What do the following authors have in common: J.D. Salinger, Emily Brontë, and Oscar Wilde? They are famous for writing just one novel.

J.D. Salinger? The Catcher in the Rye. Emily Brontë? Wuthering Heights. And Oscar Wilde? The Picture of Dorian Gray. Home runs. Classics. Enduring favourites. Lasting fame. Millions of copies sold around the planet. But in each case, there were no follow-ups. They were all one and done.

J.D. Salinger became a recluse. Emily Brontë died shortly after the publication of Wuthering Heights. And Oscar Wilde stayed with writing plays. As novelists go, they are all one-hit wonders.

When it comes to music, one-hit wonders are an endless source of amusement. How can someone become internationally famous for decades when they only have one song that anyone cares about?

These are special cases where lightning is captured exactly once. And no matter how many more songs these artists wrote, they would never, ever achieve that extreme level of fame again. A single song overshadows every other effort.

Let’s apply this to the history of alt-rock. What songs and artists qualify?

It took a bunch of research, but I think I managed to crack it using a combination of statistics. And we’re now up to episode four of five in this mission: the 50 all-time biggest alt-rock one-hit wonders.

Songs heard on this show:

• Doctor and the Medics, Spirit in the Sky
• Enigma, Sadeness (Part 1)
• Edwyn Collins, A Girl Like You
• Peter Schilling, Major Tom (Coming Home)
• White Town, Your Woman
• Meredith Brooks, Bitch
• Marcy Playground, Sex and Candy
• The Caesars, Jerk It Out
• Chumbawamba, Tubthumping
• The La’s, There She Goes

Here’s Eric Wilhite’s playlist.

The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on these stations.

• 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7pm
• Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 9pm
• Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6pm.
• 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11pm
• FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8pm
• Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 10am and 10pm
• 107-3 The Edge/Calgary – Sundays at 10am and 10pm
• Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8am and 8pm
• The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 9am and 9pm
• The Fox/Vancouver – Sundays at 10anm and 10pm
• The Goat Network/Interior BC
• Surge 105/Halifax – Sunday at 7pm
• WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Have you ever wondered why heavy metal singers can scream for hours on end, but other singers lose their voices all the time? You’d think it would be the other way around, right? Turns out there’s a weird answer to this medical mystery of music.

Using a special high-speed camera designed to visualize vocal cords, a speech doctor in San Francisco discovered that a heavy metal singer’s screaming is more like a baby’s than an adult’s. When a metal singer sings, they’re not actually straining their vocal cords. Their muscles relax and flap to create sounds, rather than squeezing out the loudness like most adults.

It’s a skill that babies instinctively use to protect their throats while crying and screaming, but is usually forgotten as they grow older. For whatever reason, heavy metal singers are still able to do it, and doctors hope they can teach the technique to patients with throat injuries and vocal issues.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Music scenes flourish everywhere, even in Antarctica, the last true wilderness on Earth. Home to a few thousand research scientists, Antarctica has a unique historical music scene. In a place where the only sounds are the occasional penguin or cracking glacier, music is often what breaks the silence.

To keep up spirits with a link to civilization, the famous Captain Robert Falcon Scott brought two gramophones on his last expedition to the South Pole at the turn of the 20^th century. There are many reports of sailors singing to penguin colonies. No word on whether this pleased or annoyed the penguins. S

cientists based there today have their own little scene. The Argentinians really like metal, and the American base has a classical aficionado. The Ukrainian station is into folk, and some of its researchers even hold jam sessions. One Ukrainian scientist even built a piano in their lab to pass the long Antarctic winter.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has played under several interesting band names in his career. There was a metal act in high school called Avant Garde. They later became Zoom, after experimenting with Prong and Power Chicken. When that band broke up, Cuomo joined a group called Sixty Wrong Sausages, which expanded into a four-piece in 1992. They remained nameless while they wrote and rehearsed, but name suggestions included Meathead, Outhouse, Hummingbird, The Big Jones, and This Niblet.

The name Weezer was a fluke. Actor Keanu Reeves and his alt band Dogstar decided to play an impromptu gig in Hollywood one evening and needed an opening act. Cuomo’s unnamed group got lucky and landed the slot, but now needed a name to perform under. Rivers suggested Weezer, the nickname he was teased with as a kid because of his inhaler. And, after a long meeting, Weezer ended up being the name.

Thank you, Keanu Reeves, for forcing the situation.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Just minutes before Richard Edwin was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences for the planned and premeditated murders of two strangers in April 2022, the 43-year-old apologized to the victim’s families when asked by the judge if he wanted to address the court.

