Mountie Madness: Well That’s One Explanation
In November 2009, an RCMP officer in Ontario sat through two traffic light cycles; the car in front of him hadn’t moved. When he investigated, he found the driver of the car chatting on...
Canada
Warner Bros.
In 1888 a family of Jewish refugees from Poland crossed the ocean, settled in Ontario, and changed their name to Warner. In 1903 the three eldest brothers bought a movie projector and visited mining...
CN Tower
It all started due to bad television signals. In the 1960s, the tall skyscrapers of Toronto, Canada, hindered proper transmission of signals. It was at this point that the Canadian National Railway Company (CN) decided...
Poutine
There are several claims to the origins of this dish, but most likely poutine (meaning “mess” in French) was invented in Warwick, Quebec, in 1957. Rushing to fill a trucker’s order, restaurant worker Fernand...
That’s a Nice Wine
Canada might not surpass California’s Napa Valley, but the country can produce one that NApa will never be able to: ice wine. When life hands you frozen grapes, make ice wine. That’s what Walter...
Crash Test Dummies
We prefer their original name Bad Brad Roberts and the St. James Rhythm Pigs but they came under the sway of a medical student friend who suggested Crash Test Dummies instead.
The Poppy Family
“Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” was the musical question posed in 1969 by this Vancouver psychedelic pop group. Headed by Terry and Susan Jacks and backed up by two unrelated musicians, the oh-so-sixties name...
Sloan
This Halifax band got its name because of a friend’s problems at work. Jason Larsen’s French speaking boss referred to him as “Slow One,” but it sounded like “Sloan” to his coworkers, and became...
Mahogany Rush
The band’s leader, Frank Marino, thought up this name during an acid trip that put him in the hospital. He was trying to explain the nature of his LSD exhilaration the “rush” and figured...
The Canadian Crop
The Niagara Peninsula’s perfect convergence of good growing conditions for grapes and consistent freezing make it the world”s most productive ice wine region. Inniskillin Winery Niagara-on-the-Lake was pioneer in Canadian ice wine, winning the...
