Saskatoon sexiest town in Canada...Goofy Olympic mascots...and photos

VANCOUVER – This city might be about to stage one of the biggest sporting events in the world, but it’s apparently not the centre of love.

Amazon.ca on Tuesday published a list of what it calls the 20 most romantic cities in Canada, based on sales of romance novels, sex and relationship books, romantic comedy DVD’s and, uh, sales of Michael Buble CD’s since Jan. 1, 2010. The figures were based on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents.

Here’s what they came up with:

1. Saskatoon
2. Calgary
3. Victoria
4. Regina
5. Guelph
6. Kingston
7. Kelowna, B.C.
8. Edmonton
9. Winnipeg
10. London
11. Peterborough
12. Ottawa
13. Thunder Bay
14. Abbotsford, B.C.
15. Sudbury
16. Halifax
17. Brantford
18. Barrie
19. St. John’s
20. Windsor

Personally, I got a problem with this. No Vancouver? No Toronto? No, ahem, Montreal or Quebec City?
Seems pretty funky. You could argue for Come by Chance or Heart's Delight, Newfoundland (yes, and Dildo, too), but they don’t have 100,000 residents.

And they only based this on sales of Michael Buble. What about Tony Bennett or Diana Krall?
Apparently Toronto and Vancouver scored well on renting romantic movies, but not so much on the other stuff.

Either way, the lack of romance is yet another thing the rest of the country gets to toss in Toronto’s face. Mind you, we can always mention Adam Giambrone, can’t we?

OLYMPIC MISCELLANY

A Vancouver Olympics person who didn’t appear to have been drinking told me that she’s sometimes seen a person follow along behind Quatchi, the 2010 Winter Mascot who looks like Sasquatch (think a smiling version of Chewbacca from Star Wars) whose job is to vacuum loose hairs of the fuzzy guys’ body.
Just in case you think you had a bad job, consider that.

I guess it comes with the territory, like running for mayor and kissing babies and all. But I still cringe when I see photos like the one at right of Vancouver Organizing Committee CEO John Furlong (in front) and IOC prez Jacques Rogge (third man in the bob) taken at an Omega event in downtown Vancouver on Tuesday. It's not quite the same but I remember covering an event in Atlanta where they taking then IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, a former Spanish ambassador to the USSR, on a tour of the Coca-Cola museum. It was full of good old Southern boy and classic American commercialism, and he had this look on his face that said something like "If I ever step foot in this building again I'm gonna puke."

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On the hockey front, Furlong was talking Tuesday about the attention that a gold medal game for Canada’s men’s team would bring.
“If we are in the final, there will be nobody in the country not watching TV,” he said. “I don’t now who will be running the country.”
Uh, John, with Parliament in permanent abeyance because of PM Stephen Harper and the Olympics, the question is who’s running it now?

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Resident Olympic wit John Powers of the Boston Globe asked Canadian officials yesterday about the Own the Podium program. He said it’s the sort of aggressive funding program one would expect in the United States, “but we’d pay for it with a sub-prime loan.”
Best line of the Games so far, John.

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Still waiting to hear some complaints about not enough French being spoken at Canadian Olympic Committee press conferences. There was a press conference yesterday featuring VANOC, the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Own the Podium program and there were perhaps three words spoken in French outside of the introductions; “Bonjour and merci beaucoup."

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The final elements of the City of Vancouver's transportation management plan for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games are going into effect this week, including pedestrian corridors, rolling road closures for the torch relay and temporary street and bridge closures related to the Opening Ceremony on Wednesday and Friday. To help reduce vehicle traffic by at least 30 per cent for the Olympic Winter Games period, commuters, delivery drivers and residents are strongly encouraged to leave their vehicle at home and put their personal Games-time travel plan into action, starting on Wednesday and continuing until March 1.

SCANNER IMAGES PART IX

Not sure of the legitimacy of this, but I got an email from a chap who sent me a link to a web story about an Indian film star who claimed that scans of his body were captured at Heathrow Airport and kept for people’s enjoyment, or something like that.

Like I say, I can’t verify it. But it plays into the hands of folks who called me an idiot for supporting the scanners, and I always like to give the opposition their fair due.

Here’s the link to the website on something called prisonplanet.com. 

COME TO JAMAICA AND FEEL ALL RIGHT

For the sixth straight year, Destination Jamaica recorded growth in visitor arrivals from Canada. For 2009, the destination received 22.9% more visitors than in 2008.  In total, 290,307 Canadians visited the country.
Last year also was a banner one as tourism partners added more flights from Toronto and Montreal and added the first-ever direct flight from London, officials said.