Wearing the same taupe track jacket with horizonal stripes he wore throughout his judge-alone trial,  Edwin spoke loudly, staring straight ahead.

“I would just like to say that I’m sorry for all this and this was my fault. It was due to mental illness. I was having strong delusions. No person would do something like this, in their right mind, on camera. I’m sorry and would like forgiveness as well,” said Edwin.

Prior to Edwin’s short speech, the parents of Kartik Vasudev and Elijah Mahepath, the two men who were shot to death two days apart on April 7, 2022 and April 9, 2022, gave emotional victim impact statements.

Court heard Vasudev, a 21-year-old Seneca College student, came to Canada from India only three months before he was shot outside Sherbourne Station.

Vasudev’s father recalled how his son declared he wanted to go abroad to study and was considering Australia or Canada.

“I remember asking him, ‘Why not Australia?’ He smiled and said, ‘Canada — my dream country and it’s better and safer for my future studies,” Jitesh Vasudev said. “That answer stays with me even today.”

Vasudev’s father said his son was focused, determined and clear about what he wanted in life. His father described the financial hardship his murder has caused for their family.

“Just a day before his demise, I spoke to Kartik. That conversation I will carry with me forever. He said to me, ‘Papa, just give me two years. After that, you won’t need to work. I will take care of everything. I will support Parth (his brother), his education, and I will repay all the loans that you have taken,” Vasudev’s father said.

Vasudev’s brother delivered a victim impact statement via Zoom from India. His voice cracking, Parth Vasudev explained how his older brother was his protector, mentor, best friend, hero and the person he turned to in every important moment of his life.

“The knowledge that the offender who took my brother’s life exists in the same world as my family causes me ongoing anxiety and distress,” said his brother.

Elijah Mathepath’s sister said her brother dreamed of becoming a pastor one day and he enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Toronto.

She called her brother authentic and said he lived goodness.

“There is one moment I return to often: a man tried to rob him. And Elijah looked at that man and said, ‘You don’t have to do this. Just ask me.’  He then took out the $50 he had in his pocket and gave it freely. As the man walked away, Elijah told him, ‘Jesus loves you.’ That was not a performance. That was at his core,” Hanna Mahepath wrote.

“Richard Edwin did not take a stranger from this world. He took a man of extraordinary character,” the sister wrote. She also said her brother would have forgiven Edwin, acknowledging that Edwin is a sick man.

In handing down her judgment Monday, Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly acknowledged that Edwin was sufferings from schizophrenia at the time of the shootings, but found he could appreciate the moral wrongfulness of his actions.

She rejected his defence of not criminally responsible (NCR) and found the murders were planned and deliberate.

After the victim impact statements were read out, Kelly then sentenced Edwin to two mandatory life sentences with a parole ineligibility period of 25 years, to be served concurrently.

Kelly acknowledged the families’ pain from the murders.

“To describe it as devastating would be an understatement. They are trying to understand such senseless deaths on our streets. These two killings have had a chilling effect on our city,” Kelly said.

“Two strangers shot in broad daylight. I don’t think it’s a stretch for all of us to think, ‘it could have been me.’ Criminal acts such as this one cause us all to fear for our safety.”

Edwin has been in custody since his arrest on April 10, 2022. He will be eligible for parole on April 10, 2047, when he’s 65 years old.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Calgary city council has rejected a request to allow for a charter school in an industrial park in the city’s northeast.

The Rocky Mountain Charter School Foundation had applied to rezone the 11-acre site near 10 Street and 68 Avenue N.E. to allow for a K-12 charter school with a focus on health and wellness, sustainable agriculture and global technology.

The site, which is located in the Deerfoot City Business Park between Deerfoot Trail and Calgary International Airport, is home to an office building with warehouse space.

However, city councillors voted 12-2 against the application, which has officially been refused and abandoned over a number of concerns with the site.

“We don’t have a school for September 2026 for 750 students,” said Nasser Kadri with the Rocky Mountain Charter School Foundation. “It’s not so much a question where we go from here, it’s where the kids go from here.”

Several councillors had noted concerns with the site’s proximity to the airport, as well as industrial businesses in the area including a window and glass manufacturing plant, an ambulance training centre, a heavy equipment storage facility, and a drywall supplier.

The Calgary Police Service firearms training centre is also located near the proposed school.

“I’m not sure why we’re even considering this,” said Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot. “This is probably the worst place in the city to put this type of use.”

Placing a school in an industrial park would be “begging for trouble,” according to Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas, who also voted against the proposal amid concerns of a lack of pedestrian infrastructure like sidewalks along the site.

