A quick, belated shout out and naming of Canadian of the Week to Montreal’s Arcade Fire to knocking Eminem off the top of the charts last week in the U.S., Britain and Canada with their new album, “The Suburbs.”

The band also earned raves from Rolling Stone, which called them “the biggest mainstream success to emerge from the indie-rock world this decade, a North American equivalent of Radiohead in critical respect and mounting commercial clout.”

See the full story from CBC.ca.

Oh, look it’s a TV actress with a vanity project.

Edmonton-born TV star Jill Hennessy is working on an album called “Ghost in My Mind.”

“I know there’s going to be a lot of skepticism,” Hennessy to the QMI Agency, via the Toronto Star. “People will say, ‘Oh, it’s a TV actress with a vanity project.’”

Hey, how did she know we’d say that? Seriously, we love Jill’s venture back into music, and her return to Edmonton makes her our Canadian of the Week!

“Not many people know that I actually started off as a musician. I would play on the streets in Toronto for money,” she continued. “Music’s basically where my heart has always been, to be honest. I was just lucky that acting took off. Music provides me with much more profound and personal satisfaction.”

She goes on to explain that she’s been working on the album for more than four years, and started it while she was filming “Crossing Jordan.” The songs are based on experiences from her life from 2005 to 2007, including one situation “of extreme loss.”

In an ideal world, Hennessy says she’d have a full-fledged music career on her hands. But she knows acting is what puts food on the table.

She’ll be playing the Edmonton Music Festival this weekend.

Check out Jill performing “Ghost in My Head” on QTV right here:

If having the best match at a WWE Pay Per View event was a reason to name someone the Canadian of the Week, Chris Jericho’s mantle would be littered with the diamond-studded, gold-plated COTW plaques we send out.

Note: Those plaques absolutely do not exist.

So what put Mr. Jericho over the top this week? It was the pairing of his show-stealing match against up-and-comer Evan Bourne at WWE’s “Fatal 4 Way” event on Sunday followed by his engaging effort as the host of the new ABC game show “Downfall” on Tuesday.

And while Jericho isn’t as surefooted with his new hosting duties as he is while performing his trademark Lionsault or Codebreaker wrestling maneuvers, he makes up for it with his genuine enthusiasm and natural charisma. He also manages to strike a good balance between portraying the excitement of winning valuable prizes and the ridiculousness of a giant conveyor belt that launches prizes off of a 100-foot building.

Mr. Jericho, your plaque is in the mail. (No, it totally isn’t.)

Tonight, Canadian hoopster Steve Nash kicked off another Western Conference Final with the Phoenix Suns, leading his squad at the age of 36 — some six years after the Dallas Mavericks opted not to sign him because he was aging.

Regardless of the outcome of this series and the season as a whole for the Suns, though, Nash’s contributions and representation of Canada in the NBA is truly historic.

The two-time MVP and seven-time All-Star hasn’t lost a step, still leading the Suns as the fastest moving offense in the league and forcing defenders to keep up with him and his famously wild hair. And in the last series, Nash’s toughness was put to the test as he suffered a serious eye injury that left him with a right eye that was swollen shut and required six stitches. Still, he finished the game and led his team to a victorious series.

For his efforts on and off the court, Nash is our Canadian of the Week, and the Suns are our pick to make it to the NBA Finals.

Game over.

Someone had to say it, right?

Montreal’s Eric Gagne officially called it a career after failing to make a comeback with the Los Angeles Dodgers — the team with which he made the biggest and most exciting impact.

Gagne’s career has undoubtedly been marked with the highest highs (setting a record for consecutive successful save attempts with 82), and the lowest lows (being named on The Mitchell Report as a player who’d used human-growth hormone), but his overall effort and the phenomenon he created in Los Angeles make him our Canadian of the Week.

Gagne is one of just nine relief pitchers to have ever won the Cy Young Award, taking it in 2003, when he successfully converted all 55 of his save attempts during his record streak.

Gagne’s arrival on the mound during those years made for such a sure finish that the stadium scoreboards flashed “GAME OVER” when he took the ball.

The Mitchell Report, rightly, put a damper on Gagne’s success, and he was never able to regain the strength and success he’d had in that three-year stretch with the Dodgers. He admitted in an L.A. Times interview to using the drugs, but said it was only to recover from a knee injury.

