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

In the 1980s, hardcore punk was among the hardest, heaviest, and most intense genres in this arm of the galaxy. It was very heavy with testosterone. Speaking generally, the music was angry, confrontational, and anti-establishment. Sometimes anti-everything. The bands took no prisoners, and neither did audiences. Gigs could be very intense, places where rage was burned off with slam dancing, mosh pits, circle pits, crowd surfing, and stage diving that looked like an army battalion heading over a cliff at full speed. We had bands like Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Agnostic Front, the Cro-Mags, and Bad Brains. But the scene also had room for Hüsker Dü, a band from Minneapolis that introduced more melody into hardcore. And D.C. gave us Minor Threat, who, while still maintaining that hardcore spirit, lived a drug-free and alcohol-free lifestyle that they called “straight edge.” Sometime in the late ’80s, people plugged into the hardcore punk subculture started talking about a new flavour that grew out of whatever Hüsker Dü and Minor Threat were having. There were groups like Rites of Spring, Embrace, and Fugazi. Their music was still loud, hard, and often very fast, but there was something different about the lyrics… They were personal, honest, and even vulnerable… Things could get screamy, but there was no mistaking the emotion that came through… When Gen X entered their coming-of-age years in the 1990s, this emotional punk found itself rippling through the alternative nation… Its DNA showed up in bands like Nirvana and Weezer, while newer groups such as Sunny Day Real Estate and Jawbreaker stayed closer to the emotional punk playbook while also incorporating some of the sensibilities of ’90s indie rock. A couple of parts of North America really embraced this. The Midwest of the U.S. and the Northeast: New York, New Jersey, and parts of New England. By the end of the decade, emo—we’d already been calling it that for a while—started experiencing wider success. Jimmy Eat World, Alkaline Trio, Dashboard Confessional, Saves the Day. This set the stage for the main event: the emo explosion of the early aughts. And while many of the original bands continue to do their thing, one group in particular is doing better than ever. They took a genre built in tiny clubs and scaled it to stadiums. Yes, I’m talking about My Chemical Romance. But it wasn’t eas. This is a band with a career filled with trauma. Here are ten of them. Songs heard on this show (all by My Chemical Romance)

• • Skylines and Turnstiles

• • Helena

• • I’m Not Okay (I Promise)

• • Famous Last Words

• • Welcome to the Black Parade

• • The Only Hope for Me is You

• • Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)

• • Boy Division

• • Fake Your Death

• • Foundations of Decay

This is 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 10am and 10pm

• • The Goat Network/Interior BC

• • WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm

 

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

When System of a Down was working on the Toxicity album, there was a lot of tension within the group, tension that led to actual fistfights. One night in the studio, drummer John Dolmayan punched guitarist Daron Malakian. He responded by slamming Dolmayan with a mic stand. Both of them ended up in the same emergency ward that night, getting stitched up next to each other.

When the album came out in September 2004, the band had a free concert planned for a parking lot in Hollywood. They figured about a thousand people would show up. Instead, the gig attracted 10,000 people. When fire marshals cancelled the gig, there was a riot. The crowd rushed the stage and destroyed about $30,000 worth of gear. Cops had to fire on the crowd with rubber bullets. Six people were arrested.

And while the gig was a disaster, it made System of a Down more famous than ever.

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

Queens of the Stone Age have a pretty distinctive sound. How did Josh Homme’s writing style develop? Polka music.

Josh grew up in Palm Desert, California, a place he said didn’t offer a lot in terms of guitar teachers. The best he could do was a guy named Tom Polonsky whose specialty was polka music. Young Josh learned the guitar through playing those kinds of tunes over the course of two years’ worth of lessons.

Now that you know that, go back and listen to some Queens of the Stone Age Music, especially the song “No One Knows.” If you deconstruct that track down to its very essence, you can hear the distinctive bounce of a polka. This isn’t the only Queens song that feels this way.

Josh says that polka music is so ingrained in him that the polka feel keeps showing up in his songwriting as a default, whether he wants it to or not.

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

Polymarket, an online betting platform, has removed a contract that allowed users to bet on whether any of the seven men accused of raping a Cornell student in 2024 will be charged with a felony sex crime.

