Country fans sing their hearts out at Troubadour Festival
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The first edition of the Troubadour Festival in Barrie with headliner Dean Brody
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CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
Buy Canadian moment creates opportunity for Roots and its domestic leather business
TORONTO — Rifling through the Roots Corp. product archives on a recent Thursday morning, CEO Meghan Roach is surrounded by the kind of heritage 'most consumer brands would die to have.' In every direction she turns are racks of leather jackets spanning the company's 52 years. Some are replicas of custom pieces gifted to Toronto Raptors players for their 2019 championship win, the cast of Saturday Night Live for its fiftieth anniversary or the Jamaican bobsled team that inspired the 'Cool Runnings' film. Others are even more rare: a forest green jacket stitched with a floral and friendship bracelet motif for pop star Taylor Swift, and one adorned with snazzy sunglasses and piano key pockets that marked Elton John's retirement from touring, the lining of which features 56 years of albums. What they have in common is an origin story that began with the building Roach is standing in — the Roots leather factory in north Toronto. Chances are, if you bought a leather bag or jacket from the retailer, they came from the Caledonia Road site, which has given Roots bragging rights in an era where everyone wants to buy Canadian. 'Every time I bring someone through the factory, they kind of look at me and say, 'I just didn't realize you did this here,'' Roach said of the facility where dozens of workers cut leather, stitch it together, emboss it and ultimately, handcraft up to 8,000 pieces monthly. The Canadian operation is a rarity these days, after clothing manufacturing largely migrated overseas in the sixties, when brands wanted to reduce costs and offload repetitive and sometimes time-consuming tasks. Roots has not been entirely immune to the allure of international production. It sources some of its clothing in Asia and Europe, but designs everything in Canada, which remains the heart of its leather business. Domestic production has been 'very challenging,' Roach said. Canadian suppliers have been dwindling, so the company has had to look to Italy and France to source leather and even farther afield for zippers. For a time, it had a Canadian company helping it with piping on bags, but they went out of business, so Roots bought its machinery and trained staff to use it. The decision was a point of pride long before shoppers started letting patriotism rule their pocketbooks this year in hopes of countering U.S. President Donald Trump and his tariff whims. The moment has shoppers rallying around any company with a shred of Canadiana so Roach is determined not to let it slip away without customers learning more about the brand's, well, roots. Founders Michael Budman and Don Green were raised in Michigan but met at Camp Tamakwa in Ontario's Algonquin Park in 1963 and 10 years later, decided to head north of the border to start Roots. Initially, they specialized in negative-heel shoes, which reduced pressure on backs, but when the footwear sold out in less than a month and spawned a waiting list, Budman and Green dreamt bigger. They started pumping out varsity jackets, leather bags ideal for weekend getaways and salt-and-pepper sweats. Eventually, they became a Canadian staple with stores dotting the country, a discount airline shuttling people from coast to coast, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck starring in ads and a coveted contract to outfit the nation's Olympic team. Nowadays, the stores remain but the airline has folded, the business no longer sells shoes, ads aren't quite so star-studded and Lululemon Athletica Inc. outfits Team Canada. Budman and Green? They sold a majority stake in Roots in 2015 to Searchlight Capital Partners L.P., a firm split between Toronto, New York, Miami and London. Roach worked at the firm before joining Roots. When she took the top job in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020, she was inheriting a brand Canadians adored but that needed to get some of its groove back. 'Because it's 50 years old, you have to be really careful in terms of how you modernize it,' she said. 'You can't just wake up one day and change everything, so we've been slowly over the last five or six years, making small tweaks and changes.' Having heard from customers who wanted less dominant logos on their clothes and softer fabrics across more products, Roach introduced new lines with minimal branding and expanded the brand's use of comfier materials. She sold the items in stores slowly being revamped to have a brighter and lighter feel that is less reminiscent of a cabin and more like a burst of freshness from the great outdoors. She also decided Roots needed to do a better job of telling its story, so it invested more heavily in digital marketing and brought on brand ambassadors. Some of those efforts are working because Roots appears to have stronger margins and renewed consumer interest, said Liza Amlani, principal of Retail Strategy Group in an email. But she still feels the brand has work to do because 'not all stores are consistent in the customer experience and many are packed to the brim with product' that needs to keep evolving if Roots wants to hang onto customers long after the buy Canadian bubble bursts. These days they're marketing a Canada collection of red-and-white apparel, T-shirts dedicated to local waterways like Okanagan Lake and leather goods like an emoji bag charm with maple leaves for eyes. Roach insists the unabashedly Canadian items aren't a sign that other markets aren't still a priority. When she joined Roots, she relaunched the brand in China and began plotting to expand its presence even further into the U.S., where it has two stores. That plan is still on the table, even now that Trump has chosen Canada as one of his top tariff targets, because she says, 'there's a huge amount of potential there once we get through the current volatility.' 'The thing about being with a brand that's been around for 50 years is you have to look past the short-term nature ... like not what's happening next month or next year but what's going to happen over the next 10 to 15 years,' she said after strolling the leather factory. 'You're thinking what do I have to do and invest in and what are the green shoots I have to build today for this business to be successful more over a longer period of time?' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2025. Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
Globe and Mail
4 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Netflix's Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem revisits mayoral tenure of Rob Ford