It might be a few days late, but if he made us wait five years to let us know that Booth and Bones already kissed, we’re pretty sure Hart Hanson will understand.

As promised, the creator of “Bones,” which celebrated its 100th episode last week with a real bombshell, is our Canadian of the Week.

Back in 2005, Hanson, who was born in California but moved to Canada as a child and graduated from the University of Toronto before getting an MFA from the University of British Columbia, dared to bring a forensic crime drama to Fox, of all places. Who would’ve believed that despite not necessarily pulling in the numbers of those forensics-by-numbers shows on CBS, he took Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz and crew, and created the most personal and fun forensics show of the bunch.

Winding down to the end of its fifth season, with a sixth already ordered from Fox, “Bones” boasts one of the most loyal audiences in television. Despite scheduling changes that have seen the show air on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, throughout its run, viewership has remained consistent and even grown a bit since the premiere, without wavering.

Then came last week’s 100th episode, written by Hanson and directed by Boreanaz, in which a trip down memory lane revealed that Bones and Booth actually kissed when they first met and worked their first case together. So, it turns out the “will they or won’t they?” question is answered with a resounding: They already did!

Still, they decided to keep things professional at the time, and the new information brings the sexual tension to a new level, and that should be entertaining for at least a few more years to come.

In case you missed it, or just feel like watching it again, here’s the 100th episode of “Bones”:

By Gordon Holmes
Special to Canadian of the Week

From Alberta’s Hart Family to Quebec’s Rougeau Brothers to Ontario’s Edge and Christian, the tradition of Canadian wrestling is full of larger-than-life personalities and unforgettable matches. We’ve been counting down to Wrestlemania XXVI by taking a look at the Great White North’s finest contributions to the squared circle.

Editor’s Note: The “Modern Era” is defined as the period of wrestling that exists from
SummerSlam 1988 to the present day. Why 1988? Because that’s when I started watching wrestling. I know, I’m lame.

Previous picks:
10. Andrew “Test” Martin
9. John “Earthquake” Tenta
8. Lance Storm
7. Christian
6. Chris Benoit
5: Trish Stratus
4. Owen Hart
3. Edge
2. Chris Jericho

1: Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart
Height: 6’0”
Weight: 234 lbs.
Hometown: Calgary, Alberta
Greatest Match: Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin – Wrestlemania 13 – Submission Match

“If wrestling is so real, then why don’t they post the results in the Sports section of the newspaper?” – Gordon W. Holmes Jr.

That’s the comment my dad liked to hit me with whenever I brought up wrestling as a kid. You see, my dad hates wrestling. With a capital “H,” underlined, and italicized the man hates wrestling. He hates the hype, he hates the costumes, but most of all he hates the fakeness.

Quick Question: Why do wrestlers get slapped with the “fake” label but the Harlem Globetrotters don’t? Why should Fred “Curly” Neal be more respected than Bruno Sammartino?

But in the late ’80s when the then-WWF would roll into St. Louis, my dad would do what all dads who’ve ever taken their kids to Miley Cyrus concerts have done; he scored a few tickets, paid a ridiculous parking fee, and was bored for a few hours just to make his kid smile.

It was on one of those trips that I first saw Bret Hart wrestle in person. Don’t get me wrong: I was there to see Hulk Hogan ram the Big Boss Man’s head into a steel cage and “Macho Man” Randy Savage defend his WWF Title in a street fight against Bad News Brown, but I was also very excited to see Bret.

Quick Aside: My neighbor was convinced that Bad News Brown was going to bring a gun to the street fight because “Everything was legal.” Being a kid is great.

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Next to the Hulkster, Bret Hart was my favorite wrestler. This makes no sense because I was too young to appreciate technical wrestling and he was really only little more than one half of a mid-card tag team at that point.

But I do know this: When I’d wrestle my friends in my basement (then known as the Gordon’s Basement Wrestling Federation or GBWF), I went by the moniker Gordon “The Hitman” Holmes.

Legal Notice: Kids, don’t wrestle in your basement.

That’s why I never buy the knock that Bret didn’t have charisma. He obviously had something about him that drew a dumb kid like me in. Whether it was the contrast of his laid-back coolness in an organization of angry muscleheads or something else, he obviously had a lot of people hooked.

