A 430-pound convict was released early from a Quebec prison because his jailers could not accommodate his huge frame.
Michel Lapointe, who served more than two years in jail on drug charges, was released Tuesday — three months early, Canadian news broadcaster CTV said.

The decision was made in May by a Quebec judge after prison officials said they were unable to find Lapointe a chair or table large enough to fit him.  Lapointe described his time in prison as “a living hell,” CTV said.

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.

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.

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.

When Bert Cooper surveyed the backyard of his Manitoulin Island property a few months ago, he was stumped: Someone had stripped the bark off his birch trees.

At first, it looked as though the culprit hit only a handful of trunks. But as the 78-year-old walked along his property, on the island that borders Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, he saw that the bark bandit was efficient and methodical — about 120 birch trees had the same two-to-three-foot section uniformly cut out.

“It was so disgusting,” he told the CBC.   Cooper isn’t the only victim of this curious caper. His neighbours have since had their trees stripped, too.   Bud Hebner of Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources says these thefts are becoming more commonplace. He believes the burglars are using the birch bark for crafts, as the unique texture of the bark is increasingly in demand.

This type of crime sure is a lot different from the news casts I watched during my trip to NYC last year.