Weird Canada III

I haven’t blogged in a while, well make that a long while. All blogged out I guess, no inspiration and when I get home from a day of teaching, there are always odd jobs to do such as correcting and preparing classes. When I finally finish I just haven’t got the energy to think up something original to write about. Anyhow here is some weirdness about the Great White North that I picked up in the last edition of the Bathroom Reader, just to prove that we are not any less wacky than the rest of the world.

YOU WANT THE TOOTH, OFFICER?

Outside Samia, 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 Southem 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."

ANINUL ACT

Wildlife officials in Deer Lake, Newfoundland, had to put down a moose in 2009, after someone reported the animal collapsing from exhaustion in their backyard. Witnesses reported seeing three teenage boys chasing the moose for hours and hitting it with sticks The teens were quickly caught, brought up on animal cruelty charges ... and acquitted. Why? One of the boys' fathers testified that they couldn't have been abusing the moose, because at the time they were busy vandalizing a local church.

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.

THE LAW IS THE LAW

In June 2010, Marika De Florio's five‑year‑old neighbor was driving her crazy, riding his battery‑powered four‑wheeler past her Seeley Bay, Ontario, house over and over again all afternoon. She asked the boy's grandparents several times to keep it down, but to no avail. So De Florio went outside and, in full view of the boy, took off her shirt. That, she reasoned, would convince the boy's grandparents to bring him inside. Indeed, Mike and Nancy Berry quickly hustled their grandson inside and then called the police on De Florio. No charges were pressed, however‑it's legal in Seeley Bay for women to be topless in public.

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.

BANADA

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.