We will be starting  a fantastic series on what is cool and hot to do in Toronto.  We will be covering all the cool hang-outs, hot night spots and delicious eateries the city of Toronto has to offer.  Stay tuned and please submit your comments to participate.

Would you give up your underwear for peace?  Canadian women are being asked to volunteer their undergarments in an international effort to shame Myanmar’s ruling junta into giving citizens greater access to humanitarian aid and human rights. Organizers launched the Canadian edition of the Panties for Peace! campaign Tuesday with a call for women to send their underwear to the Myanmar embassy in Ottawa.

The campaign plays off regional superstitions that contact with women’s panties can sap a man’s power. Activists claim the fear is shared by the leaders of the country’s military regime. Spearheaded by a pro-democracy group based in Thailand, the campaign was launched in the fall to draw attention to human rights abuses against women in the country.  At the time, the junta was violently suppressing a pro-democracy uprising by the country’s Buddhist monks.  

The Canadian version of the international campaign, co-ordinated by the Quebec Women’s Federation and Rights and Democracy, hopes to also raise funds for victims of Cyclone Nargis.  More than 130,000 people are thought to be dead or missing in the wake of the cyclone that struck in early May. The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million survivors have not yet received any aid.

News organizations reported Tuesday that humanitarian workers have only just begun reaching the remote, hardest hit areas of the country.  Levesque said Rights and Democracy will funnel any money raised to known aid groups working along the Myanmar-Thai border. She refused to name the groups for security reasons.

Observer say the junta is worried successful aid operations will undermine its authority following the protests in the fall. According to the campaign’s organizers, Myanmar’s embassies in Europe, Australia and Brazil, among other places, have been receiving female underpants in the mail.  Personally I think they should only collect nasty soiled underwear and drop them on the military headquarters.

Canadians will find this one weird, a Missouri car dealer was bragging to local news that sales have soared at their auto and truck business since launching a promotion last week that promises buyers a free handgun or a $250 gas card with every purchase.

Max Motors, a small Butler, Missouri dealership that has as its logo a grimacing cowboy wielding a pistol, has sold more than 30 cars and trucks in the last three days, far more than its normal volume. And owner Mark Muller credits his decision to start offering buyers their choice of a $250 gas card or a $250 credit at a gun shop.

Every buyer so far “except one guy from Canada and one old guy” has elected to take the gun, Muller said. Muller recommends his customers select a Kel-Tec .380 pistol. “It’s a nice little handgun that fits in your pocket,” he said.

Muller said the promotion was inspired by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is vying with Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee for the presidential election in November. “We did it because of Barack Obama. He said all those people in the Midwest, you’ve got to have compassion for them because they’re clinging to their guns and their Bibles. I found that quite offensive.”

“We all go to church on Sunday and we all carry guns,” said Muller. “I’ve got a gun in my pocket right now. I have a rifle in my truck. We’ve got to shoot the coyotes out here, they’re attacking our cows, our chickens. We’re not clinging to nothing. We’re just damn glad to live in a free country where you can have a gun if you want. This is the way it ought to be.”  Stories like this make me glad I live in Canada.

Tired of squeezing into cattle class and looking for somewhere to stretch out? Pay just 12 dollars more to sleep in the overhead luggage compartments of Canada’s Westjet … on April Fool’s Day.
 
“The overhead compartment has traditionally been a place where guests have placed their carry-on baggage,” Westjet vice president Bob Cummings said in a joke statement.

“Given that the overhead bins on our fleet are among the most spacious of any airline, we made the decision to offer sleeper cabins in that space,” he said of their fleet of 73 Boeing 737s.

“By offering our existing overhead bins as sleeper cabins, guests will now have the opportunity to lie down for a period of time and arrive at their destination refreshed, rested and ready to go.”

The statement was accompanied with a picture of a traveler comfortably nestled in an overhead bin bed with a pillow and a blanket.  I have seen hotel rooms in Asia that looks similar to those overheads, so I guess a lots of folks fell for this one.

Peter Brouwer and his girlfriend were both born in February and like to celebrate their birthdays in style.  They organize trips every year to mark the occasion, hitting the slopes in the Rockies, Carnival in Brazil and other interesting locations. This year, for his 13th birthday, they plan to head to a beach to bask in the California sunshine.

