we're talking about 80s music being repurposed for a new generation okay so the talking in your sleep that's definitely the romantics uh here the secrets that you keep when you're talking you tell me that you love i'll keep going if you want uh the other sample uh it's funny because I've had a couple episodes lately where we talked about Tears for Fears. Because I talked about it with Elvis, and then I talked about it again with Mike Wilner.

Let me just hear this. It's Pale Shelter by Tears for Fears going on there too. So tell me about the weekends at Toronto, boy. tell me about the video for this song, Secrets. Well, it got a lot of love when it showed up online last week because of its use of a couple of Toronto locations. And the most prominent one, the Toronto Reference Library, 40 years old, undergone a lot of renovations in the last little while. Right now they've got a comic art shop in the front.

Have you seen that? Honestly, I haven't been there since university. So I haven't been to the Toronto Reference Library since university. So yeah, it's a lot more lively than it used to be. And the Balzac's coffee shop upstairs. They served it at my wedding in the distillery district to be in the Balzac's coffee shop. Upstairs, the salt salt. They served it at my wedding in the distillery district. We had the Balzac's. So you didn't have to go to the library.

Upstairs, they've got this salon. A lot of literary events there. And people like having weddings and stuff. If they're literary geeks, you can get married in the library. Why not? But what I remember from my trips to the reference library was going through microfiche this was so you got you got to look at old newspapers through the microfiche i hope that service is still available that's the heartbeat of the toronto yeah less and less demand for it because a lot of this stuff is now on the toronto

library website right you you can look up a lot of p PDFs of things that you used to have to spin that wheel, right? I mean, you want to talk about manual labor, going through that microfiche by hand and trying to find page after page after page. The Toronto Sun, which has a remarkable legacy for all sorts of reasons, right? Including being racist and homophobic and whatever else, sorts of reasons, right? Including being like racist and homophobic and whatever else, but also like great Toronto tabloid history in there. Their digital archive is so terrible that to this day, right? It's really been left behind here in the transition. Nobody ever got around to scanning all those Toronto Suns. You still have to go there for that purpose. So the reference library playing a big part in the choreography of this weekend video. And the University of Toronto Southern Scarborough campus.

Is that also in the, that also makes an appearance? Yeah, so there's like a sort of brutalist architecture element that's in there. And that required shooting around the UTSC, closer to home, for the weekend. So in the history of music videos filmed in Toronto, of which quite a few have been made, right? You've got The Spoons coming on here. Yes, it's Gord Depp. made, right? You've got the spoons coming on here. And often

referencing romantic traffic as one of those pioneering videos shot on the subway back in 1984. Sort of captured in time as far as where things were at. The red rocket makes an appearance.

So we haven't seen the red. I remember I could see it a bit. I remember once in a while when I was in high school, you might get one of the red subways. They were still in circulation. You might get one. It was kind of like a Russian roulette sort of, oh, a red one or whatever. But it's been a long time, I think.

And here we are already into like a whole other generation of subway cars. Right, right, right. Even though on the Bloor-Danforth line, they still couldn't get the right air conditioning on there. And that created a lot of trouble last summer. We'll see how it goes this time around. So the weekend showing that civic pride that comes along with flaunting Toronto locations in a music video.

Well, Tears for Fears, again. One of their videos, Head Over Heels, was filmed at the U of T library. Yeah, one of the U of T libraries. Do you remember which one? I can't remember. Victoria College one, maybe. I can't remember.

Close enough. Either that or University College. I can't remember. I used to know them all when I went to U of T. I used to know them all. So The Weeknd, a guy that sings about stuff Close enough. Either that or university college. I can't remember. I used to know them all when I went to U of T. I used to know them all. So The Weeknd, a guy that sings about stuff like cocaine. Right. I can't feel my head. It's about cocaine. turn into a very mainstream sort of superstar, right? By virtue of making these sort of appearances.

And the lyrical meaning behind what he's on about, I guess people don't pay all that much attention when he's able to come off like a slick pop star in the tradition of Michael Jackson, playing all the big arenas everywhere. He does remind me of Michael. His voice reminds me of Michael Jackson playing all the big arenas everywhere. He does remind me of Michael. His voice reminds me of Michael's. I'm not saying he's as good as Michael was, but there's definitely,

they got a similar voice, a similar style for The Weeknd and Michael Jackson. Does it bother you as a parent that maybe your children are listening to lyrics that are explicit? Because when we were growing up, that was quite a thing.

