Tag Archives: Canada News
Vancouver Island Earthquake 6.4 – Full Video
6.4 earthquake struck 175 miles west of Vancouver, causing buildings to sway in the Pacific coast Canadian city while causing no reported damage.
Residents of Vancouver Island, the 290-mile-long land mass to the west of the city, said they felt the impact. The temblor hit west of the island yesterday at 12:41 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
“It was scary but it was quick, it only lasted a few seconds,” said Cathy Falavolito, who with her husband owns the Westview Marina & Lodge in Tahsis, British Columbia, on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
The quake took place on a secondary fault, not the major Cascadia Subduction Zone, said John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington in Seattle. There was no tsunami because the edges of the fault moved sideways, not up and down, so a major wave wasn’t generated, he said.
“There will be lots of aftershocks, but they’re in a place that aren’t likely to cause a lot of damage,” he said.
A damaging tsunami isn’t expected, the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center said on its website.
The earthquake was centered about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Port Alice, British Columbia, according to the warning center. It was the biggest in the region since November 2004, according to emergency officials, and caused no reports of injuries.
Oslo Blast Hits Completed Footage Full Video
At least seven people were killed and 15 injured in the bomb blast, the nation’s worst attack since World War II.
Police Inspector Bjoern Erik Sem-Jacobsen said a suspect in the shooting has been arrested. He said the gunman, who was dressed as a police officer, pulled out a gun and started firing into the crowd of youths. There were unconfirmed reports that five people were wounded in that shooting.
Bar Fight With Hells Angels
40-year old Const. Chris MacDonald of Prince Edward Island and 25-year old Const. Kiel Samotej (Sa-mo-tay) of Alberta.
The two had pleaded guilty to assault charges after an off-duty incident at Cheetahs night club in August of 2009.
Samotej’s lawyer Neville MacDougall says his client is remorseful and takes full responsibility for a shoulder bump which ultimately led to the brawl outside.
MacDougall says the officers had been at the stag party before going to the nightclub had been drinking considerable amounts of alcohol.
Both constables, who did not appear in court in Kelowna Monday, will have to pay a $500 victim surcharge fee. (CKFR)
Meaghan Blanchard Royal Gaffe
22-year-old country singer had stayed up most of the night rehearsing her remarks to Prince William and Kate as they took in a series of cultural performances on Prince Edward Island on Monday.
When she took the podium at the Dalvay by the Sea resort and tried to address the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge by their formal titles, however, things didn’t go as planned.
“I mixed up Duke and Duchess and it came out d o o t c h, Dootch,” Blanchard said in an interview from Charlottetown.
The mispronunciation — which veered dangerously close to a derogatory insult — sparked widespread laughter from the audience and prompted some “life-saving” guffaws from the royal couple themselves.
Blanchard said the slip prompted Kate to hurry over to her husband to give him a playful tap on the shoulder, laughing all the while.
The hilarity helped ease the tension of an embarrassing moment, she said.
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“I felt awful because that’s not how I envisioned it going, but sometimes that’s just life and you gotta roll with the punches,” she said.
The songstress bounced back from the slipup to deliver a flawless performance of the self-penned “Waltzing with you.”
Blanchard wrote the song in tribute to her grandparents and felt the romantic ballad would make an appropriate choice to perform before the newlyweds.
Talk of her flub dominated discussion when the performers cleared the stage, but Blanchard said she felt bolstered by the supportive members of the Island arts scene.
“The music community on P.E.I. is really tight,” she said. “They were all laughing at me and giving me hugs and kisses and saying, ‘you know what, Meaghan, don’t worry about it.“’
Blanchard even managed to find a silver lining to the situation, musing the slipup may have provided a lift for audience members and organizers who may have been feeling the effects of the rainy weather.
“I think with the rain, and I think with them trying to rush through things because of the weather, I feel like it broke the tension a little bit,” she said with a laugh. “I might be just trying to make myself feel better.”
Blanchard’s performance before the royal couple may have been her official introduction to most of Canada, but the singer-songwriter from Hunter River, P.E.I. has already made a name for herself in Atlantic Canada.
She first gained attention with her debut album in 2008 and went on to rack up two nominations from the East Coast Music Association. Her sophomore effort, “Chasin’ Lonely Again,” earned her the ECMA 2011 country album of the year.
Vancouver 2011 Scott Jones and Alex Thomas Kissing Couple Footage Video
Australian Scott Jones and Canadian Alex Thomas, knocked down by a line of advancing police in riot gear.