We're coming up on 10 years since Rob Ford's death – and the memories of his four-year rumble as Toronto's mayor have happily blurred into the middle distance of the past. The post-Ford panic that led the city to play possum politically for a decade by electing John Tory over and over seems to have finally lifted. Torontonians ultimately decided to just move on – name an arena in Etobicoke after Ford last year to placate those who view him as a hero of Hogtown's hoi polloi, but otherwise pretend like that never happened. Alas, here comes Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem out on Netflix on Tuesday to rudely reopen old wounds and remind us of our world-class shame. There's that infamous 'crack video' again – there were two, actually – and all those shots of Ford running, running, running, around city hall or smack into a city councillor, while the city itself stood still in what now seem like crucial years wasted. Why make Canadians cringe anew at Ford struggling with his demons in public and emitting sordid soundbites about 'drunken stupors' and how he had 'more than enough to eat at home'? Did all that sound and fury signify something? Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem treats Ford largely as the stand-alone story about an addict possessed of a certain chaotic charisma who ended up a leader of the fourth largest city in North American thanks to an electorate momentarily miffed by a garbage strike. Elbows (and bottoms) up: The down-low on the upfronts at Corus, Rogers, Bell Media and CBC It has nothing to say about his legacy in burying the myth of Toronto as 'New York run by the Swiss' – or the endurance and evolution of the Ford Nation phenomenon under his brother Doug Ford's mantle. Indeed, the hour-long doc is designed to only have passing interest in its subject. It's part of an 'anthology documentary series' produced for the streamer by Raw TV, a London-based film and television company, that revisits media circuses from the past quarter century. A brand that started in 2022 with the three-part Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 now has a shorter attention span; its first episode this season re-examined the fatal Astroworld Festival crowd crush in Houston in 2021, and the episode to come after its documentary on Ford will be on the so-called 'poop cruise' disaster of 2013. That 'remember that terrible thing?' focus, or lack thereof, makes Trainwreck feel like the flipside of those old VH1 I Love… nostalgia series. It's an approach no doubt in tune with our times – kind of an I Love to Hate... the 2010s. While Torontonians may be frustrated by this framing, at least Mayor of Mayhem is not one of those docs that tries to come up with a contrarian pseudo-compassionate view on a maligned figure from the past. Ford is here exactly as you remembered before you blocked it out. 'This, folks, reminds me of when Saddam attacked Kuwait,' he said, after city council finally stripped him of his powers. 'You guys have just attacked Kuwait.' 10 new TV shows to watch this summer, from The Bear to Star Trek and more Mayor of Mayhem interviews three groups of people who were immersed in the mayhem: The journalists who tried to expose its true extent; the municipal politicians who eventually stopped it; and the members of Ford's inner circle who say they tried to temper it. Ford's chief of staff Mark Towhey, fired after he kept strongly suggesting his boss go to rehab, comes across a hero of sorts, while the mayor's receptionist Tom Beyers, whose wife left him during this period of overwork, paints himself as a true believer who felt duped when he learned that a crack video did exist. As for the journalists, Robyn Doolittle, who moved from the Toronto Star to The Globe and Mail newsroom during that period and literally wrote the book on Ford's time in office (Crazy Town), is interviewed, of course. So too is Katie Simpson, then with CP24 and now a Washington correspondent for CBC; she was star of a viral clip, where she turned to the camera and reacted in genuine shock to a sexually explicit soundbite that I heard unbleeped here for the first time and is, indeed, still stunning. But David Rider, who was then city hall bureau chief of the Toronto Star, makes clear that the Ford phenomenon was not actually good for the press, naming the post-Ford elephant in the room: 'Rob Ford demonizing the media years before Donald Trump did the same thing was extremely effective.' Doolittle recounts death threats she received – and reminds viewers that though she had viewed the crack video first, if it weren't for the American site Gawker breaking the story, she might not have been able to report on it given Canada's plaintiff-friendly defamation laws. What would have happened if Ford were mayor today – with Gawker since bankrupted by a lawsuit backed by an anti-democratic tech billionaire, and the proliferation of deepfakes making the bar for reporting on videos even higher? What would have happened if Ford hadn't got sick during his re-election campaign for that matter? I feel that panic again. Thanks a lot, Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem, for pulling my head back out of the sand.
CTV News
10 hours ago
- CTV News
‘They started singing along': Vancouver musician plays the melodica for elephants in Vietnam
Vancouver concert pianist and composer Martin Mayer has plenty of fans around the world, especially in China, where he's known as 'Canada's Prince of Piano.' He's performed for sold-out crowds on several multi-city tours of the country and says he's been mobbed for autographs, followed by paparazzi, and was even woken up at 3 a.m. by a fan knocking on his hotel room door. And now Mayer has two new devotees in Vietnam—who happen to be elephants. The musician visited Vinpearl Safari in Phu Quoc on a recent vacation, and because you can't fit a grand piano in your pocket, he brought a melodica—a handheld keyboard you play by blowing into a mouthpiece. While feeding the elephants at the zoo, Mayer's partner suggested playing them a song. He went with the recognizable 'Perfect' by Ed Sheeran. 'These two elephants basically stopped what they were doing, stopped taking food from the other people, walked up and started listening,' he told CTV News. They flapped their ears, put their trunks together, and 'started singing along.' 'I've played for thousands of people in concert and millions of people on TV and the whole notion of playing for two elephants in the sanctuary—I can't think of any way to top that,' he said. Mayer was at a loss for words after the encounter and later ran back to see the elephants again. He whistled at them and the animals turned around to give him a final look. 'I remember feeling this innate sense this is beyond human-to-human, this is human-to-animal, and I'm able to communicate with these two in a way that is beyond language or anything like that,' he said. 'It's the best feeling to be able to provide joy and possibly the first music that they've ever heard.' Mayer is now considering continuing his new gig as an animal entertainer, floating the idea of performing at the Greater Vancouver Zoo, Vancouver Aquarium, or even bringing the melodica on a boat to play for the harbour seals and orcas. 'Human beings shouldn't be the only ones that get a chance to experience music,' he said. With files from CTV News Vancouver's Spencer Harwood