When Prince, Purple Rain was a big deal. That sparked all sorts of discussion about needing parental advisories. Well, Darlene Nikki, I think, was the one where she was masturbating. Or was it Darlene Nikki? Yeah, Darlene Nikki was the one. So where are we at here? I have no problem with it. Speaking as a we at here? I have no problem with it. Speaking as a dad.

Yeah, you have no problem with it. You don't even think about it. It doesn't matter. This is my, and I've got what I got, like 15 and a half years experience of being a parent. And what I have always emphasized in my kids is context over content. So as long as we talk about it and we discuss the context, I actually have never had a problem like a lot of parents when they send their kids over to play of mine i have to remind myself like

oh i can't just like when they were young i can't just you know throw these kids in front of the simpsons their parents might be mad at me or maybe pulp fiction won't be the movie tonight maybe we'll watch lilo and stitch instead like uh definitely i i don't have a. Like, definitely, I don't have a great, I don't have a problem with my kids listening to music that has bad words in it. Heck, I can't tell you, like, the N-word, for example, they understand the context of the N-word and who's saying it and what, historically, what the N-word means. My kids, my 13-year-old, my 15-year-old, have probably heard that word, like, a hundred times, a thousand times based on the kind of music that they're listening to. And as long as we talk about the context and they understand that, I have no problem with it.

So I think in a previous era, if you had like Mayor John Tory endorsing The Weeknd, I don't know if he had a tweet about this video or not. But, you know, politicians like to do that sort of thing, show some sort of alliance with pop culture. You don't have to be like Norm Kelly's account and be completely ridiculous about it, but just give a nod to the creativity that's out there. We do seem to be past the point where people get riled up by the idea that maybe there's something

in the lyrics to this music which isn't appropriate for everyone. Well, dare I say, the average Joe has no idea that I can't feel my face has anything to do with cocaine. That's my thought. I think it's so subtle or...

Yeah, it's so subtle, I guess you could say, that most people don't... When you're singing along to it, because it's not, it's, yeah, it's so subtle, I guess you could say, that most people don't, when you're singing along to it because it's on Chum FM or something, you have no idea

it's about cocaine. That's what I think. So do you think that counts as progress? Because people are looking for so much to be riled up about, right?

There are so many different social cues that people have a problem with. It's not Ice-T's cop killer or anything, you know what I mean? But with body count, who put out Cop Killer, like, you can understand, okay, here, we got to talk about this.

But this is all so subtle, and it's art, and, you know, maybe we survived the Madonna years, and, you know, I think at this point, a good pop song is a good pop song, and we'll let these references to, these subtle references to cocaine just slide. Yeah, that's where we're at now. But I think we found out in this era of social media outrage

that it's like a bottomless well. And who knows? They could be coming next for the weekend. We could look back on the fact that this guy got away with this stuff until somebody raised a ruckus and started a petition. And there is something inappropriate about what he was singing about. Now, while we're talking about music, can we talk about, so Sgt. Pepper,

the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album celebrated an anniversary. What is that, 50 years? 50 years. I think Sgt. Pepper, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, only exists for the purpose of having anniversaries. And it's all the fault of the opening line, right? It was 20 years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. So back in 1987, I don't know if you remember,

it was sort of the dawn of this baby boomer nostalgia. The Beatles came out that year on compact disc, and they expected everyone to go out and buy the same albums all over again. And they did. Five times the price of what they originally paid for.

Get me another rubber sole. Those CDs used to be really expensive, too. It was like 20 bucks. 20, 25, maybe. I remember the $20 days. So in 1987, a lot of it was tied in to the idea of buying Sgt. Pepper on compact disc.

And 30 years later, it's a big round number. 50 years ago, they managed to do it all over again, right? And there was a deluxe edition Sgt. Pepper, and you could upgrade, buy a box set with all the different outtakes, and all the stuff was available online too, at least anything that the average fan would want to listen to. You could hear different tracks from behind the making of the album, different outtakes. They threw in Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane. You could hear a little bit about how those songs were constructed. But yeah, at the same time, a local angle was found in a way to put the Sgt. Pepper thing in a Toronto context.

