Spend Canada Day at The Laff!
Rosey dropped in to see what's on tap for the big day and let's just say what's on tap isn't just beer.
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CBC
22 minutes ago
- CBC
Kicking it old school: Why these childhood friends never want to stop playing soccer together
CBC Ottawa's Creator Network is a place where young digital storytellers from diverse backgrounds can produce original video content to air on CBC and tell stories through their own lens. Victories. Losses. Injuries, career changes, moves, fatherhood. Over their more than a decade on the pitch, "No New Friends" soccer players have seen it all, says longtime player and co-organizer Nick Pouponneau. He attributes the 60-minute Ottawa Footy Sevens soccer league games to helping him and other players navigate life both on and off the field. "No matter what happens, it's always going to be there for me, whether we win, whether we lose," Pouponneau said. "Soccer to me … it's a way of life." Pouponneau decided to profile the longtime team and explore how the sport has shaped its members in a video for CBC Ottawa's Creator Network. Decades later, childhood soccer friends still kicking it on No New Friends soccer team 4 minutes ago Wins, losses, broken ankles, breakups and moves: Players on longtime team say they've seen it all, and wouldn't miss their weekly games, in video for CBC Ottawa's Creator Network. Old friends and foes "Everything's happened, right? There've been breakups, there've been new jobs, they've been marriages," said longtime player Dominic Goss about the team, which came together over a decade ago from a group of friends who'd been who'd been playing — or against each other — since they were boys. "I mean, it's been life, right? [That] happened in the meantime." When soccer scholarships and degrees wrapped, the childhood buddies found themselves back in the city, at loose ends and looking for a way to bring serious soccer back into their lives, said Pouponneau. The name references a Drake song from that era. "We called ourselves No New Friends because we just had known each other for so long that it's like, 'Oh, we don't need new friends," said Pouponneau. He joked it's ironic because these days, players struggle to balance soccer and other commitments, and they often need new friends — especially those with younger legs — to pick up the slack. Soccer bonds and life plans But Goss said the teammates' history starts much earlier, back when soccer wasn't as popular in Ottawa, and the tight-knit community, many of them new to the country, often crossed paths at the gym at St. Patrick's High School. "Soccer was very much a sport played by immigrants and the kids of immigrants," recalled Goss, whose family immigrated from South Africa. He recalls his Canadian-born school friends tended to play hockey. "So it was a great bonding experience [for newcomers] that I think was necessary for a lot of people who maybe otherwise could have felt like outsiders." "We came to Canada in 1995 … from a war-torn country, and then one of the ways I made friends ... was through soccer," confirmed longtime player Francis Mavula, whose family came from Burundi, and whose brother also plays on the team. Mavula said soccer went on to shape the course of his life. After dreaming of becoming a professional player, he scored a soccer scholarship and went on to captain the men's team at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. "Soccer has had such a huge impact on my life. I think outside of my parents, it's been the biggest influence in who I am," he reflected, adding that he remains in touch with teammates despite being sidelined this season by a broken ankle. The sport also had a big impact on Pascal-Olivier Ouandji, who joined the team more recently. Raised in Cameroon and Kenya, he moved to southern France as a teen to pursue serious soccer at a high school affiliated with a soccer club, later coming to Ottawa with a plan to pursue sports journalism. "I was so obsessed with sports and [soccer] in particular that I kind of planned my whole life around it," said Ouandji, who like many of the players now works for the federal government and also makes music. More than just a game As they got older, many of the players say they struggled with balancing their love of the game with adult responsibilities. But for some, that made the team even more important. "I'm 39 years old. I have a two-year-old daughter now," said player Aras Tahir, who grew up with this group. "It's kind of hard to keep in touch with people, and soccer is our way." Pouponneau said he, too, is grateful for the weekly excuse to connect. "We always have these long goodbyes at the end of the game in the parking lot, and we're walking out