Seconds later you see Jones protecting his girlfriend Thomas from police. The kiss, caught by Getty Images photographer Rich Lam, occurred seconds after that.
The couple’s kiss became a defining image of the Vancouver riots and catapulted the couple to celebrity. They have since hired an agent to deal with the surge in publicity.
In an interview with the CBC, Jones said that he was trying to calm down his girlfriend after they had been knocked down by police.
“They started beating us with the shields, like trying to get us to move,” Jones said.
“We weren’t being aggressive towards [police] or anything like that. But eventually they passed over us. And that’s when we were on the ground. She was a bit hysterical afterwards, obviously, and I was just trying to calm her down,” said Jones, 29, an Australian who’s been in Canada for six months.
“They were literally charging at us and we tried to run away,” he said.
Rich Lam who snapped the image also recalled the moment.
“It was complete chaos. Rioters set two cars on fire and then I saw looters break the window at a neighbouring department store,” he said to the Guardian.
“At that point, the riot police charged right towards us. After I stopped running, I noticed in the space behind the line of police that two people were lying in the street with the riot police and a raging fire just beyond them.” he added.
The image sparked speculation about the couple’s identity on Twitter and Facebook and questions about whether the image was photoshopped. Jones even picked up a nickname, the “Riot Romeo” for his smooch.
Kissing Couple Explain Their Famous Embrace In Interview
“We weren’t being aggressive towards [police] or anything like that. But eventually they passed over us. And that’s when we were on the ground. She was a bit hysterical afterwards, obviously, and I was just trying to calm her down,” said Jones, 29, an Australian who’s been in Canada for six months.
Alex Thomas said she wasn’t sure how she fell, although a witness has told CBCNews.ca that the Canadian woman was hit first by rioters and then pushed over by riot police trying to clear the street after rampant vandalism and looting spread through the downtown streets following the Vancouver Canucks’ Game -7 Stanley Cup loss to the Boston Bruins.
“Tripped up? I’m not sure. I was starting to get really frightened because I’d never experienced anything like that before, and it’s really scary,” Thomas told CBC News. “I was upset, and I fell down, and didn’t really know exactly what was happening.”
Jones said they had been trying to get out of the downtown area but found themselves on a street filled with police in riot gear.
Photos gone viral
“They were literally charging at us and we tried to run away,” he said.
Neither Thomas nor Jones blames the police for what happened, but understand they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“[The police] were doing their job,” Thomas said.
Jones has been working as a bartender and trying to break into acting and standup comedy. At least one of his comedy routines has been posted on YouTube.
Following the Canucks’ loss to the Boston Bruins, images of the kissing couple surrounded by riot police were splashed around the world.
On Twitter, Facebook and other social media, there was early speculation that the picture was staged. CBC.ca immediately launched a search to uncover the identity of the two.
Hannah Jones, Scott’s sister from Perth, told CBC News earlier Friday in an email that the man in the pictures is her brother, and he recently started dating Thomas, a former student at the University of Guelph in Ontario.
The two are overwhelmed by all the coverage the picture has gotten, she said, fielding calls from media around the world.
Kissing Couple At Vancouver Riot Identified Video
Wednesday night, images of the kissing couple were splashed around the world — notably in Australia after the family came forward as knowing the man caught in a passionate embrace with a woman on the street of the B.C. city.
Hannah Jones, Scott’s sister from Perth, told CBC News in an email that the man in the pictures is her 29-year-old brother, and he recently started dating Thomas, who attends the University of Guelph in Ontario.
And via Skype from Perth, their father, Brett, also confirmed that the pair are his son and his new girlfriend.
‘It’s just completely gone viral’
Brett Jones said the couple had been at the NHL final game, and after the frenzy following the loss spilled into the street, the two were caught in the violence.
“They were between the riot police and the rioters, and the riot police were actually charging forward, and Alex got knocked by a [police] shield and fell to the ground,” he told CBC News. “[Scott] was comforting her and gave her a kiss to say, ‘It’s going to be OK,’ and the photographer just took the shot at that moment.”
Brett Jones said Scott is fine, and Alex suffered a bruised leg from falling to the ground.
The two are overwhelmed by all the coverage the picture has gotten, he said, noting that he has been fielding calls from media around the world.
“They are both just totally stunned by it, actually.”
The dad of the now-famous bartender-standup comedian said Scott was in Vancouver on a work visa, and is leaving in a few days for the U.S., and then heading back to Australia.
But the image of Scott Jones and his girlfriend will likely forever be considered the one bright light in the Vancouver post-Stanley Cup frenzy.
