Our happy holidays message also applies retroactively to Hanukkah, which ran from December 10-18.
CBC has a lot of Christmas-related programming down the stretch. The Saturday night CBC Canadian film series continues on Boxing Day.
CBC Radio smartly brought back the James Murray COVID-19 updates on The World at Six on CBC Radio One. A reminder to limit holiday gatherings to those in your household. Ontario goes into a province-wide lockdown on Boxing Day.
We are going to take some well-deserved time away for the rest of the calendar year, short of breaking news, such as a new nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Canada.
We are adjusting our schedule and won't cover the 2021 World Juniors tournament this season. The tournament begins on Christmas Day and runs through January 5. The original schedule was for the tournament to be in Edmonton and Red Deer in Alberta. The 2021 World Juniors will be held in a bubble in Rogers Place in Edmonton. The old Northlands Coliseum hosted the tournament in 1995 and 2012.
This move would have been made even if COVID-19 did not exist.
You can follow the tournament on TSN in Canada and the NHL Network in the United States.
2021 CBC television winter schedule
CanadianCrossing.com Canadian TV coverage
CanadianCrossing.com television coverage
Season 9 of Letterkenny debuts on Christmas Day on Crave. Season 9 of Letterkenny will be on Hulu on Boxing Day in the United States. You might recall that Season 8 of Letterkenny debuted on Christmas Day 2019.
Your humble narrator has been catching up on Letterkenny and Cardinal as well as Canadian films on Hulu.
Each Letterkenny season runs 6-7 episodes. Cardinal has 4 seasons of 6 episodes on Crave in Canada but Hulu only has the first 3 seasons. Hulu still hasn't acquired the third and final season of Mary Kills People.
Letterkenny has been this amazing dynamic of smart writing in a rural setting. A few too many fights than I prefer in a show but witty banter and a real love behind the making of the show. An English Canadian show that has love for the Indigenous and Quebecois populations is really incredible.
For the Americans who haven't tried out the Global TV show Nurses on NBC, the U.S. network is giving you another chance to see the first 2 episodes. NBC will run the first 2 episodes again on December 29 at 9 pm Eastern. The 10 pm Tuesday timeslot is where new episodes air on NBC on January 5.
We had our CBC winter schedule preview on Monday. The U.S. audience will have to wait quite awhile for the Baroness von Sketch Show bonus episodes (February 24!!). The CBC winter schedule starts January 4.
Trickster coming to the U.S. on the CW in January
Thought about Anna (Maika Harper) from Mohawk Girls this week with the news about Michelle Latimer. Anna's father was Mohawk but whose mother was white. She struggles with whether she qualifies as part of the community.
Latimer relied on her family's oral history to claim Métis and Algonquin heritage and specifically the Kitigan Zibi community of Quebec. Verification is really important in these matters. Should be noted that the Métis National Council does not recognise any Métis communities in Quebec.
As a settler, I can't begin to understand how this works. I think I've learned to make sure something has been verified first. Journalism teaches you that if your mother says she loves you, check it out. A grandfather's oral history may sound great but you need to check that out first.
Latimer apologized for claimed historical roots without verification. She has also left the production of Trickster for Season 2.
Latimer had an amazing 2020 before this news. Inconvenient Indian won the Best Canadian Feature Film at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The festival also showed the first 2 episodes of Trickster. The U.S. audience will get Trickster on the CW beginning January 12.
The National Film Board just pulled the distribution of Inconvenient Indian. The film will also not play at the Sundance Film Festival. Hard to punish a film.
Authenticity is vital to the storytelling process, something Latimer should have known.
"There should be no debate on whether Michelle Latimer is Indigenous. She may have distant Indigenous ancestry but she is not recognized by the nations that she claims. Genetic ancestry does not prove Indigenous affiliation."
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers weighed in on this issue with an extremely thoughtful essay. You might remember Tailfeathers from The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, where she starred and co-directed with Kathleen Hepburn. We don't normally assign homework on this blog but this should be required reading.
2020 Toronto Raptors NBA preview
We ran the Toronto Raptors preview yesterday; the team's actual home opener (well, in Tampa, at least) is tonight against New Orleans.
The NHL has January 13 circled for the start of a 56-game season. The Canadian division due to the border issues thanks to COVID-19 should prove intriguing.
Canada selects 14 Jours, 12 Nuits for the Best International Feature Film for the Oscars
Funny Boy disqualified as Canada entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars
TIFF selects Top 10 Canadian films of 2020
CanadianCrossing.com film reviews
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
You can catch up with the above links for those that missed the chaos over the weekend on the changes in the Best International Feature Film entry for the Academy Awards. Good to have a Plan B when Plan A had a small chance of making the cut.
If you have significant time off, you should look into our film reviews for excellent options for Canadian films and which ones to not watch as well. Funny Boy is an intriguing option for Canadians on CBC Gem and non-Canadians on Netflix, even with not being the Best International Feature Film entry for the Academy Awards. We will have plenty more Canadian film reviews in 2021.
photo credit: A Christmas Fury film
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