Crystal lakes, snow-capped mountains, hockey, Mounties, bilingual traffic signs…and some really, really weird news stories.
TAKING A BITE OUT OF CRIME
Aaron Helferty, 31, was drinking in an Edmonton bar when a group of men he didn’t know began berating him. He ignored it…until one man approached him, silently stared at him, then suddenly lunged forward and started chewing on his nose. Two bar employees broke up the fight and threw out the attacker, who’d managed to bite off (and swallow) part of Helferty’s nose. Helferty plans to get reconstructive surgery; police can’t find the attacker.
YOU WANT THE TOOTH, OFFICER?
Outside Sarnia, Ontario, in June 2010, a driver flagged down a police officer on Highway 402 to warn him of a semi truck meandering all over the road. The officer caught up to the truck and pulled it over. The driver’s explanation for his erratic driving: He was attempting to pull out one of his teeth. No longer able to deal with a toothache, he tied one end of a piece of string to the bad tooth and the other to the roof of his cab. “One good bump” and it would come right out, he told the officer. As it turned out, he was right—the officer could tell by the bloody tooth on a string sitting on the seat.
BEEFY VINO
In Japan, Wagyu cattle are fed beer and massaged with sake each day. The result is the richly flavored and expensive (more than $100 a pound) Kobe beef. Seeking to create his own specialty beef market, Bill Freding of Southern Plus Feedlots in Oliver, B.C., has developed his own booze-based method: wine-fed cows. Like the cattle at other high-volume beef producers, Freding’s cattle eat a diet of primarily grain. But they also drink a liter of wine every day for 90 days prior to slaughter. The red wine is from wineries in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, and Freding claims the beef tastes “sweeter.”
PLEASE KNOCK FIRST
For Valentine’s Day 2010, the Toronto restaurant Mildred’s Temple Kitchen pulled out all the stops for romantic diners—serving intimate meals for two…and openly encouraging couples to “couple” in the restrooms. A handful of concerned citizens reported the Mildred’s promotion to the Toronto Public Health office. The agency investigated and found nothing wrong with the idea, as long as frisky patrons stayed out of food-preparation areas.
Spelling test: Pretending to practice witchcraft is against the law in Canada.
DIRTY YOUNG MEN
Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse of the University of Montreal’s social work department began a project in December 2009 investigating how pornography affects the way men view and relate to women. Part of that research required a “control group” for comparison, so Lajeunesse advertised around Montreal to recruit 20 young men who did not view pornography. He received zero responses.
BAN-ADA
In the 1910s, Toronto police had full authority over movies, including the right to ban films they considered offensive. The criteria: Any movie that showed a pro-America attitude, murder, or an extramarital romance could be banned. Any movie. In 1911, an inspector reported, “I witnessed a moving picture show of Hamlet, written I think by Shakespeare. That’s all very well to say it’s a famous drama, but it doesn’t keep it from being a spectacle of violence.” A few weeks later, the same inspector banned a film version of Romeo and Juliet.
YOUR (CANADIAN) TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
In June 2006, the federally funded Council for the Arts gave a $9,000 grant to a performance artist named Jess Dobkin. Her performance: She set up a bar called “Lactation Station” where patrons could sample human breast milk. Dobkin modeled the event after a wine tasting, providing milk from six different women. In similar news, the Ontario provincial government gave $150,000 to researchers at Laurentian University to study the sex drive of squirrels.
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME
In the spring of 2013, Google Earth captured an image of a mountainous region that looks like a gigantic Mayan Chieftain in full headdress. The locals call the figure “The Badlands Guardian,” and it can only be seen from high in the sky.
Ponoka, Alberta, once forbade the building of mud huts and houses with straw roofs.