But while she normally has 364 sleeps before officially blowing out the candles on her cake, his wait is more than four times as long.  Brouwer is among the 21,400 Canadians born on leap year day, according to Statistics Canada - the last day in February marked every four years.

More than a decade ago, the Duncan, B.C., resident decided he wanted to connect with others who share the birthday and he created a website with a Feb. 29 theme.  Prior to its launch, Brouwer said the only time he had ever met anyone born on the day was in the 1970s when he spotted an ad in a Vancouver newspaper placed by a man looking to meet other “leapers.” 

There are now about 7,000 members worldwide registered on the site - including roughly 450 from Canada - in celebration of their special shared birthday.  The honour roll even has a special section for leapers who are related, including New Brunswick quadruplets and 72 sets of twins.

Brothers John and Jeff Durrant, both B.C.-based accountants, were born on the leap year day in 1956 and 1960, respectively, and plan to celebrate their birthday together Friday.  Sounds like a fun way to enjoy a rare birthday.

In some parts of the U.S. the word “Canadian” has ugly connotations and it is not because we refused to join the war in Iraq.  In the south, “Canadian” is a racial slur referring to African-Americans. The term has its roots in the word Canuck, says an expert.

“Canuck, that very same term of endearment Canadians use now,” was used by racist southern Americans to insult French Canadians with dark skins, said Stefan Dollinger, editor in chief of Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. Over time, we gave the word Canuck a totally different spin and it now refers to any Canadian, he said.

“In the U.S. some people still use Canuck as a slur,” said Dollinger, who is also the director of the University of British Columbia’s Canadian English lab.

Internet message-board posters have been discussing the issue of southern Americans using the word Canadian to replace racial epithets for black people.

A Texas district attorney got into trouble and have left others wondering what exactly it means when he used the word “Canadians” to describe blacks on a jury.

In an e-mail to a junior prosecutor, district attorney Mike Trent wrote: “He overcame a subversively good defence by Matt Hennessey that has some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing.”

Reports indicated there were no Canadians, but a number of black people.

“Never heard of that here in Edmonton,” said Michael Broodhagen, local chapter president of the National Black Coalition of Canada Society.   There goes the US being dumb again, it must be an effect of George W. Bush.

Thousands of Quebecers can thank an extra 2.1 centimetres of snow for a free trip, part of a vacation giveaway based on the amount of snow that fell on Jan. 1. Canadian online travel retailer itravel2000.com confirmed Wednesday night that 14.8 centimetres of snow fell at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Montreal on New Year’s Day.

That amount surpassed the minimum of 12.7 centimetres or five inches required for a free trip under their “Let it Snow” promotion
Quebec customers whose departures were scheduled between Nov. 1, 2007, and Apr. 30, 2008, and who booked their trips between June 12 and Dec. 7, 2007, earned free vacations.

The offer was based on snowfall in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal or Halifax. Toronto measured in at 9.4 centimetres, while Halifax recorded 0.8 centimetres and Calgary had 0 centimetres. The number of winners could be in the “tens of thousands,” itravel2000 vice-president Brad Miron told the CBC on Tuesday.  It looks like it still might have worked out.

Wearing speedos at the beach is wrong, right?  But they crazy Canadians are showing off their speedos in sub-zero weather…that is wrong, very wrong!!  But it was all for a Sick Kids Foundation fundraiser, so that is ok, eh?

Those crazy, nutty Canadians sure have good hearts, check these guys out, they have no shame!

Talk about a party platform.  The Rhinos are back and they’re hoping to lure voters with the tantalizing promise of weekly orgasms - and marijuana in every pot. The Neorhino party promises to declare Spanish as Canada’s official language and pass legislation forcing Prime Minister Stephen Harper to go on a diet.

They’re proud of smoking pot, they draw their political inspiration from cigar-chomping comics and rock legends, and they want to get elected so they can stick it to “The Man.”  The new party - officially called neorhino.ca - is one of at least two groups claiming to be a reincarnation of the defunct Rhinocerous party that specialized in political satire.

Like the old Rhinos, the party has no clear political ideology except for two deep beliefs: something’s seriously wrong with the state of modern politics, and Canadian public discourse could use a lot more fun.  “We are a Marxist-Lennonist party - based on the philosophy of Groucho Marx and John Lennon,” said party president Francois Gourd.

