Weird, strange, odd, shocking, funny, hilarious, silly, and giggle-inducing news—all of it from Uzbekistan. No, Canada. We meant Canada. Sorry.
ROYAL CANADIAN NAUGHTY POLICE
In July 2012 Corporal Jim Brown of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Coquitlam, British Columbia, division was suspended after hundreds of photos of Brown were found online. They showed Brown in a variety of staged situations, including one where he is shown wearing only his high, leather RCMP boots and a kilt, while holding a large knife. On her knees beneath him is a smiling naked woman wrapped in cellophane.
Other photos show Brown using the knife to cut the cellophane from the smiling woman. The ensuing investigation found that Brown had an active life as a member of an adults-only internet club, under the name “the Kilted Knight.” “I am personally embarrassed and very disappointed that the RCMP would be, in any way, linked to photos of that nature,” British Columbia’s RCMP commander Randy Beck said, but he also acknowledged that the photos had been taken on Brown’s own time, so Brown was able to keep his job.
NO, REALLY—BLAME CANADA!
In 2003 the Canadian Tourism Commission released the inaugural issue of PureCanada, a 185-page magazine that was to come out twice a year, with the intention of enticing Americans to visit the country. Unfortunately, there were a few errors. Okay—more than a few. Maps in the magazine spelled place names incorrectly (Nunavut, for example, was spelled “Nunavit”); some provinces were mislabeled; and on some of the maps, Prince Edward Island and the Yukon weren’t labeled at all. “It’s unfortunate,” Commission spokeswoman Isabelle Des Chenes said, “that there were a few things that slipped through.”
When news of the gaffes made headlines all over Canada, the Commission blamed Fodor’s Travel Guides for the mistakes, as the U.S.-based company had been contracted to create the magazine. The Commission later admitted that they had made the mistakes themselves, and were forced to issue apologies to both Fodor’s and the Canadian public. (“For once,” one newspaper report said, “the Americans are not the villains here.”)
The largest non-polar ice field in the world can be found in the St. Elias Mountains, Yukon.
YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO (ANOTHER) LAWYER
Donald Johnson, a defense attorney in Cornwall, Ontario, was awoken by noises in his home one night in 2005. He had his wife call police while he investigated—and found a strange man in his house. He tackled the stranger, was able to take a knife from him, and then realized he recognized the guy: 34-year-old Scott Best—one of Johnson’s clients. Police arrived, and Best was arrested. He apparently had no idea he was burgling his own lawyer’s home. Bonus: At the police station Best was advised he could call a lawyer—and he asked if he could call Johnson. Police convinced him that that probably wasn’t a very good idea.
UP GOES THE PLANE AND DOWN COMES THE…
In June 2013 Emma Gilfillan-Giannakos of Mississauga, Ontario, was in her backyard with her kids when something fell from the sky. “All of a sudden we heard this big bomb!” Gilfillan-Giannakos said. She and her kids investigated, and found brown splashes on her pool and around the yard. “I stuck my finger in it and I smelt it,” Gilfillan-Giannakos went on, “and it smelled like poo.” Just days later another Mississauga family reported a similar incident. Both families homes are in the flight path of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and they suspected that they had been the victims of “sky-poo” falling from passing airliners. Pearson officials said that toilets on planes are never evacuated during flight, and that whatever it was that fell from the sky must have come from something else—perhaps a large bird. “There’s no way one bird could have done it,” George Sullivan replied, “unless it was a pterodactyl.”
PRISON BRAKE
Jorden Morin was arrested in July 2013 when he was caught driving a stolen car. What made that especially dumb was that Morin was on his way to jail: He had earlier pleaded guilty to an assault charge and had been sentenced to 60 days in jail, to be served on weekends. At his subsequent court hearing, Morin, who had a lengthy police record, told the judge he had only stolen the car so he could get to jail on time.
The judge added 10 months to Morin’s 60-day sentence.
There’s a hotel inside the Toronto Blue Jays’ stadium.
Steve Simonar of Saskatoon, Alberta, was given a ticket by police in May 2013 for not wearing a seatbelt. But he had a good reason: Simonar cannot put on a seatbelt by himself, because he has no arms—they were amputated at the shoulder after he was shocked by electricity in a boating accident in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, he is a legal driver. Simonar has a retrofitted truck that allows him to control the gas, brakes, and steering—as well as other things, such as indicator lights and windshield wipers—with this feet, and he has been driving this way for nearly 30 years. He cannot put on his seatbelt without assistance, so he sometimes drives without one. “I’ve had tickets before and police have stopped me,” Simonar told reporters, “but nobody’s ever given me a ticket because they figured out right away that I can’t put one on.”
Despite a public outcry over the ticketing of the armless man, and the fact that Simonar had a note from his doctor excusing him from wearing a seatbelt, the Saskatoon RCMP refused to rescind the ticket. As for Simonar, he said he’d take the case to the Canadian Supreme Court—and even go to jail if he had to. “I’m not ever gonna pay this ticket,” he said.
IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD
In May 2013, Billy McNeely of Fort Good Hope, Northwest Territories, was scratching at a sore spot on his back when, as he later told reporters, it “made a little sound, so that worried me.” He asked his girlfriend, Stephanie Sayine, to took a look. “I told Billy, ‘There’s a knife sticking out of your back’” she said. The pair went to the hospital, where doctors removed a three-inch-long knife blade from McNeely’s back. It had been there for a while: McNeely had been stabbed in the back several times, he said, during a fight…three years earlier. Doctors had not done X-rays at the time, but had simply stitched him up and sent him on his way. McNeely had since then gone to doctors several times complaining of a “burning” sensation in his back, but each time the doctors had said it was just nerve damage from the stabbings. “I’m kind of upset with the health system,” McNeely said.
In Yellowknife, you can see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) an average of 243 days a year.