Well, Alan Cross, Canadian music historian. Former Toronto Mike DeGest. You have to throw that in at every turn. Where are you now with him? I don't know. Can we trash him here on the podcast? Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's not listening. I don't think he did anything all that bad.

But he was peddling this little story 50 years after Sergeant Pepper came out. He managed to find the actual identity of Sergeant Pepper. His source was the granddaughter of an OPP constable who conveniently had the name Sergeant Randall Pepper. And the granddaughter of Randy Pepper claimed that Grandpa actually accompanied the Beatles when they came to Toronto, one of their final concerts ever in 1966. Sergeant Pepper, the OPP version, was such a hep cat, such a laid-back guy, such a cool, permissive cop that he let the Beatles do whatever they wanted to do. I don't know that they were that specific about what these things were. You have to assume it involved the consumption of drugs based on the way it was explained.

So because Sergeant Randy got along so well with the Fab Four that he was willing to let them get away with whatever while they were all burned out on touring and looking forward to hitting the studio for their next album. They remembered this Sgt. Pepper so well that they decided to name the entire album after him. And now you know the rest of the story. I don't think any of it's true. I don't know how this could go 50 years without anybody hearing about it.

Alan Cross is a liar. Is that what you're saying? I'm hanging it on Alan Cross because he was the one who promoted this story. And you saw this granddaughter on all the major Canadian newscasts talking about it. And they seem to use Allen as their main source, that he had validated whatever she was talking about. What does he call himself, a musicologist? Is that the term he's given himself, musicologist? Well, here's the thing.

Paul McCartney himself has mentioned in interviews over the years that he has no memory of where the inspiration came from. Now, again, this had a lot to do with the fact that he was high half the time, right? I mean, this was what was going on behind the scenes of Sergeant Pepper. So, you know, any time that it came up, right, they were asking him about all the Paul is dead rumors. And, you know, he never explained what the whole Sergeant Pepper concept was, like too many brain cells burned out for him after 1967 that he hadn't been able to explain where the inspiration came from. Ontario Provincial Police, in the gatefold opening of the vinyl album. You know about this, right?

Did you even have the album growing up, or you saw this thing? I've definitely seen that cover many times, and it's actually fun to kind of go through it and recognize historical figures and, yeah, different people. Yeah, because I don't think I even knew about the OPP patch until I saw it myself on the album. And this was years later. I bought the album the same day John Lennon died. I bought the Sgt. Pepper album,

like earlier in the day. So it was news to me. Oh, interesting. I mean, just random happenstance. But that is a crazy coincidence. Much to it. Why? Because the Sgt. Pepper album is so important, I think.

Of all the days you could have bought it, though, you bought it. So speculating in Alan Cross's story was the idea that Sgt. Randy Pepper gave Paul or maybe all the Beatles this OPP patch, and he put it on his uniform, on the album in tribute. Of all the creative things that the Beatles were doing all that time, could you imagine them giving this much attention to some arbitrary police officer that they met in Toronto? They were so fixated upon paying tribute to him that they made a point of putting this little Easter egg in the album.

I realize Alan Cross might not listen to this podcast, but technical producer of the ongoing history of new music, Rob Johnston, is a loyal listener. Okay, but Alan is going to stand by this story, right? I don't think it...

But he was really just a conduit for this woman that was claiming it. Adding insult to injury here is the fact that last year there was a Beatles history exhibit in Toronto, the St. Lawrence Market Gallery, commemorating that last concert, August 1966. A lot of artifacts. I didn't get out to see it myself. I sort of regret it because it looked really thorough, right? And it's sort of an immersive, artistic thing that they did with all these artifacts of the OPP patch was actually given to the Beatles two years before Sergeant Pepper.

More than two years. 1964, the first time they came to town. That's when the patch originated from. And so, you know, this idea that it was something that was entirely based on 1966, that the patch might have focus into saluting an OPP officer on their album. I'm not buying it. And I'm not buying Sgt. Pepper in general because I don't think it's a very good record. I don't think there's a lot happening there. Like I said, I think it only exists to be commemorated on the

50th anniversary, 20th, before that. Now that that's out of the way, we can move on to the next. I don't know. I think I told you I worked at a price chopper as a teenager at the Galleria Mall. Food City!