and they're shutting off the lights in the facility," he said, explaining it's a chance to catch up on everything from kids to sleep patterns, to more serious topics. "A lot of times you'll see guys hang back and have those more deep conversations from, like, 'Hey, I'm really struggling with XYZ thing,' or, 'I'm feeling stressed about work.' Just get advice from that kind of brotherhood perspective." Now that many of the players have become dads themselves, they say the team's weekly games are a way to pass on that passion for sport and time with friends to the next generation. But despite the increasingly family feel of the weekly games and the age of the longtime players, they stress that competition is still fierce. "That's what's so great about sports. It's a continuous challenge, and especially as you get older, the challenge changes, and ... gets more difficult as well, right?" said Goss. The team was league champion last year and is in the playoffs again this season. "I mean, you know what these young guys are like. They can just run and run for days, which is not something that any of us are capable of, and as a result we rely heavily on our experience." Soccer on film Pouponneau, who now works in the fitness technology field, said he teamed up with filmmakers Pearly Pouponneau, his partner, and Evan Hartling to tell this story as a tribute not just to his childhood friend group, but to other longtime teams and groups he's seen over the years. "I think that there's a lot of versions of No New Friends out there... guys that are playing together week in week out," he said, adding that he was pleased to learn through this project just how important the team has become. "It was just a bunch of friends getting together once a week, and we didn't know where that would lead to. But it's just kind of continued for over 10 years now, where we're still doing it," reflected Mavula with a laugh. "People get older, people get hurt ... life gets complicated. I want us to just keep it going. I want us to play as long as we can," added Goss. "I can't understate the importance of how soccer shaped the trajectory of my life," said Pouponneau. "When you meet people who get it ... they get it, you know?"
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Abel Tesfaye returns to Toronto to kill The Weeknd
Social Sharing Unlike Taylor Swift's meteorite-like crash landing in the sweaty city of Toronto, there were no friendship bead-wearing police horses at The Weeknd's first showing in the Six. Instead, a more subdued air surrounded Rogers Centre as fans funnelled in: Low-key Starboy tracks warbling into the 30 C drippingly-wet air blanketing the stadium in the heart of The Weeknd's hometown. But that doesn't mean a lack of excitement, despite the weather. "God damn, it's hot," Canadian producer and DJ Kaytranada even exclaimed, towelling himself off onstage during a well-done if not earth-shattering opening. That was as sweltering fans at the first of four sold-out nights in the 50,000-seat venue braved the heat in requisitely dark clothes to match the R&B superstar infamously dark music. Just a day before, Mayor Olivia Chow dubbed the preceding days "The Weeknd weekend." That was because, she said, "Abel (The Weeknd) Tesfaye represents the best of our city." The Scarborough-raised artist also received a key to the city. And it was all just before audience members, eager to experience what is often still described as a once-in-a-lifetime concert experience, were uncharacteristically chatty with journalists — throwing themselves into on-camera interviews instead of waiting for the insistent coaxing of harried producers. "Everyone here, we are The Weeknd," a fan named Perry told CBC News. "He represents Canada." But as Tesfaye took the stage, the seemingly incongruous mix of emotions instantly made sense. Decked in a black robe encrusted with glittering gold rhinestones and a golden half-mask, you could see he embodied that caustic mix of the charismatic and subdued that, for anyone else, would not fit in the same person at the same time. As he has proven since releasing anonymous and unsettling dance-themed mixtapes in the 2010s all the way to this seemingly last tour under The Weeknd moniker, this is the space where Tesfaye thrives. While not retiring from music, he plans to no longer perform under the name he has become famous for. A return home Quickly barrelling through classic tracks The Abyss to Wake Me Up to After Hours, he was flanked by similarly masked, enrobed backup dancers — moving in unison around a slowly spinning golden statue of a giant, nude woman (imagine a female Oscars statuette, but with visible nipples). They stood beneath large gold rings, in front of a mocked up golden skyline of a crumbling