The market was made available on Sept. 30 and was scheduled to close on Jan. 31.

It had more than $450,000 in volume before it was taken off Polymarket’s international platform, The Associated Press reports.

The company’s U.S. exchange is regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which bans trading related to “activity that is unlawful under Federal or State law.”

“Our primary goal at Polymarket is to bring objective, data-driven insight to the most important questions of our time,” a Polymarket spokesperson told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

“This market addressed whether the government would take action — a process that deserves scrutiny, particularly in a case of such serious concern,” the spokesperson said.

“That said, we believe in the wisdom of crowds, have heard them loud and clear, and removed the market,” the statement added.

Front Office Sports was the first to report on the contract.

Backlash began after a petition under the name “No Gambling on Gang Rape” made reference to celebrities like LeBron James, Emily Ratajkowski, Eli Manning and others who have promoted the online platform.

“As brand ambassadors profiting from your ties with the ‘predictive market’ (online gambling) platform Polymarket, you are also profiting from the heinous trend of betting on sexual assault cases,” the petition description read.

“Survivors deserve so much better than to have bets placed on whether or not they will win justice, not to mention the corrupt influence it could put on participating parties like jurors,” the petition added.

The petition called on the celebrities to “do the right thing by cutting all ties with Polymarket and denouncing the gross practice of betting on legal cases regarding sexual violence.”

The Ontario Securities Commission fined Polymarket’s parent companies in April 2025 and the online prediction platform is currently serving a two-year ban in Ontario for violating provincial securities laws.

A woman identified in court documents by the pseudonym Jane Doe filed a lawsuit last month alleging that seven fraternity members sexually assaulted or exploited her in October 2024 and that Cornell mishandled her complaints. All of those men have denied her allegations, saying either that their interactions were consensual or that they weren’t involved.

She went to campus police three weeks after the alleged encounter and gave a detailed account of what happened, but the local district attorney decided not to file criminal charges or push for more investigation after reviewing a police summary of her interview, according to The Associated Press.

Only the school’s investigation, under the federal Title IX law, persisted, with a goal of deciding discipline for the students involved.

In her lawsuit, Jane Doe accused two of the other men who entered the room of performing sex acts on her without her consent, while she was partially incapacitated.

She accused another man of kissing her without her consent. According to the Title IX documents, viewed by The Associated Press, Jane Doe told investigators two other men stood at the foot of the bed acting “more like voyeurs than anything.”

The lawsuit seeks to hold all seven men liable for rape. She is asking for unspecified damages.

The former student’s rape allegations have sparked campus protests, renewed scrutiny of Cornell’s disciplinary system and led to the reopening of a criminal investigation of the alleged October 2024 assault.

—With files from The Associated Press

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

Angine de Poitrine is taking its alien invasion global.

Quebec’s polka-dotted, self-proclaimed extraterrestrial duo has announced it will embark on a world tour in 2027.

It kicks off March 4 in Melbourne, Australia before touching down in South America, North America and Europe.

Among the eight Canadian dates are stops in Calgary, Ottawa and Winnipeg, as well as a performance at Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre — marking their largest headlining show in the city so far.

The tour comes to a close in their hometown of Saguenay, Que.

In September, Angine de Poitrine won the $30,000 Polaris Music Prize for their second album, “Vol. II,” and the $10,000 SOCAN Polaris Song Prize for their track “Fabienk.”

They’re the first act to claim both prizes at the ceremony.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

First Nations in Alberta are celebrating the win for the pro-Canada side in Monday’s referendum — but they’re also raising concerns about a shortage of ballots in their communities.

About three in four Albertans said yes to Confederation on Monday, while about one in four said they wanted the province to hold a second, binding referendum on leaving.

Siksika Nation says that while it’s pleased with the outcome, the polling station in their community was understaffed and didn’t receive enough ballots from Elections Alberta, leading to long wait times and “unnecessary obstacles.”

Tania Cameron, who helped boost First Nations turnout in the vote, says she was proud to learn several First Nations polling stations had to request more ballots.

She also says Elections Alberta should have been more prepared.

She says not having enough ballots is a slap in the face to community members who wanted their voices heard.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

The Bank of Canada has held its key interest rate unchanged for about a year, but some economists expect rates to begin increasing again as early as next week — which would be the first hike in more than three years.