He calls himself “Yo” Gourd, which in French sounds just like “yogurt.” He strode to the podium in the news-conference room near the House of Commons on Thursday sporting a cloth rhinoceros horn on his head.  The original Rhinos were founded in 1963 by Quebec author Jacques Ferron, and reached the pinnacle of their success in the 1980 election where they received 110,000 votes - or 1.01 per cent of the popular vote.

They never won a seat and stopped running election candidates in 1993 after an election reform law that stripped the party of its registered party status.  Gourd recently ran in Quebec’s Outremont byelection and finished sixth with just 145 votes.  The party claims to have 600 members in 30 ridings - 20 of them in Quebec.  Among its other campaign planks: Replace soldiers’ weapons with paintball guns; Create a national gas-barbecue registry; and replace the Defence Department with a Ministry of Laughter.

Beneath the thick veneer of gags, the party raises a serious point: people are so disenchanted with politics that almost 40 per cent of Canadians no longer bother voting in federal elections.  That, for the Neorhinos, produces a tantalizing bit of electoral math. If every single one of those non-voters were to cast a ballot for them, they could statistically hope to win a majority government.

The Neorhinos admit some respect for the established political parties - including the NDP and the Greens. They say it’s hard to like Liberals, and dismiss Conservatives as proponents of the politics of fear.  For example, they are no fan of the Tories’ war on drugs.  “We are for the Marijuana party of Canada - and we inhale. And we enjoy it,” Gourd said. “I am an illegal person. I have been smoking dope for 30 years.”

They poked fun at the prime minister for saying recently that he struggles to explain the drug references in Beatles lyrics to his son, Ben. To them, it offers further proof of how dull politicians are.  “We’re just joining the herd of the stupid, the idiots and the nuts,” Gourd said. “When you have to explain Beatles songs to your children, something is strange.”  I am not a big fan of politics but these folks seem to be heading in the right direction.

So everyone always thinks of Canadians as those too nice, docile folks to the North, but what they don’t know is that under the facade of sweetness lies the cold heart of a cheater. According to a Sun Media-Leger Marketing sex poll, though, almost 30% of Canadians admit to illicit trysts and cheating on their partner.

While Atlantic Canada boasted the most faithful partners, with only 16% admitting to cheating, that number doubles in the Prairie provinces, where 35% say they’ve been unfaithful. Gender differences are marginal among the 1,524 poll respondents, with 30% of men cheating, compared to 25% of women.

“Cheaters follow the same patterns,” Gruschynski, a private investigator said, and signs of infidelity are predictable. But sometimes the victims of betrayal can also fall into dangerous patterns, he added, and call back to bust subsequent unfaithful partners.

The bust-a-cheat business has been brisk in Edmonton, growing proportionally to the population boom. Summer is particularly busy, he said, when long summer days and more exposed skin heat up dormant libidos. Though it’s said it takes two to tango, most couples counsellors agreed that cheaters who do the horizontal mambo are ultimately accountable for their actions.

“The victim of betrayal should never be blamed,” said Montreal psychotherapist Jason Phelps. But infidelity is often the result of growing distance in the relationship, he said. When Sun Media dangled a carrot in front of respondents in the form of secret sex, three-quarters of Canadians said they would never cheat even if no one could ever find out. But a gender breakdown reveals that double the percentage of men — 26% — would cheat if given the chance. Meanwhile, the refrain “look but don’t touch” may apply to casual glances of admiration on the street, but intimacy at any level — including online — is considered a betrayal among the majority of Canadians.

Is kissing cheating? While 67% of Canadians consider kissing cheating, online intimacy is close behind at 63%, followed by “loving someone else but no sex” at 56%. “Many partners will feel betrayed by online chatting,” Phelps said. “They’re sharing their inner-most thoughts, feelings and fantasies with someone outside the relationship; the partner will feel betrayed.”

But while online intimacy is seen as emotional betrayal among 72% of women, only 54% of men consider cybersex and online chats cheating. “When one’s doing it secretively, it doesn’t involve the other person and it becomes an ongoing thing, it’s going to cause problems,” Phelps said. Having been the victim of a cheating wife I can tell you something you don’t always see in the above statistics and that is the broken homes and kids that have to grow up without an intact family. It seems wedding vows don’t mean much these days….