Not only have people poured onto the streets in Vancouver but also Yonge St in downtown Toronto has been closed as people swarm in to celebrate Canada's victory! (I can hear drivers passing by my apartment as they're showing their pride and I live uptown)

CANADA has won at the Olympics!!!

VANCOUVER – A record 14 golds. And the biggest one of all.

Canada today edged the United States 3-2 in overtime on a Sidney Crosby shot in overtime in the gold medal men’s hockey game, sending an entire nation into a frenzy.

After the U.S. had tied the game with 25 seconds to go in the third period, Canada’s Crosby fired one from the right of American goalie Ryan Miller to give the gold medal to the home side at the 7:40 mark of sudden-death overtime. And a new Paul Henderson was born.

Just seconds after a Canadian turnover had forced Canadian goalie Roberto Luongo of the Vancouver Canucks to make a fabulous save, Jarome Iginla tipped a pass from the boards to Crosby. Sid the Kid had been quiet most of the game, but he didn’t let history pass him by; firing a whistling shot past Miller and straight into the hearts and minds of a Canadian public that will ensure he never again has to buy his own dinner.

Champagne and cigars on centre ice? Bring it on. In triplicate. Or better yet, times 14.

It was a closely fought match between the country that won the most medals at the Vancouver/Whistler Games and the little guy to the north that won the most golds. When it was all over, the Canuck side was celebrating in a sea of red-and-white that surely set off parties from Truro to Tofino.

Canada jumped out to the lead when Jonathan Toews buried a rebound in a first period that featured some ferocious checking and a few great scoring chances for both sides.

Corey Perry made it 2-0 for the home side in the second after a couple of nice passes from Ryan Getzlaf and Duncan Keith. Canada looked to be in command, but Vancouver Canuck Ryan Kesler deflected a shot in the middle of the second to make it a nervous, 2-1 lead for the Canadians.

With goalie Ryan Miller on the bench, the Americans tied it up with 25 seconds to play, Zach Parise knocking in a rebound in a wild scramble reminiscent of the Canadian semifinal game against Slovakia.

That sent things to an extra period, but Crosby responded with a goal that will go down with Paul Henderson’s as one of the most memorable in a hockey-mad nation’s history. He made a mad dash for the corner of the ice, where his teammates buried him under a pile of red and white as the crowd went entirely bonkers.

The win gave Canada a record 14 gold medals; double the previous high by a Canadian Winter Olympic team (seven in Turin in 2006 and also in Salt Lake City in 2002) and the most-ever by any country at a single Winter Olympics.

Canada finished with 26 medals overall; 14 gold, seven silver and five bronze. That’s two more than the previous high of 24, collected in Turin four years ago.

Own the Podium? Maybe not. But there isn't a Canadian in the world who cares right now.



A new mark for Winter Olympics will be set Sunday if Canada beats the United States for men's hockey gold.

An Olympics that had a stuttering start for the host nation gained yet more momentum Saturday on what was the first three-gold day in Canada's Winter Games history. The men's long-track team of Denny Morrison, Lucas Makowsky and Mathieu Giroux kicked it off by beating the United States at the Richmond Oval. Minutes later Jasey-Jay Anderson staged a dramatic comeback in the second leg of the Parallel Giant Slalom final to win gold.

And then Kevin Martin's rink beat Norway 6-3 in the men's curling final.

The only previous countries to win 13 gold in a Winter Games were the Soviet Union in 1976 and Norway in 2002.

MEDAL MANIA

The 13 gold medals is also a record for a host nation, breaking the previous mark of 10 set by the United States and Norway.

Canada seems certain to end the Games with 26 medals. Lyndon Rush's sled won a bronze Saturday in four-man bobsleigh. That's a record, two more than the 24 won in Turin four years ago.

It takes a lot of guts to go out there and stand out and be different especially the way Lady GaGa does it, without fear and a lot of courage says a lot about someone. Not everyone can pull it off and I understand why music giants such as Annie Lennox and Elton John would think Lady GaGa is IT!

Annie Lennox has taken to her blog to profess her love for pop wonder Lady Gaga. The former Eurythmics singer, whose successful solo career has spanned nearly two decades, called Gaga "groundbreaking."

Recalling her own experience as an inventive performer, Lennox championed Gaga's steady supply of costumes and set designs, as well as her collaboration with Elton John at the Grammys and her work with Cyndi Lauper on MAC 's Viva Glam campaign for safe sex and the eradication of AIDS, which the two artists recently discussed in a 'Good Morning America' interview.

In a post on her official site called "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" -- a nod to Spoon's 2007 album -- Lennox writes, "I have to say that I am completely entranced by Lady Gaga...She is completely off the scale on just about every level, and I'm just loving it!"

Lennox is also an activist, and recently raised AIDS awareness by performing in a t-shirt that read "HIV Positive" at the 2009 Rock Hall of Fame concerts, where she sang 'Chain Of Fools' with the song's original singer, Aretha Franklin.