Now, odds are if you know anything about wrestling the first time you saw that Canadianoftheweek.com was doing a ranking of Canadian wrestlers you had Bret Hart pegged as the number one pick. And, the list of reasons why Bret deserves this lofty position were already discussed during last week’s Chris Jericho post.

However, if you’re new to this, I’ll lay them out for you…

• Bret was a five-time WWE champion back when that was an impressive accomplishment.
• Bret helped usher in the era of smaller, more technically sound wrestlers.
• While he may hate to acknowledge this, Bret was a big part of getting the freakishly successful “Attitude” era off the ground.
• Bret had amazing matches with a wide variety of talent. I chose Hart/Austin from Wrestlemania 13 as his greatest match, but could have easily been talked into Bret vs. Owen Hart from Wrestlemania X, Bret vs. Shawn Michaels from Wrestlemania XII, Bret vs. Davey Boy Smith from Summerslam ’92, or even Bret vs. Austin from Survivor Series ’96.
• Bret’s popularity (especially outside of the U.S.) was at or near the top of the heap during the ’90s.

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So, that being said, let me lay out one more.

It was about halfway through his match with the Honky Tonk Man that night that Bret Hart was whipped chest-first into the turnbuckles. Now, if you’re any kind of wrestling fan, you know that’s how Bret tended to take his corner bumps. It’s swift, violent, and very impressive.

Even my father thought so.

I’ll never forget the look on his face as he watched Bret crumple into a ball on the mat. As the referee checked on Bret, my dad even said, “Is he OK?”

When the Honky Tonk Man eventually pushed the ref aside and started kicking Bret in the chest my dad realized he’d been had. It was all part of the show. My dad laughed, feeling kind of silly for buying into it.

To me that was one of the best facets of Bret’s work, it was always kind of real with him. Be it his crisp moves or the way he’d sell weird things like a finger, you’d always buy it.

Even the way he won the World Title from Ric Flair supports this statement. Bret’s first reign started after a shocking win over the champion in a throwaway show that never aired on television. If wrestling were real that’d happen all the time. There’s no way a champion could dominate a top challenger 25 times out of 25 attempts on a wrestling tour.

So yeah, Bret getting my dad to believe (even if it was only for a second) didn’t make it into the St. Louis Post Dispatch’s Sports page, but it was certainly news to me.

Oddly enough, the paper didn’t even cover the news that Bad News Brown had shot “Macho Man” Randy Savage to death en route to winning the WWE Title. Or so I would lead my neighbor to believe…

Gordon Holmes is the wrestling correspondent for Comcast.net’s SlamCast wrestling coverage and the “Survivor” correspondent for Fancast.com. He was also trained to take a beating by WWE Hall of Famer Afa “The Wild Samoan” Anoa’i. You can follow Gordon on Twitter at twitter.com/gordonholmes.

She headlined the 10th season premiere of “Dancing with the Stars,” and there’s no telling how long she’ll last, so we figured it best to go ahead and quickly bestow Canadian of the Week honors on bombshell Pamela Anderson.

Claiming she had no rhythm and was tone deaf, Pam brought some of her signature moves to the celebrity dancing competition, dancing her cha cha cha in a skimpy outfit and tossing her hair about.

After her performance — in which she, ahem, deflowered a brand new “Dancing” pro named Damian Whitewood — judge Bruno Tonioli said, “All I could think about was sex, sex and more sex.”

If this was still selling itself as a family show, the jig is up.

Pam is the perfect train wreck for this show, and she was working it Monday night. Her partner was practically holding her up after her performance as she said she was exhausted.

She’s definitely bringing some fun to the season, which is filled with some controversial and eye-popping stars, including Kate Gosselin, Erin Andrews and Nicole Scherzinger.

By Gordon Holmes
Special to Canadian of the Week

From Alberta’s Hart Family to Quebec’s Rougeau Brothers to Ontario’s Edge and Christian, the tradition of Canadian wrestling is full of larger-than-life personalities and unforgettable matches. Join us every week as we count down to Wrestlemania XXVI by taking a look at the Great White North’s finest contributions to the squared circle.

