Kid in the Hall now a Winnipeg hockey dad

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/06/2011 (5532 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

KID IN THE CITY: Try to picture Kevin McDonald from Kids in the Hall as a Winnipeg hockey dad. When I spoke to him, he’d just rushed in from delivering a kid to the rink. McDonald now lives with his elegant dancing girlfriend, Paula Blair, in a house in River Heights. Her kids are 10 and 14. He says of his stepkids, in a swift, well-memorized phrase: “They are sweet and wonderful children every minute of the day.” Wise man. Neighbour and former Winnipeg Blue Bomber kicker Trevor Kennerd says the street’s quite buzzed about having him. The lovebirds met in April 2009, when she attended a show he hosted at the CBC Winnipeg Comedy Festival — a long-distance romance followed, and he moved to Winnipeg. McDonald is currently involved in a sitcom called Homeland Insecurity about the Canadian/American border, rife with misadventures, and he’s writing his own “sitcom about a sitcom.” The skinny McDonald says he runs 30 minutes a day here, and Blair has taught him a lot about healthy eating. You can catch three hot guests — McDonald, Blair and pyrotechnic magician Brian Glow — on the Kelly Hughes Live talk show Friday at 7 p.m. at Aqua Books, 274 Garry St., $5 at the door.

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BOAT GONNA FLOAT? The water is high and the docks aren’t yet in evidence — and it’s only two weeks to the River Rouge upper deck wedding of Wendy Nightingale, 54, and Jere Tetrault, 55. “If it doesn’t work to take the boat on the water by June 11, we’ll just send out an email to everyone and postpone it until we can. We’re just in love with each other,” says the affable owner of Smart Cleaners. “So it’s all good.” No bride or groomzilla with these two.

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THE ELLEN TREATMENT: Young Winnipeg philanthropist Reid Valmestad didn’t make it on the Ellen show, so SHAW TV’s show the Week Thus Far gave him the WTF Ellen treatment, anyway. The comedy news gang cranked up Ellen’s intro music “Have a Little Fun (boop-boop) Today,” got Valmestad and the audience up dancing and boogied him down the aisle. Check it out on the Sunday rerun loop on SHAW. This 17-year-old Grant Park High School student is on an amazing ride. He was picked by Hot 103FM’s Ace Burpee as an experiment to make a random person famous through social media like Facebook and Twitter. “I woke up and I had tons of messages and I knew something was up.” Valmestad decided to roll with it all and offered a T-shirt to sell for fun. The shirt read @reidov (ov is for Ole Valmestad — his dad’s and grandfather’s initials) with a blue Twitter bird and #makereidfamous! on the back. “I sold 120 shirts in 24 hours,” he said. That was 120 shirts he had to race out and get made. Orders kept pouring in at $20 a shirt. “I decided I should do something good with the money. So I dropped a $1,000 cheque off to the Red Cross for Japan earthquake relief… and another $1,000 cheque is going to MADD.” Reid has a special connection to Mothers Against Drunk Driving because he lost his own mom that way. “On Oct. 8 my mom, Marcie Ranville, was a victim of a car accident outside The Pas and was killed by a drunk driver.”

Valmestad says many of the 250 shirts sold have been bought by family, friends and supporters at school. His shirts for charity are available in a rainbow of colours at www.reidov.com

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MO’ MONEY: Manitoba Motorcycle Ride for Dad, raising funds for prostate cancer, is delighted to report a higher-than-previously reported total in funds raised, thanks to proceeds from the wind-up event at Cowboys and additional corporate sponsorship. The sum is now $95,000. Cop-turned-politician Shelly Glover, the co-captain for the ride, looked perfectly at home astride her, um, hog. Correction: Motorcycle mama was riding a sky blue luxury model. Joining the MP for St. Boniface as co-captain was Doug Brown of Winnipeg Blue Bomber fame. At the official start were; Justin Swandel, Deputy Mayor, City of Winnipeg; Keith McCaskill, chief of police, City of Winnipeg; Mike Sutherland, president, Winnipeg Police Association; Wally Schmeichel, the Telus Reg’l GM; Carolin Taubensee, marketing director, Manitoba Lotteries; and Moe Sabourin and Kirk Van Alstyne, co-chairs, Manitoba Motorcycle Ride for Dad. The MC for the event was popular TV host Jim Ingebrigtsen.

 

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