Lennox also noted Gaga's "stamina and chutzpah," adding, "I can tell you, that it takes f........g HOURS and a TEAM to make up and dress up on a daily incarnation like that!!!"

Lennox, who is considered the most successful female UK artist of all time due to her combined work as a solo artist and as one half of the Eurythmics, declared that Gaga has "smashed the cookie-cutter tedium" of the current music scene. "She's the real deal."


Officials said they had raised more than $16 million, not including matching federal funds, during the one-hour Canadian special, which was broadcast live on CBC, CTV and Global Television.

The show began with the song “Try” by Nelly Furtado and also included performances by K’Naan, Metric and The Tragically Hip.

Home renovator, television host and author Mike Holmes was among the Canadian celebrities making a live appearance. Holmes said he is already at ways to help the stricken country in the same way he helped in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

“I picked up my phone right away and I said we should start talking about we can do to help.”

On his role as a telethon co-host Ben Mulroney said, “When we talk about being leaders in the world, this is what we mean and this (telethon) is just another way for us to do that. This is a long-term project, it’s going to require countries from around the world and we’re doing more than our part in an attempt to pull people in the same direction. I’m just privileged to play a small role in that.”

Telethon co-host George Stroumboulopoulus said, “The fact that all the networks have come together, man, makes this so much better on a personal level. This actually is altruistic, there is no competition. You rarely get to do that in television, purely altruistic, commercial-free one hour, everybody working together. Lord have mercy, how crazy is that?”

Hip-hop artist K’naan, a performer at the concert, urged fellow Canadians to keep helping the devastated country recover fully from an earthquake.

“I can’t say it’s good to be here,” K’naan said Friday afternoon after a sound check at the CBC headquarters on Front St. in Toronto, where the concert will be broadcast.

“When something like this happens, you can’t really say you feel great being here.” Instead, he called his performance “a necessity. We show the best of ourselves during times of crisis. I’m just here to try to do my little bit.”

The 31-year-old Somali-born singer, who turned to rap to help learn English when his family moved to Toronto, will perform one song. The Tragically Hip is also scheduled to perform amid a glittering lineup of top Canadian talent, including singer Céline Dion and director James Cameron.

The benefit concert is a collaboration among three networks, CBC, CTV and Global Television, which will all air the show at 7 p.m. ET and PT. It will also be streamed live to their websites and broadcast on CBC Radio Two.

From the world of film, the stars include Jason Reitman, Ryan Reynolds, William Shatner, Rachelle Lefevre, Joshua Jackson, Eugene Levy, Norman Jewison, Tom Jackson and Will Arnett.

From TV: Brent Butt, Hugh Dillon, Mike Holmes, Rick Mercer, Alex Trebek, Sandra Oh and Pamela Anderson.

Musicians Justin Bieber, Nelly Furtado, Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies, Simple Plan, David Foster, Chantal Kreviazuk, Raine Maida and Measha Brueggergosman will be part of the broadcast.

Also appearing are humanitarian Craig Kielburger and star athletes Wayne Gretzky and Steve Nash. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean will have special messages for Canadians.

“As the relief efforts move from rescue ... to reconstruction, there’s going to be so much more need, and that’s one of the reasons that we’ve all come together,” said Mulroney.

Stroumboulopoulos said it wasn’t hard getting celebrities to give their time to the project.

“One of the things about this country is we have a long history of giving and a long history of trying to come together,” he said. “It’s part of (our) identity.”

Donations collected during the broadcast will go to a number of non-profit organizations, including the Canadian Red Cross Society, Care Canada, Free the Children, Oxfam Canada, Oxfam Quebec, Plan Canada, Save the Children Canada, UNICEF Canada and World Vision Canada.

All donations will be split evenly among the charities, said World Vision Canada president Dave Toycen, who urged Canadians to give Haitians hope.

“I’ve been involved in disaster work for over 30 years and this is one of the worst I’ve ever (seen),” said Toycen, who just returned after spending six days in Haiti.

One of the lasting experiences he had was meeting a woman who insisted that Toycen take her young son, because she feared he had no chance of a good life in Haiti.

“That’s what this special is about in a way. First, it’s to answer that call to give help, but it’s also to prove to that mother: You don’t have to give your child away in order for your child to have a future,” he said.

“We’ve had a great response. Canadians have given very generously already and yet, I think there’s still people who haven’t given. So I hope tonight’s program will particularly challenge and touch people who haven’t given yet.”

The U.S. benefit “Hope for Haiti Now” will air immediately after the Canadian benefit. The two-hour special — on CBC, CTV, Global, MTV, MuchMusic and National Geographic Channel — will be hosted by George Clooney and include performances by the likes of Beyonce, Madonna, Wyclef Jean, Bruce Springsteen, Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake, Coldplay and Taylor Swift.