This comes after a recent warning from the central bank that inflation is expected to keep rising as a ripple effect of the Iran war and other factors.

This comes after the U.S. Federal Reserve hiked its key policy rate last month for the first time in three years, and after U.S. inflation in August topped 3.4 per cent.

Tamping down red-hot inflation is key to making life more affordable for Canadians amid the heightened cost of living — along with increasing wages and salaries — but in order to achieve this, it may mean some will end up paying more to borrow money.

Central banks usually increase their benchmark borrowing rate to help cool down inflation, which can raise costs for Canadians and businesses with products like variable rate mortgages, and some loans for cars, tuition and business.

“The trend continues to provide the BoC with a warning that it needs to get on with tightening next week. We forecast the Bank of Canada will hike 25bps next week,” said Derek Holt, vice president and head of Capital Markets Economics at Scotiabank in a statement on Monday.

The Bank of Canada has a mandate to “promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada,” and this includes ensuring prices for goods and services remain relatively stable, while also keeping borrowing rates low enough to allow the economy to expand.

Its target range for inflation is between one and three per cent, with a target of two per cent, and its benchmark interest rate has been 2.25 per cent since October 2025.

Governor Tiff Macklem at the Bank of Canada spoke to reporters on Saturday in a press conference from the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund meetings in Bangkok, and said he expects the outlook for inflation will be “quite a bit higher” than it was in the central bank’s last forecast in July. That projection had inflation cooling to around 2.5 per cent in the second half of this year.

Consumer price inflation in September was measured at 3.1 per cent, which was mainly because of higher gas prices, and the consumer price index has been at or above three per cent for three straight months.

Although inflation has been hovering on the higher end of the central bank’s target range, it hasn’t necessarily spiked out of control. Elevated gas prices amid the Iran war have been mostly isolated, which has somewhat clouded the underlying price growth, known as core inflation, which has remained closer to two per cent for several months.

But over the long term, higher oil and gas prices can lead to higher prices for just about everything else, including food.

Macklem has said on several occasions that rising oil and gas prices are a risk to inflation, but there has been little evidence of broader spillover into consumer prices. This means that the recent higher inflation readings are being taken with a grain of salt.

However, Macklem warned that the longer oil and gas prices remain elevated, the more likely it is that it will lead to inflation becoming entrenched and rates will need to rise.

“If energy prices go higher, and particularly if they stay higher for longer, there could well be a need to increase the policy rate to get inflation back to two per cent,” Macklem said in August.

Speaking in Bangkok over the weekend, Macklem said, “The question we’re going to be asking ourselves is, is inflation likely to come back down towards our target on its own, or are we going to have to raise interest rates to influence the path?”

It was those comments that led some economists to change their own outlooks for interest rates in Canada, expecting the Bank of Canada to raise rates next week to get ahead of rising inflation.

“That is really what flipped the script for us a little bit and put us in the camp of expecting a Bank of Canada rate hike in October,” said Randall Bartlett, deputy chief economist at Desjardins.

“The Bank of Canada is really trying to get ahead of higher inflation, higher underlying inflation, which we haven’t materially seen yet, but to prevent it from happening.”

After the pandemic, when inflation peaked at over eight per cent, some economists felt the central bank waited too long to raise rates to get inflation under control. At the time, the key policy rate was raised relatively quickly and aggressively from emergency lows of 0.25 per cent in March 2022 to five per cent by July 2023.

“Policy was left far too low for far too long and the consequence of that was it had to raise rates aggressively over a really short period of time to get inflation back under control,” says senior economist Robert Kavcic at BMO Capital Markets.

“And so now they’re kind of sitting here perhaps looking at that mistake and saying, well, let’s not repeat that again.”

Kavcic added: “we’re looking for a very cautious set of rate hikes.”

Holt says the central bank may take a different approach this time by acting pre-emptively rather than responsively.

“Governor Macklem sounds like he’s fading backward looking data in favour of a higher forward-looking inflation forecast and higher inflation risk. The BoC looks at trends, not spot data anyway,” said Holt.

“BoC staffers have a serial addiction to missing inflection points on inflation risk and routinely underestimating it.”