city. Even Tesfaye's microphone was gold, a particularly heavy-handed metaphor that, early on, he stumbled chaotically toward. While roughly 30 women walked in sync around the statue and then behind to him, and as jets of fire shot up 20 feet into the air, Tesfaye held his hands up to the mic as if in prayer. None of them had to dance or even move much to earn the deafening applause that came next, as Tesfaye revealed the tiniest bit of his face, slightly peaking over the top of the mask. "Well that's a warm welcome home, isn't it?" he asked to another roar. It wasn't the last call out to his hometown. Later, he remarked the stadium is where he used to come to watch Blue Jays games "as a little baby," let out a long and extended "Toronto" in the middle of his track Sacrifice and managed to sneak both CN Tower and Rogers Centre references into São Paulo. But the focus was the gold, the ceremony and the performative reverence of it. The effect is impressive if eerie. A consummate musical professional with four Grammys under his belt and more Junos than anyone but Anne Murray, Tesfaye knows how to set a scene. He also knows how to sing, and — more than that — perform. He never failed to lead the tens of thousands of cheering attendants in song or just rapturous applause. It all gives the impression of some club-themed religious ceremony: A gigantic and enormously budgeted cultic worship service, except here the god is hedonism, sex and all the more outrageous scenes of Wolf of Wall Street. Of course, this is by design — both why The Weeknd can define himself as a generational sex symbol without gyrating or even revealing a sliver of his body under baggy robes and ostensibly why he's choosing to leave the schtick behind after this tour. In his shows and music, he's playing a club kid, fame-obsessed semi-satirical character invented way back in his debut mixtape House of Balloons days — itself a mask, Tesfaye explained in a 2013 Reddit AMA, he chose in order to hide his name and, by extension, himself. Vanity and nihilism In person, it all comes together like a magic trick. At a Weeknd concert, we're both sick of materialism, and sick of being sick of it. We're letting go of every inhibition, forgetting love, revelling in sex and giving up on self-control. It's all a statement about nihilism, you see. Or maybe, it's not. "It seems exorbitant when it all ends. A pointless, uncomfortable exercise from an artist who believes vanity means no stone of excess can be left unturned," music journalist Hanif Abdurraqib wrote of a 2013 Weeknd show in his book They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us. "The Weeknd tells the same tale: It's never about love, but then again, how can it be about anything but love, even if the love is just the love you have for your own ravenous desires." How much the separate entity of The Weeknd exists for Tesfaye to explore and mock his most self-destructive tendencies — instead of just revelling in them — isn't exactly clear. You would've been hard pressed to find any hints of displeasure from the seemingly ecstatic Tesfaye on Sunday. He hit hits old and new out of the park, and was grinning ear-to-ear as he held the microphone to nearly fainting fans, screaming out the ad libs of Out of Time. Still, it's perhaps a strange message to brand, as Chow did, the best of the city — and a strange one to have drawn as many barely five-foot middle-schoolers as Sunday's all-ages show did. At the same time, it's a theme that has offered diminishing returns. There was the 2022 Los Angeles concert in which Tesfaye infamously lost his voice due to stress. Then the ill-fated series The Idol, a Tesfaye-fronted series about the relentless pursuit of fame that was widely panned by critics and even The Weeknd himself. And then there was Hurry Up Tomorrow, the absurdly, incomprehensibly stupid filmic tie-in of his most recent album. Intended to further explore his falling-out-of-love with The Weeknd after the L.A. show, instead it only managed to compete with Megalopolis as the most offensively boring movie to premiere in the last 12 months. But perhaps these failures were because Tesfaye was performing to the wrong crowd, on the wrong stage. His messy, introspective and vague metaphors work better in song lyrics than dialogue; better sung in front of a stunning pyrotechnic flame and fireworks show than on a film screen. If Sunday's show proved anything, it was that. And even if on the inside he's done with The Weeknd, it proved he can certainly still fake it.
CBC
4 hours ago
- CBC
How orcas became such a big symbol of British Columbia
They were once seen by many as threatening monsters, but today are beloved. How did the perception of orcas change so much? Justin McElroy reports.