Thank you. It was a Food City for the first few years. Food City. Well, okay, sorry. Yeah, first, yeah, thank you. It was a food city for the first few years I worked there. I think this is like the 17th time this has come up on the podcast. And these days I find myself frequenting our local No Frills. I'm a No Frills man right now. And tell me, though, is No Frills trying to become uh hip oh i see these ads on facebook especially right uh loblaws is is trying to promote the fact that they've got this discount chain which uh all the years that they've been running it has mostly been uh uh left you

know forlorn the whole idea was you know you went No Frills, maybe you didn't have a lot of money, maybe it was the closest supermarket around, but you didn't give a whole lot of thought to the fact that you were shopping there, right? And that was the whole idea. Well, you're there to save a buck or two. That's why you're there. And you were there to have to bring your own bags.

Or buy bags. At the time this started, this was a really radical idea, right? It's like, we're going to show you how cheap we are here. We're not even going to give you a bag to take your groceries home in. I can tell you, when I was working at the Food City, we gave you bags, okay? We even might have had a grocery clerk guy help you bag it, okay? But we gave you bags. And when we converted to a price chopper, no more free bags.

It was going to cost you a nickel a bag. And that's all like some sort of shopping psychology at work. Definitely. Same way that Honest Ed's was like the most expensive store in Toronto when it came to a lot of things you would want to buy there. Right. But like the whole impression that it gave was that it was was a bargain house and everything here must be as cheap as possible. But if you went there for a tube of toothpaste, it would be like $7. So that was part of the honest and mervish experience. First you said Sgt. Pepper wasn't that good,

now you're saying Honest Dead was too expensive. What other great Toronto sacrifices? Knocking down, yeah, all the sacred cows here today. Okay. But yeah, so we've got no frills now trying to be hip and they're, they're trying to do it in that reverse way.

Taking out these ads, uh, that are basically saying that, that, you know, all these things that you get, uh, at,

at, at your, uh, major pricey supermarket, like a, you know, fancy meat counter and, uh,

jazz trio playing, you know, to playing to a company you're shopping. Everything else going on there. You know, you don't really need any of this stuff. It's contributing to the cost of your food. And the biggest irony there of all, right, is the fact that the greatest offender for these things is Loblaws. Right. The parent company of No Frills. all, right, is the fact that the greatest offender for these things is Loblaws, the parent company of No Frills. And so they're trying to play themselves against themselves and trying to present the idea

that No Frills is, in fact, a socially acceptable place to do your shopping. A lot of it's the same president's choice products in the end, isn't it? I mean, that's a common denominator there. You've got Shoppers Drug Mart selling most of the same stuff. So I think a lot of this is just figuring out ways to corner the market, make people pay Loblaw no matter where they're shopping. A completely unavoidable situation, right, where you can't go through life in Toronto without giving money to Loblaw. Okay, you mentioned Shoppers Drug Mart,

which of course is owned by Loblaw now, right? Or is it the other way around? No, Loblaw is the company, the bot shopper store. Right, right, right. And the Hard Rock Cafe, which by the way, Ed the Sock came over. He was recording his show from the Hard Rock Cafe and they pulled the rug out from

under that sock if you will because the Hard Rock Cafe has been closed the sign I think has been preserved somewhere the guitar I think it's been preserved or they didn't destroy it anyway. Well yeah it's a multi-national company there are other Hard Rock Cafes that will take the sign and the memorabilia

I don't know if there's any other country looking for Kim Mitchell's guitar or whatever was hanging there. It's a wild party. So that's turning into a shopper's drug mart, this hard rock cafe. And the reason it's turning into a shopper's drug mart is because Loblaw was willing to pay double the rent.

It was a million dollar a year lease. And here Loblaw comes in with two, and that's how much a property was worth to them. So a lot of the speculation centers around the fact that Loblaw has been lobbying really hard. I mean, they've got the evidence. There was a Frank Magazine article with proof. Loblaw really wants to be the main marijuana retailer within Canada. Once weed is legalized, they've got their eyes laser-focused on the idea of being the place you go to buy pot.

