Guy Maddin in conversation with Bookworm host Michael Silverblatt at the News Café: Replay

Backstreet Boys extend Toronto residency to 11 nights

TORONTO - Hit '90s boyband The Backstreet Boys are adding more tour dates to their Toronto residency.

What was first announced as a four-night run at Rogers Centre has swelled to 11 shows, with the band's recent announcement they're adding concerts on March 5 and 6.

The band says on its website the new dates were added "due to overwhelming demand."

Dubbed “Into the Millennium – Homecoming: Live in Canada,” the residency will kick off on Feb. 12.

Separatist movements are an indication of dissatisfaction, not imminent collapse

For a country supposedly on the verge of breaking apart, Canada has remarkably few people who actually support it.

Tenants battling landlords find help in short supply from province

For nearly three years, Quincy Houdayer and Avery Helm repeatedly pressed their landlord to address plumbing failures, water damage and other maintenance problems at their West Broadway apartment, with records showing some issues persisted until the couple turned to the Residential Tenancies Branch.

Emails and text messages between the tenants, Clearwater Management and the RTB reviewed by the Free Press document recurring leaks and flooding, periods without heat or hot water, concerns about mould and basement conditions and repeated followups from the couple seeking repairs.

“Most of the experiences we’ve had with them can be boiled down to, like, they either are very dismissive about it, they act like it’s not their problem… or they will just fully, blatantly ignore you,” Helm said, adding that the only way to get Clearwater to respond was to threaten going to the RTB, a provincial government agency.

RTB data obtained by the Free Press also shows 13 orders involving the three-building complex at 193-197 Furby St. in 2026 alone. All but one favoured the tenant, while the remaining order ruled in favour of both the tenant and landlord on different items.

Hurricane Simon pounds resorts and vulnerable towns along Mexico’s Pacific coast

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (AP) — Hurricane Simon pounded Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 3 storm on Sunday, its eye remaining just offshore as its most powerful winds and rain slammed people living between the Sierra Madre and the ocean.

The hurricane's center swirled parallel to the coast, closing in on the Puerto Vallarta area, where its most damaging winds and rain were expected to hit around midnight and continue through Monday morning. Its maximum sustained winds weakened late Sunday to 115 mph (185 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, but it was still expected to remain a dangerous hurricane.

That’s not good news for people in and around Puerto Vallarta, a popular tourist destination in the state of Jalisco. Just inland and uphill from the resort areas, many Mexicans live in communities where housing might not stand up to the storm.

By late Sunday, Simon's eye was moving northwest about 45 miles (75 kilometers) south of Cabo Corrientes at about 5 mph (7 kph). A senior hurricane center specialist, Philippe Papin, said this westernmost tip of mainland Mexico is the area most likely to get a direct hit from the system. Cabo Corrientes is at the southern tip of Bahia de Banderas, the wide bay where Puerto Vallarta looks out to the Pacific.

Letters, Oct. 13

The major assumption Manitoba Hydro undertakes is the weather. Hydro projected a $214 million profit for the 2025-26 fiscal year. On Sept. 29, it reported a $446 million loss. It took on additional debt due to $751 million in operating losses. In addition, Hydro stated the fiscal results for 2025-26 were “significantly influenced by circumstances largely beyond Hydro’s control.”

Gang member who shot rival, bystander back in prison after release revoked

A Winnipeg man who shot a rival teenage gangster and an innocent 11-year-old bystander at the crowded Red River Exhibition more than four years ago has been sent back to prison.

Mocree Chuck Scatch-Dubour, now in his early 20s, left prison in April on statutory release on his 5 1/2-year federal sentence for the 2022 shooting. Scatch-Dubour was sentenced to the prison term as an adult in the spring of 2023 after pleading guilty to discharge of a firearm with intent to wound, aggravated assault and possession of a restricted firearm.

By law, most federal inmates automatically receive statutory release after two-thirds of their sentence, if they have not already been paroled.

Parole Board of Canada officials formally revoked Scatch-Dubour’s release this month after he unlawfully left his halfway house in June.