“There’s a place in the city to have schools that’s closer to parks, that’s closer to residential areas, that’s supported by transit near pathway connections with sidewalks,” Farkas said.

According to the Rocky Mountain Charter School Foundation, the proposed school had a conditional approval from Alberta Education.

In a statement, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said school authorities are responsible for securing appropriate facilities, and that funding is only released after a lease is signed and zoning approvals are secured.

“Through discussions with the school authority, it was communicated that relying on a single facility option carried inherent risk, as zoning approval was not guaranteed,” the statement said.

“Given the site’s industrial location, there was a recognized possibility it could be deemed unsuitable. This risk was identified and clearly communicated to the school authority.”

Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston and Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal were the sole votes in favour of the proposal.

Dhaliwal said he had been in conversations with the applicant and had hoped to mitigate council’s concerns in the development permit stage of the process.

“If we could get it to the (development permit) stage and it’s identified that this is not going to work, it’s not going to work,” he told reporters. “That’s why I was supportive of it, to at least take it to that stage, but unfortunately it failed.

City administration had noted that allowing a school in that industrial area “may weaken the supply of strategically located industrial land,” and could reduce the area’s “attractiveness for warehousing and related industrial investments.”

“Thirty years of experience in education, I totally believed that this site is perfect in many ways,” Kadri told reporters. “I understand that it’s industrial, but which takes precedence: industrial or our kids?”

The Calgary Planning Commission recommended city council reject the proposal, with Commissioner Nathan Hawryluk noting there is “strong logic” for not allowing a school in an industrial area.

“This application is a reminder that we need to find a real plan for finding space for charter schools,” he wrote in his comments to council.

“Ideally, that land would be located by people and not in the middle of industrial areas.”

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Members of Parliament voted today to approve the appointment of Annette Ryan as Canada’s next Parliamentary Budget Officer.

MPs approved her appointment in a 164 to 153 vote, with Bloc Québécois and Conservatives voting against her nomination.

Ryan, a longtime public servant and the current deputy director at Canada’s financial intelligence agency, Fintrac, was named as cabinet’s pick to lead the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer last month.

Ryan’s testimony was clouded at times by MPs’ focus on Jason Jacques, the former interim PBO whose term expired earlier this year.

Conservative MPs had said they would vote against Ryan’s nomination because they want Jacques to take on the permanent role.

Ryan has said she would present the office’s fiscal analysis in a way that makes clear the implications of spending decisions, but added she would leave the “stark language” to parliamentarians.

—With files from Craig Lord

© 2026 The Canadian Press

The Liberals are moving to take control of House of Commons committees now that they’ve secured a majority government, a move that will allow the governing party to control of the agendas of the 25 House of Commons committees.

The move will allow the Liberals, for example, to shut down attempts by the opposition to have the Commons ethics committee question Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne about a potential conflict-of-interest involving his spouse who is employed by the proponent of a government-backed high-speed rail project.

Liberal MPs on that committee right now are engaged in a filibuster that has stretched for 17 hours to prevent any such investigation.

But having control of House of Commons committees will also give Liberals more control over everything from the kinds of topics committees choose to study to the witnesses they hear and, as a result, can be a powerful way of controlling the entire agenda of Parliament.

Government House leader Steven MacKinnon said in a social media post Tuesday that the Liberals will seek to change the standing orders, the rules that govern the Commons, to ensure they have the most votes on committees.

“Prime Minister Mark Carney and his government are determined to work constructively both in the House and in parliamentary committees,” he said.

MacKinnon will hold a press conference Wednesday morning to address the issue.

Conservatives sent supporters a fundraising email Tuesday evening arguing that Prime Minister Mark Carney is “going to use his majority powers to make life easier for his government.”

The email asked for donations to help Conservatives “stop Carney from stacking the deck and continuing his cynical power grab.”

“He’s going to stack the deck on committees to shut down investigations into his scandals, conflicts, and waste, because he thinks no one can stop him,” said the email. “Since 1867, the founding of our country, committees have reflected the results of the ballot box, not a manufactured majority. But now, Carney is trying to reset the balance of power on committees to limit his opposition.”

The standing orders of the House of Commons, though, cannot be changed until the three winners of the April 13 byelections — all of them Liberals — formally take their seats in the House of Commons.

That has not yet happened yet though they are expected to be sworn in and take their seats in the days ahead.

The process of verifying byelection results and swearing in MPs is a process involving Elections Canada and the Speaker of the House of Commons and can typically take between one and three weeks after a byelection.