So what would be more convenient? What would be more appropriate for the legacy of Y & Nundas, the place with all the big record store neon signs, where head shops were once the most prominent thing on the strip, than for Shoppers Drug Mart, 279 Young, to be the flagship store for marijuana retailing in Canada? It makes sense to me. Well, yeah. But that'll be a provincial government decision, right? Because just like alcohol, where they sell it at the LCBO or whatnot, this will be one of those decisions made by your provincial government. Yeah, and Loblaw and the supermarkets already got big on selling beer, right?

They showed that they were socially responsible enough. There were all sorts of rules, stipulations about when you can sell the beer, how many beers you can buy at one time. You have to have specific cash registers. So I think they've shown themselves as corporate citizens, right, that they can play along with this game as far as serving people responsibly. But it's going to be a real wild world that we're going into by next summer, Canada Day 2018, when weed becomes legal. Let's see if they line up right behind Great Lakes Brewery to become a Toronto Mike sponsor.

I mean, imagine doing the read for some weed on a podcast. Yeah, and every guest gets a joint. Oh, man. At least some of those edibles. So when we talk about the supermarket class war, right? And the other one was the issue of the

Metro store that was in the Junction Triangle, a new condo complex. I think it was called Fuse. They had a sign up there for years saying that a Metro supermarket would be moving in as they built the place up. Now that the construction is at least almost done, it was made clear that, in fact, there won't be a Metro supermarket going in there.

There's going to be a food basics so once again uh even a petition was started up to complain about this wow that that's how passionate people were about the fact that their their supermarket was being downgraded wow that the people behind metro decided that this area which is not that far from from the uh price chopper where you used to work, right? It's around the corner from the Galleria Mall. Right. And of course, like the food basics, that's the equivalent of the no frills and the price chopper, if they're even around anymore. I don't even know if there's any price choppers around. I guess there are a few. A lot of them became Fresh Co's or whatever. But yeah, that's like your bottom, your discount version.

So the Metro is the upper tier where you pay three times the price, but the floors are really clean. The aisles are wide. You have a lot of selection. And there's even a deli place and there's a bake shop. Those are where the rich people go to those places. So all these people who are very proud of themselves for having moved around the junction triangle, right? Like, uh, DuPont, uh, Davenport, uh, area, uh, DuPont and Dufferin, I guess would, would be the Galleria Mall intersection. No, uh, uh, they, they actually considered it like a personal insult based on this petition, which might have also been some sort of, like, avant-garde prank, by the way. It doesn't, there. There's not much evidence that these things are real.

But it still was an interesting symbol when it came to gentrification that there would be somebody out there theoretically outraged by the fact that they couldn't get the supermarket experience that they were promised, that they were being given a down-market version of what was advertised, and this somehow reflect badly on them, that they had paid a premium to live in this downtown neighborhood, and that if real estate costs in Toronto were skyrocketing, they deserve the metro. That's what they were living here for. They wanted instant access to a place where you could buy a baguette. And having it suggested that you wouldn't get the same level of selection available in there, that you'd be stuck with this food basics, it seems that they got upset about it. But the reputation of Metro compared to Loblaw is not all that high.

I don't think... Well, they're the old Dominions, right? So Dominion is Metro, and as I recall, it's mainly because of the meat, I believe. Is that still used? I don't think so. But not as much affection for the Metro brand. No, true. That's true. It falls somewhere in the lower middle tier of supermarkets. I'm going to be there tonight, not at the Metro, but in the area, but the Stockyards has a,

has a fairly new Metro. I see near, near George Bell Arena there at St. Clair and whatever that is, St. Clair and Runnymedia. There's Metros at Queen and Gladstone. Now there was one that opened in Liberty Village at the beginning of the era

where they tried to transform the space around there. I guess it's the fact that a lot of people don't want to be ambivalent about where they buy their food. They either want to be dismissive about it. I don't care. I'll buy it wherever. Cheapest possible place. Fine with me. Or they want to make sure that they're having the most elitist experience possible. a little bit, because if there's a more robust grocery component to what Amazon does, based on the history of how Amazon works, how it manages to smoke out entire industries, then it might be a case where the entire supermarket business in the US.S., Canada, I don't know, all around the world, that, you know, it might be a different game

by the time Jeff Bezos is finished working his way through it. Now, since the last time you were here, the Budweiser stage has opened. So that is the old Molson Amphitheater near Ontario Place. And I remember, I think the Future was going to be the first concert. I think it was the Future.