Keith Urban, Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow plan to perform a song together, as will Bono, the Edge, Jay-Z and Rihanna.

Canadians can donate by visiting www.CanadaForHaiti.com, dialling 1-877-51-HAITI, or texting AID to 45678.

With files from The Canadian Press



A pair of American sociologists spent five years sifting through all the available literature contrasting the outcomes for children raised in traditional families with those raised by a same-sex couple. Their conclusion: no substantive difference at all.

“The upshot of the study is something that should be common sense, but instead there is this enormous belief in the significance of gender. Bottom line: What matters is good parenting,” said NYU’s Judith Stacey. She and colleague Timothy Biblarz published the results of their investigation in the Journal of Marriage and Family on Friday.

Stacey and Biblarz have been involved in the culture wars surrounding gay marriage and gay parenthood since the release of their 2001 study, How Does The Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?

Those who disagreed with their answer to that question – “not that much” – began casting around for their own scientific data. That prompted this follow-up.

“In the U.S. especially, policy makers ... always start their (anti-gay marriage) argument with, ‘Research proves...,’” Stacey said. “But that research is almost exclusively research that compares children with two married parents to children whose parents divorced or never married. It’s completely skewed.

“They were extrapolating from those studies, which can say, on average – and that’s an important qualification – two parents usually are better than one. Not always. That’s another, more complicated story. But it certainly has nothing to do with whether (the parents are) male or female.”

The only discernible and consistent advantage they could come up with for traditional couples: lactation.

Their new review of 81 studies focused almost exclusively on lesbian couples raising children. Stacey notes that gay male parenthood is too recent a phenomenon and the sample size too small to provide evidence of child outcomes.

Without exception, the studies showed that, on average, children of lesbian couples fared no worse than their counterparts. They played more with their children, spent more time with them, and were less likely to use physical discipline. Their children, in turn, were more accepting of difference in others.

Since the issue of “fatherless boys” is front-and-centre in those debates, Stacey particularly wanted to debunk the myth that boys suffered.

“The unstated – or maybe stated – fear is that they’ll be ‘sissies’ or ‘wimps.’ There’s no evidence for that. There’s a teeny bit of evidence that boys with two mothers were just as masculine on the scales that we use to measure such things, but they did turn out a little bit higher on their feminine scale,” Stacey said.

In other words, boys tended to be better rooted in both gender camps. Girls raised by a pair of mothers were indistinguishable in their development from those raised by a man and woman.

As for the argument that children of gay couples were bound to be the object of teasing and abuse from other children, Stacey was dismissive.

“There’s very little evidence of that. Plus, that’s one of those self-fulfilling prophecies, isn’t it?” Stacey said. “That’d be like saying you shouldn’t let Jewish people have children in an anti-Semitic society because they’ll be stigmatized by their peers. It’s ridiculous.”

If anything, children raised by lesbians might be slightly better off.

“It’s a little hard to say, because if you have two women parenting together, you’re selecting for people who very actively wanted to become parents,” Stacey said. “But the second female parent (the mother who did not give birth) tended to be more actively involved than the biological heterosexual father, in terms of contact time with their children. Plus, lesbian couples, on average, tend to share domestic and economic responsibilities a little bit more equally than heterosexual couples did.”

However, Stacey veered away from any talk of better or worse. She emphasized nurture over nature.

“Women have a slight advantage for all sorts of reasons – cultural, and possibly biological reasons – but on average there are more women who are really eager to be parents and be really invested in it,” Stacey said. “But men who want to do it are just as good at it as women.”

Rachel Epstein, coordinator of the LGBTQ (Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual Trans Queer) Parenting Network at Sherbourne Health Centre, welcomed the results, but with a caveat.

“This finding about gender is interesting. It kind of lays to rest the anxieties that people have about kids growing up in lesbian families,” Epstein said. “People are afraid they’ll be all confused about gender, they won’t understand. The study’s saying, ‘No need to worry. The kids come out the same as any other kid.’”

“On the other hand, if you want to make a more complicated argument, you could ask, ‘Do we really want to support very traditional gender norms? Is that what we’re striving for?’” Epstein said. “There’s always been this pressure on LTGB families and the kids in LGBT families to be poster children. We always have to say, ‘Everything’s fantastic.’ It would be really great if we could have a more real conversation about what’s happening in our families, good and bad. But that conversation becomes limited because of the political context in which we live. It’s still very attacking of our families.”

Many of those issues are addressed in Who’s Your Daddy?, an anthology about queer parenting edited by Epstein.

Though she hasn’t ventured as far as those intimately involved in the debate, Stacey was nonetheless preparing for a backlash.

“I suspect there will be (hostility). It just too directly conflicts with what is just a foundational belief of people who are opposed to all sort of family changes,” Stacey said. “But I think they’re going to have a hard time finding any research that supports them. We really looked carefully.”