Gooood morning Regina! It’s winter! As I’m starting to type here at 10:21 in the mid-morning, the temperature is -25 and it sure felt like it on the walk to work. The expected high today is -21 with a low tonight of -30. The sun poked its sleepy head over the horizon at 8:56 and it slips back into hiding at 5:14 p.m. All right, so what’s going on?
1. THE TRUDEAU SHUFFLE Cabinet shuffle today. Early word says Chrystia Freedland is now minister of foreign affairs.
2. JUSTICE FOR ALL? Today is the second anniversary of the death of Nadine Machiskinick, who fell 10 storeys down a hotel laundry chute Jan. 10, 2015. Her family is holding a vigil today at the Gathering Place. An inquest into Machiskinick’s death will begin this spring.
3. CRASH CITY There were 23 car accidents reported yesterday. Twenty three!!!
4. SHOOTING OFF MORE THAN THEIR MOUTHS Who is firing guns at Parliament and Robinson? Stop it. Bad.
5. WHEN A TREE FALLS The iconic, 150-foot-tall tunnel tree nicknamed the Pioneer Cabin has fallen. It might have been 1,000 years old.
6. SO MUCH TO DO, SO LITTLE TIME The Obama administration is working on police reform in Chicago and Baltimore, two cities with forces that have been especially racist and violent.
7. CANADIAN APPAREL Looks like Montreal-based Gilden is buying the bankrupt American Apparel brand. What they’re not presumably buying is the company’s commitment to North American manufacturing, fair wages, and LGBT and immigration activism. AA had its problems (expunged founder Dov Charney masturbated in front of journalists and has been accused of sexual harrasment) but in the cesspool of the clothing industry they did more than a few things right. Better than Gildan, anyway.
8. THE JOURNALIST WHO BROKE THE BIGGEST STORY OF THE 20TH CENTURY HAS DIED British reporter Clare Hollingworth has passed away at 105. In 1939 she was the first to report Germany’s invasion of Poland, which started the Second World War.
9. MIKE PENCE HAS AN UNEXPECTED REDEEMING QUALITY Awful U.S. vice president-elect Mike Pence has been a born-again moralizing manure mound for years as a fiscal conservative with a shit record on women’s and LGBTQ rights. He’s an awful person and the world would be a better place without him on it. That said, it’s possibly a bad idea to totally reject the humanity of enemies so I’m gonna celebrate Pence’s one redeeming quality: he and his family likes pets. They have two cats, a rabbit named “Marlon Bundo” and a, yes, yes, snake. It’s named Sapphira but I haven’t been able to find out what kind of snake it is because reporters don’t ask tough questions anymore. Unfortunately Sapphira is staying at the family’s Mississippi home, so no slithering Second Pets at Number One Observatory Circle, at least for now.