And then due to the high levels of Lake Ontario, they moved that show to the Air Canada Centre, I believe, which then Chance the Rapper became the first scheduled show at the Budweiser stage. I happen to have had tickets to that particular show, and they ended up postponing it another week because of the high-level lake levels. But they eventually did have the Chance the Rapper show,

and I can tell you I was there. So when people excitedly talk about trivia, what was the first concert at the Budweiser stage, I can say I was there for Chance the Rapper. And based on your report, I saw your photos, torontomic.com, there was hardly anyone in the audience of drinking age. Really, I don't know if I knew what to expect.

Last time I took my daughter was Selena Gomez. And the people were so young there that parents came with them. They were young enough that parents would come. But this crowd for Chance the Rapper, which looked like, I would say, somewhere between like 17 and 21 years of age, like 99.9% of that crowd between 17 and 21.

And my daughter looked awfully young because she was only 12. And I can't tell you how old I looked. And somebody, I think it was Pete Fowler who said, I tweeted a photo of me and my daughter in the lawns surrounded by probably a very white crowd too. I don't know what that says about anything, but an extremely white crowd of 17 to 21-year-olds.

And Pete Fowler said, I looked like the teacher on an expedition or whatever. You looked like Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell or one of those characters. With my hair, though, I think. So the Budweiser stage now open and this whole flooding thing, which by the way, I don't want to speak like some authority,

but I literally bike along that waterfront every day. It is higher than I've ever seen it, but there doesn't seem to be any danger anywhere. I never look at anything and go, oh, that's dangerously high. It's just a higher lake. I'm not speaking about the island. I understand that's a whole different story,

but actually along our Toronto coastline, it's just higher than normal, dare I say. Now, I was at the first concert at the Molson Amphitheater. Who was it? Brian Adams. I was there under the basis of writing an article, doing some research. So you didn't have to pay for that ticket. No, not only did I not have to pay for that ticket, I think I left after like 90 seconds.

Oh, you missed that. I was there just to like skulk around and see what it was like. I mean, the journalistic standards were pretty low about what I was writing at the time at iWeekly. But I guess there was some idea that, like, here was a free ticket, and I guess I should show up. But I didn't want to sit through a Bryan Adams concert by myself. I mean, to each his own. Nothing's more subjective than music. But although I would never probably ever pay my own hard-earned money to go see Bryan Adams, if I had a

free ticket, I'd stick it out. I think I'd want to be there for the encore. So yeah, I think I was the first person to ever walk out of the Molson Amphitheater. I think I was the first one to ever have enough of what I was hearing and decided to get on the bus.

Oh man, you missed Run to You, and oh, that's some good stuff you missed. Summer of 69. Oh, man, you missed Run to You, and oh, that's some good stuff you missed. Summer of 69. Okay, but yeah, Ontario Place in general has gone through a long process of revitalization, and they've started to unveil some of the stuff that they've done around there, all the grounds, adjunct to the Budweiser stage that people in Toronto have a lot of fond,

nostalgic memories of. Right here was like a fulfillment of the Canadian centennial dream that you could hang out at a free water park. It was like a very true dopiac experience back in the 70s into the 80s, 90s. Cinesphere, all these other pavilions, children's village, monuments to progress in the province of Ontario.

And then in 2012, they decided, you know, this ain't working anymore. We're just going to shut it all down. they decided, you know, this ain't working anymore. We're just going to shut it all down. So I think the fact that there's this much very green real estate on Lake Ontario that has gone unused and that there's also sort of like a kitsch factor involved with people who have memories of being there, I think there's a lot of frustration with the fact that it's taken this province this long to only begin to figure out what to do with it. This week, I saw a few postings that noted suddenly all these off-limits parts of Ontario Place were open again. I saw that too.

