You think you’re gaffe-prone? Sit back and enjoy some boners made by other people for a change!
MISSED UNIVERSE
In May 2013, beauty queen Denise Garrido, 26, of Bradford, Ontario, was crowned Miss Universe Canada in Toronto. The win meant Garrido would be representing Canada at the international Miss Universe pageant later that year in Moscow, Russia…but she didn’t make the trip. The day after winning the crown, Garrido was called to a meeting with pageant officials, and was told that a mistake had been made: an employee transferring judges’ scores into a computer, they said, had made a typo. She was not actually the winner—the real winner was Calgary’s Riza Santos. Adding insult to injury: Garrido hadn’t even been the runner-up—she had actually come in third. “I thought that I was dreaming and it wasn’t real,” Garrido said in an interview the next day. “Unfortunately it was real.” Pageant organizers apologized profusely for the gaffe, and promised to bring in safeguards so that such a mistake would never happen again. Garrido, for her part, said she would try to at least enjoy being crowned Miss Universe Canada…“even if it lasted only 24 hours.”
OH SAY CAN YOU…UM…UM…
In May 2013, Saskatoon jazz singer Alexis Normand was invited to sing the national anthem before an internationally broadcast hockey game between Canadian and American teams in Saskatoon’s Credit Union Center. Because the game included an America team, Normand would be required to sing both the Canadian and American national anthems. She jumped at the chance, as the game was part of the Memorial Cup tournament, one of the country’s most widely-watched sporting events. At the game, Normand stood in the center of the rink, began to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and, just a few lines in—forgot the words. Then she just kind of made mumbly sounds where the words were supposed to be. Then she stopped singing altogether for about ten seconds. Then she started singing again, making more mumbly sounds. The crowd gasped, jeered, guffawed, and finally just started singing the song—really loud—to help the poor singer out. A very embarrassed Normand apologized the next day, via her Twitter account, and in interviews with television stations, said she simply hadn’t had enough time to learn the lyrics. By that time video of her anthem debacle had become a YouTube sensation—and has since been viewed by more than 740,000 people.
Alberta has half the world’s supply of bitumen (asphalt).
Bonus: Here’s an approximate transcript of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” as sung by Alexis Normand—mistakes and mumbly sounds included—at the game:
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last..…first…gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the…paralay night…
[ten second pause; crowd jeers; hockey players on rink try to hide their laughing behind their gloves]
Whose broad stripes and bright stars…at zuh lawn’s early light
What so ahh ver zwee svade and the jarlight still leaving
And the raas arr fil frehhh the bombs bursting in air
aiiii…and the gland was still there
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Bonus II: A few days later Normand was invited to sing before another Memorial Cup game, only this time organizers made sure it was between two Canadian teams…so she wouldn’t have to sing the American anthem.
YOU’RE (NOT) HIRED
In July 2012, Vanessa Hojda of Toronto, sent an email to the city’s York University to inquire about an administrative assistant position she had heard about. She wrote that she had seen an ad for the job, was interested in it, and finished with, “I’ve attached my resume and cover letter for your consideration.” Except she hadn’t actually attached her resume and cover letter—she had accidently attached a photo of actor Nicolas Cage making a wide-eyed, teeth-bared, maniacal-looking face instead. Hojda realized her mistake almost immediately; she had simply clicked on the wrong file. She posted a screen-pic of the email to her Tumblr blog, asking “is there a way to take back an email?” (There’s not.) From there, the Nicolas Cage-scary email story went viral. So much so that the it was covered by newspapers and television shows all over Canada, and Hojda was even interviewed by Time and the Washington Post in the U.S. She told the Post she had changed the name of her resume file to “ThisIsYourResumeThisIsNotAPictureOfNicolasCage.doc,” and that she had deleted the photo of Cage from her computer. Why did she have the photo of the maniacal-looking Nicolas Cage on her computer in the first place? She had found in online, she said, and simply thought it was funny.
Lacrosse was declared the national sport of Canada in 1859.
Bonus: Hojda did not get the job—the person who got the email was not as amused as everyone else—but the fame generated by the gaffe worked out for her: In the days that followed she received several job offers via her Facebook page.
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THINGS TO DO IN SASKATCHEWAN
Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, farmer Joe Murray has been excavating the basement under his farmhouse since 2005. Why is it taking so long? Because he’s doing it with remotely controlled miniature machinery. Farming season only lasts seven or eight months in Saskatchewan, so the project gives Murray something to do, in the warmth of his basement…alone…for hours every day …during the long winter. He has several different pieces of machinery: steam-shovels; front-end loaders; several dump trucks; and even semi-like trucks for transporting large amounts of dirt. Murray has even built a system of ramps, so the loaded trucks can be (remotely) driven outside to dump the dirt in his yard. How slow is the going? This slow: Murray manages to remove just two to three cubic yards of dirt—or about two large pickup truckloads—each year. Bonus: Murray videos his remote control machinery digging out his basement—and he has posted more than 150 of the videos on his YouTube channel. He has more than 3,000 subscribers, and the videos have been viewed more than four million times. “It’s not important that it ever gets done,” Murray said in 2012 of his interesting hobby. “It’s just something to do.”
Copiers and printers in Canada use the U.S. letter size, rather than the metric A4.