Top 20 interesting people of 2012
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I started 2012 covering the disgraceful mass murder of four women and ended it with the equally despicable gunning down of 20 first-grade students and six school staff members.
It won’t be a year I will soon forget.
What I do each year-end is offer a list of my top 20 interesting people — folks I covered over the year.
Here’s mine for 2012:
20. Nik Wallenda: Even though he was wearing a harness it was still a great feat to cross over Niagara Falls on a wire — the first to do so in 100 years.
19. Georges St. Pierre: For his big UFC comeback win in Montreal. St. Pierre has become one of Canada’s biggest stars while the hockey players drift into obscurity.
18. Don Cherry: This guy was hot in 2012. Always in the news, always telling it like it is, never shying away from saying what he thinks and not getting the Order of Canada. This will have to do, Grapes.
17. Kristen Stewart: It was brilliant the way she and Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson used her infidelity to help sell their movie and careers. But at the Toronto International Film Festival she was classy with her fans and for that she’s on my 2012 list.
16. Dr. Alok Mukherjee: It takes a big man to say he’s sorry and although it took a long time, the chairman of the Toronto Police Services Board did just that on the TPS’s poor handling of the 2010 G20 Summit. It was the right thing to do for all the people wrongly jailed, shackled and strip-searched.
15. Spiceman Naveen Polapady of the Maroli Indian Cuisine on Bloor St. W., who like David Chen of the Lucky Moose defended his property but ended up in handcuffs. Spiceman still has his trial to come to see if he was right or wrong using spices to fend off what he thought was a burglar. I like him either way.
14. Ontario is lucky to have ombudsman Andre Marin, who keeps the powerful honest. It’s a good thing for some that he doesn’t have the authority to lay criminal charges.
13. Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos threw Yunel Escobar under the train in his so-called gay bashing scandal but I think Anthopoulos has put together a potential championship team for 2013. If that happens, all is forgiven.
12. The discovery of missing 17-year-old Mariam Makhniashvili’s body on the Don Valley Golf Course in March concluded a Toronto mystery. It has been deemed a suicide but I still am not convinced.
11. Conrad Black finally got out of prison and gets on the list because he did his time and used it to teach fellow inmates how to read.
10. You know the name Jayesh Prajapati? He gave his life in September to save Shell Canada from losing $112 in a stolen tank of gas. He was run over and didn’t get so much as a flag at half mast while police still search for murder suspect Max Edwin Tutiven.
9. Hotel cleaning staff supervisor Nighisti Semret, 55, was murdered in a lane near Cabbagetown Oct. 23. Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux is still searching for her vicious killer. Help him if you know. Special hats off to Det.-Sgt. Terry Browne for the quick arrest in the shocking Little Italy murder.
8. The Shafia sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and their stepmom Rona Amir — all murdered in the Rideau canal in a heinous “honour” killing. Spent weeks at the trial in Kingston that wrapped up in January and learned they were executed in an evil plot as a result of them simply being female. Disgusting anywhere. Disturbing in Canada.
7. My Canadian entertainment hope for 2013 is Toronto band July Talk, whose self-titled debut album is awesome. Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay are a very interesting duo I predict will have a good year. Runner-up is classical singer Giorgia Fumanti, who was singing like an angel at Dundas Square during the Eaton Centre shooting. The Italian-born, Montreal resident is some special star too.
6. Jackie Wylie is a Mississauga woman whose rare cancer treatment was not yet approved in Ontario. Rather than just die, she and husband Peter of Cabbagetown Boxing Club fame started the fight on behalf of all such patients slipping between the cracks. They won.
5. The Barbi Twins, Sia and Shane, who used their centrefold fame with the help of a shy ex-marine to try to track down the alleged Internet kitten killer, who turned out to be Eric Newman, aka Luka Magnotta. He will face trial on the murder of Jun Lin. Perhaps if people had paid more attention to the twins, who knows?
4. Teachers: Taking away support for extracurricular activities for Ontario students as a weapon in a contract dispute gets a failing grade. Fix that in 2013. Special hats off to all the brave teachers in Newtown, Conn.
3. Derek Clarke: Or should that be Randy Gumbley? Glenn Gumbley? I have lost track. A group with Georges Laraque involved tried to form a union for CHL players but it turns out there was confusion over who was in charge.
2: Joshua Yassay, 23, and Shyanne Charles, 14. You died in the Danzig St. barbecue shooting in a city where some leaders had their heads in the sand about Toronto’s dangers and gang activity. Thanks to Chief Bill Blair’s special patrols your deaths may have helped save others from the same fate. Rest in peace. Also, the same sentiment to all of those precious 20 children killed in Newtown.
1. My No. 1 story? Not Eric Newman. Instead, to end on a positive it’s a team: The 2012 Grey Cup champion Toronto Argos. What a year. The stuff of movies. Toronto won’t soon forget the 100th Grey Cup.
Who knows, maybe a Maple Leafs Stanley Cup in 2013? There will be another team at the top of the list if it happens.
Anything is possible.
Happy New Year, everybody. Scrawler out.
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