You could roam around, do your little infiltration of all these Ontario Place spots that had been blocked off. And people seem to love it, the fact that they could explore around there and see what used to be what the area represented. So I think to this day, it's still something that a lot of people miss in Toronto, about Toronto, and that maybe the government should eventually get its act together on. New Park opened up right beside Ontario Place. They call it the David Peterson Pavilion or something like that. No, David, Bill Davis, not David Peterson. Why did I say that?

Yeah, of course, Bill Davis Pavilion. Yeah. It's okay. They were both premiers of Ontario. Yeah, yeah, that's funny. It's okay. They were both premiers of Ontario. But yeah, I would say Bill Davis, all these years later, is held in much higher regard. And he's still with us, right? Yes, Steve Paikin wrote a biography of him.

I guess it came out a few months ago. And constantly, Steve Paikin is constantly referring to Bill Davis as his hero. He was the guy that figured out the right kind of approach for Ontario politics. Red Tory, progressive conservative. That was a thing. That was the engine. This is the period of time, the era of Ontario Place, it was associated with being a really prosperous place all around. Well, two days ago, I biked

to this new pavilion, the Bill Davis Pavilion, and I took a bunch of photos, which I will, as soon as I have time, I'm going to write about it on torontomike.com and share the photos. But when you think, it's right beside a Nuckshuck Park, where if you know where a Nuckshuck Park is, where that giant Nuckshuck is on the waterfront,

it's right beside that. And yeah, they did a really nice job. That was like apparently it was a parking lot. And now it's like this beautiful, like, I don't know, 1.3 kilometer trail. And there's there's some grass and there's interesting bridges and just really a very cool little public space that they created there. Really a very cool little public space that they created there. Okay, so make sure to vote Kathleen Wynne in the 2018 provincial election because she managed to do something for you that you liked. That seems to be the re-election strategy.

You've got to touch every voter. But I'm not so sure that it's going to work. Regardless of whether I vote for Kathleen Wynne or not, regardless, it's a nice park. There's a lot of people out there. Regardless of whether I vote for Kathleen Wynne or not, regardless, it's a nice spark. That goes without saying, for sure. But I want to play a song, chat about it briefly. We're almost out of time. And then I have one final question for you on the way out.

But let's listen to this. Listen. Just leave or stay. But I'm done with you. Wait. or a staff but I'm done with you this is Carly Rae Jepsen's Boy Problems. We're coming full circle, huh? You had Selena Gomez at the beginning. Now Carly Rae Jepsen.

Okay, so there was a Carly Rae Jepsen concert at the Roy Thompson Hall. Carly Rae Jepsen fronting the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Them trying to do a little bit of youth outreach. Sure. And there seemed to be a very enthusiastic crowd that came out for this show. That Carly Rae has developed this cult of diehards.

I think she's great. Which is pretty good for somebody who was a runner-up on Canadian Idol. You've got to admit. I mean, that show did not cultivate a whole lot of marketable talent. Just her and that Jacob Hogland. Is that how you say it? Hogland? Hogard?

Hedley. Hogard Hedley. Yeah, Hedley's a band. Too many episodes this week. My brain is fried. Yeah, but nobody thinks Hedley is any good. No. I don't think they manage to, like, crack this CanCon thing, right?

Like, all their music is structurally engineered to work on these hot adult contemporary radio stations. Exactly. to work on these hot adult contemporary radio stations. Exactly. Which is very strange for something that presents itself as, like, I guess emo or post-emo or whatever, right? Like, that's the image that they project, but the sound is really safe and completely innocuous.

I'm not sure that I even remember any of their songs. So bringing up Carly Rae Jepsen relates to the phenomenon that she's created around herself, which is the whole idea, which is a very new idea, something different from when I used to feel some affinity with the cult of rock critics. The concept of somebody making pop music, not actually managing to be popular, and then building up a fan base of people who think that they're supposed to be popular. So it's the antithesis of everything that you were ever supposed to believe, right, about the role of pop music.

The whole idea that you had like different camps, right? You had like the alternative rock people, people that were into like the underground sounds. And their whole stance on everything, the perspective that they had on music, you know, was the idea that the last thing you wanted to be was a pop star. So the legacy of that thinking, right, which was very much behind the edge radio format, everything that you hold dear. I mean, that's why people love Pearl Jam, right? They were, if you were a young teenager in the 90s, you gravitated to the idea that this was music that was going against the grain, sticking it to the man. Of course, it was entirely packaged by a multinational corporation, but you were too young to understand that. And you were easily duped, right?