All three economists expect the Bank of Canada to hike by 0.25 per cent next week, and with Bartlett forecasting another 0.25 per cent hike in January.

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

Investigators with the Calgary Fire Department have determined that a blaze outside of a liquidation centre in the city’s southeast started amid some furniture behind the building before making its way inside.

Global News has been told that crews were called to the 100 block of Forge Road SE in the community of Fairview around 3 a.m. Wednesday.

Battalion Chief Shane Pascoe says upon arrival, crews were met with heavy flames coming out of the rear of one of the units.

They entered the structure after noticing that the flames were also inside.

“So there’s heavy fire on the outside and inside. We did an aggressive interior fire attack. Knocked down most of the fire. We kept it to the one source,” said Pascoe.

“We did have to evacuate smoke from one of the adjacent units. Right now crews are just going around trying to find any hidden fires.”

The fire department says the units on the left side of the liquidation centre will be returned to the owners. However, the directly affected unit will be closed for some time.

No injuries were reported. Crews are expected to remain on scene throughout the day as they monitor for hotspots.

Anyone with information or who may have dash camera video around the time the fire started is being asked to contact the fire department.

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

New polling just days before Toronto’s mayoral election shows Brad Bradford and Olivia Chow are locked in a narrowing race prior to election day on Oct. 26.

Several polls put Bradford the challenger slightly ahead of Chow the incumbent. Others still place her ahead of Bradford, indicating there is no clear favourite, according to research firms that publish the polls.

A new Liaison Strategies survey released Wednesday puts Bradford at 49 per cent support and Chow at 47 per cent among decided and leaning voters, with three per cent choosing someone else.

In this most recent poll, Chow loses a five-point lead she had in a Liaison Strategies poll published Oct. 13.

“It is a much less comfortable race for the mayor than it was last week,” said David Valentin, principal at Liaison in a news release.

But “this is not a result either campaign can treat as a clear lead,” he said.

Another poll published Tuesday by Mainstreet Research also revealed a very narrow race with a slight advantage for Bradford. The firm placed Bradford with 48.9 per cent support and Chow at a “nearly equal” 47.5 per cent, Mainstreet said in a statement.

Quito Maggi, president and CEO of Mainstreet, said in a news release that Bradford leads in Etobicoke and North York while Chow is ahead in Scarborough and downtown.

But research firm Pollara Strategic Insights has Chow in a much firmer lead in its new polling also published Tuesday. It found incumbent Olivia Chow ahead of Brad Bradford by seven points among decided voters, 53 per cent to 46 per cent.

That polling also found a significant gender gap in voting intentions. Chow leads among decided women (60 per cent compared to 39 per cent of women for Bradford), while slightly more men are leaning towards Bradford (52 per cent to 45 per cent).

Both candidates have been hitting the pavement daily in the final week before the Oct. 26 election to reach those precious undecided voters who may push the vote slightly more on either side.  Chow and Bradford have been quick to trade barbs, with Chow accusing her opponent Tuesday of neglecting residents in his own ward, and Bradford claiming that Chow has failed to address the city’s traffic and transit woes.

While advance polls have closed, voters will have a final chance to vote on election day Monday.

Liaison Strategies surveyed a random sample of 1,000 Toronto residents from October 18 to October 19, 2026, using conventional phone and Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) technology. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The margin is higher for subsamples, including decided and leaning voters.

Mainstreet Research conducted its survey between October 16 and October 18, 2026 with a sample size of 1,000 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in Toronto. The survey was conducted using conventional phone Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology. The margin of error for the poll is +/- 3.1% at the 95% confidence level. Margins of error are higher in each subsample. 

The Pollara Strategic Insights survey was fielded October 13 to 19, 2026. It surveyed Toronto residents aged 18+ eligible to vote (695 online panel, 404 live telephone). The poll was commissioned by CUPE Local 416 (Toronto Civic Employees’ Union). It was weighted to census data by gender, age and region. It states that “because the sample includes an online panel, no margin of error applies”. A probability sample of 1,099 would carry a margin of error of +/- 3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, and more for subgroups. Subgroups with an unweighted base under 100 should be read with caution, it says. 

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