But once those byelection winners are sworn in, the Liberals will move from 171 seats in the House — one shy of a majority — to 174 seats. Majority governments traditionally hold a majority of seats on House committees.

Because the Liberals won a minority in last April’s election, MPs agreed to form committees with four Liberals, four Conservatives and one member from the Bloc Québécois.

MacKinnon is proposing that most committees will now have seven Liberals, four Conservatives and one Bloc member.

The standing orders are typically agreed upon unanimously, but MacKinnon’s proposed change will require a vote in the House. He said he intends to give notice of a motion in the coming days.

https://x.com/stevenmackinnon/status/2046709694228734077

 

The byelection results, combined with five opposition MPs who crossed the floor to the Liberals in recent months, have pushed Carney’s party over a threshold it could not reach in last year’s election.

The Liberals won 169 seats last April, shy of the 172 needed for a bare-bones majority.

Canada hadn’t had a majority government since 2019, when former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were reduced to a minority in an election.

– with files from The Canadian Press

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

With the arrival of spring weather, Calgary police say excessive speeding is on the rise.

“We are seeing speeds on Stoney Trail of 175, 180 km/h on a 100 km/h road,” said Staff Sgt. Andy Woodward of the Calgary police traffic unit, who says Stoney Trail is one of the speeding hot spots.

“We have put our resources towards Stoney trail and it’s paying dividends,” said Woodward.

A quick look at the Calgary Police Service’s social media account reveals dozens of examples of tickets they’ve handed out in recent weeks for excessive speeds: 166 km/h in a 80 km/h speed zone, 131 km/h in a 6 km/h zone, 137 km/h in an 80 km/hrconstruction zone — in one example, a driver was issued $1,200 in tickets.

In addition to a hefty fine, anyone caught speeding at more than 50 km/h above the posted limit is given a mandatory court summons with the potential of even bigger fines and a licence suspension.

In the first 10 weeks of 2026, Calgary handed out 10,000 tickets for speeding.

On Saturday, April 18, Calgary traffic officers targeted Stoney Trail and Bow Trail S.W. and in just three hours they issued over 40 court summons and stopped one  driver doing 147 km/h.

After 2025, when there was a record high of 38 people killed on Calgary roads, Hannah Hamilton, program manager of Safe Communities for the Alberta Motor Association, calls the increase in excessive speeding “a very concerning trend.”

“We know based on provincial and federal data that June, July and August are the months where we see the highest number of either injuries or fatalities related to excessive speeding because the weather is nicer, we’re not as worried about road conditions, so people feel more comfortable speeding,” Hamilton said.

“What we see is that people usually speed on roads that they’re most familiar with. So they’re like, oh, I always drive this route, I know what the signs are, I know where I’m going, and they kind of get into a bit of an autopilot, and they’re more likely to veer or break away from the rules of the road because they feel comfortable.

“But the fact is that if you go even 10 km over the posted speed limit, it doubles your risk of crash, and 20 km over the speed limit, that becomes six times more likely.  I think that it’s really important that people understand that one in four crashes in Alberta involves speeding.”

The crashes can also be traumatizing for first responders.

“Any of the tragedies that we come across are tough,” said acting battalion chief Adam Boss of the Calgary Fire Department. “Coming on to a scene where there’s a fatality affects our members, affects the public, affects family members. High-speed incidents are all too common. They do happen quite frequently in the springtime.”

“There’s nothing to pinpoint to say these younger drivers,” said Woodward. “We’ve had drivers in their 50s and 60s and we’ve had drivers in their 20s.”

But what Woodward says they have in common is they think “they’ll never get into a collision or they’ll get caught by the police.”

“But we’ve seen it on social media now,” added Woodward. “We are collecting these people.”

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Nurses in B.C. are moving closer to job action after a new ruling on benefits pushed contract talks to a breaking point.

In an internal email obtained by Global News, the BC Nurses’ Union says arbitrator Vince Ready has ruled that massage therapy coverage will be capped at just over $1,400 in 2027 and reduced again the following year.

The union says it is one of several sticking points and it’s now preparing for a strike vote.

Their last contract expired last month.

“We’ve been meeting diligently with the employer for the last eight months,” Adriane Gear, president of the BC Nurses’ Union, said.

“Much of the time, it’s been frustrating. Certainly, in terms of priorities, our members have determined that maintaining and ideally improving benefits is the number one priority, but there’s also issues of equity in terms of access to mandate money.”

The Health Employers Association of B.C. says it is still open to talks.

B.C.’s Health Minister said she is confident that both sides will reach a deal at the table, adding that health care is an essential service and any job action would be limited.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.