You bought into the whole thing. So those people who are now a little bit older, they seem to have adopted Carly Rae Jepsen as a cause celeb. And the whole idea here is that if you like her music, if you understand where she's at, if you're a real Carly Rae Stan, then you're against the grain of the status quo of pop radio. Never does it come up in these conversations that the reason that she never managed to have another hit after Call Me Maybe— Which was a monster hit. A monster hit, but very much like a one-hit wonder. And they tried and tried and tried. Oh, the Tom Hanks video?

That was a pretty catchy scene. Yeah, you're right, but it wasn't a big hit like that. It didn't catch on, so you have to think, what is going on with this Carly Rae Jepsen music? That despite having all the marketing muscle behind it, that it was never really able to crack the charts. So this is really fascinating to me, somebody who's paid attention to this stuff for all these years, that you can have like a sugar-coated pop artist out there who's appreciated by a certain

crowd, you know, entirely on the basis of like post-irony, I guess you would describe it as. Because the sound, there's something that's, like, not there, that isn't going to work. I listen to these Carly Rae Jepsen songs. All I hear is, like, 6 a.m. Sunday morning Canadian content music. You know, there's a reason that her sound, her image, whatever it is that she represents, I mean, does she represent anything at all? It's like Alanis before she became Alanis Morissette. It's just not been clicking. It hasn't worked.

I think also the fact that she is now in her early 30s. Right, right. And when Call Me Maybe came out, she was in her early 30s. Right, right. And, you know, when Call Me Maybe came out, she was in her late 20s. Correct me if I'm wrong here, as the father of a tweenage girl, I think when you're around that formative age, 10, 11, 12 years old,

you don't want to listen to somebody in their 30s. That's a good point. 30 years old, that's ancient. Although... It's like triple your age. Beyonce gets an awful lot of airplay. I hear what you're saying. I don't know that Beyonce gets airplay either.

I'm saying this is like a little outside. That's all. So the question, it's been asked in countless clickbait articles. How come Carly Rae Jepsen isn't all that popular? And it makes me think, what does it matter? Why do you care? Since when is it important to you if somebody's popular or not? Like what you like. Listen to what you want to listen to. So after this TSO concert last weekend, I wonder what's ahead for Carly Rae Jepsen. Is it about

older adults who are sort of fetishizing this teenage girl thing. You know, is she the ambassador for all that? So as far as, like, cultural phenomena to watch, I think it's incredibly fascinating, and we'll see where the story of Carly Rae Jepsen goes. We'll be watching. Last question on the way out is, maybe you can tell me, because I can't believe I don't know, on June, what is this, June 22nd, I don't know the answer to this question.

Who is replacing Peter Mansbridge at the CBC? Yeah, all they'll say, three different people. So no longer will there be one anchor. The voice of God is gone. They're going to obfuscate this whole idea that there could be a single anchor with the authority required to report on Canada

and they're delaying the announcement maybe because they don't want to overshadow his departure on Canada Day and by the time we find out which might be October well, wait and see if anybody really cares. So the voice of God is gone, but there will be the Holy Trinity in its place.

Yeah, Pastor Mansbridge taking his leave. So all of us involved in the Canadian media will be forced to think about Peter Mansbridge as he walks off into the sunset until, I don't know, they bring him back for the Queen's funeral or something. Right, exactly. Even if that's like in 20 years, he'll be sitting by the red phone,

standing by, waiting for the call to come out of retirement. So yeah, he's not gone forever, but Peter Mansbridge, last episode of the National Canada Day. I'll try to get him in here. By the way, once again, fantastic. Everyone listening to my voice right now needs to subscribe to the 1236 newsletter at 1236.ca. I'm going to drink by the lake. Thanks, Mike.

And that brings us to the end of our 245th show You can follow me on Twitter I'm at Toronto Mike Mark is at 1236 Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery Are at Great Lakes Beer And propertyinthesix.com

Is at Brian Gerstein See you all next week. Maybe the one who doesn't realize There's a thousand shades of gray Cause I know that's true, yes I do I know it's true, yeah I know it's true How about you? While they're picking up trash

And they're putting down roads