Editor’s Note: The “Modern Era” is defined as the period of wrestling that exists from
SummerSlam 1988 to the present day. Why 1988? Because that’s when I started watching wrestling. I know, I’m lame.

Previous picks:
10. Andrew “Test” Martin
9. John “Earthquake” Tenta
8. Lance Storm
7. Christian
6. Chris Benoit
5: Trish Stratus
4. Owen Hart
3. Edge

2: Chris Jericho
Height: 6’0”
Weight: 231 lbs.
Hometown: Winnipeg, Manitoba
Greatest Match: Chris Jericho/Chris Benoit vs. Triple H/Steve Austin – May 21, 2001

When canadianoftheweek.com approached me about writing a list of the 10 best Canadian wrestlers of the modern era, two questions ran through my mind.

1. Why does a guy from Seattle run a site about Canadians?

2. If Bret Hart is obviously first, who’s second through tenth?

Quick Aside: Yeah, I gave away next week’s entry. Don’t act surprised.

Another Quick Aside: If I can get through next week’s entry without using the word “Montreal,” I’ll receive a special Internet award. Apparently it hasn’t been done since late 1997.

Yet Another Quick Aside: Yes, leaving Roddy Piper off of this list was intentional. The Roddy Piper from 1985 to 1987 belongs high on this list. From 1989 and on the only thing I’ve really enjoyed of his was his brief feud with Bret Hart over the Intercontinental title. From then on he’s been all Hillary Clinton jokes and brutally boring matches. And, as usual, that’s just one guy’s opinion.

It wasn’t until I sat down and hammered out who belonged where that I realized a strong case could be made for Chris Jericho taking over Bret’s top spot…a surprisingly strong case.

I know, blasphemy. But, stick with me.

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I tried breaking the two down into parallels. Bret’s pre-WWE stay in Stampede Wrestling was marked by phenomenal matches with a wide variety of performers. Jericho had awesome runs in WAR, SMW, and ECW before finally making the jump to the big leagues in WCW.

Son of Quick Aside: I saw Jericho and some guy named Rob Van Dam square off against the Eliminators in Reading, PA in ECW. One of the best matches I’ve ever seen live.

After being ignored a bit, Bret and his brother-in-law Jim Neidhart (as the Hart Foundation) had a great run on the top of the WWE tag division. It could be argued that the WWE tag ranks were the most entertaining part of the late ’80s WWE. In comparison, Jericho spun his wheels in WCW when he first entered. However, he took off once he created his “Conspiracy Victim” persona, dominating the Cruiserweight title. It could be argued that the WCW Cruiserweight division was the most entertaining part of WCW in the late ’90s.

Bret eventually took off in the singles ranks, proving that smaller, technical wrestlers could get over in McMahon’s land of muscle freaks. This helped pave the way for Shawn Michaels, Owen Hart, and others. Jericho eventually jumped to WWE and his popularity soared, proving to WCW wrestlers that WWE was the place to be for pushing new talent. This helped pave the way for Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, and others.

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After a long run at or near the top of the card, Bret Hart went on an extended hiatus after dropping a match to the next big thing Shawn Michaels. When he returned the landscape of the industry had changed and his face character wasn’t getting over like it used to. Bret revitalized his career by becoming the hottest heel the industry had seen in years. And while he was at it he turned in maybe some of the best performances of his career in his white-hot feud with Steve Austin.

After a long run at or near the top of the card, Chris Jericho retired after dropping a match to the next big thing John Cena. When he returned the landscape of the industry had changed and his witty, rock-and-roll character wasn’t getting over like it used to. Jericho revitalized his career by becoming the hottest heel the industry had seen in years. And while he was at it he turned in maybe some of the best performances of his career in his white-hot feud with Shawn Michaels.

With all of that being said, at the end of the day I did choose Bret over Jericho for two reasons. First, Bret was the main focus of the WWE for a time while Jericho’s biggest title reign (his Unified title run) played second fiddle to the nWo and Stephanie McMahon’s dog. And second, Bret’s freakish international popularity (in Germany in particular) is nearly impossible to top.

However, Jericho is still a top-notch performer. And who knows? Jericho’s still young, active and talented. He very well could overtake Bret one day.

And for those of you who think I was stretching with the Bret/Jericho parallels, here’s one more for you; they both won their most recent WWE titles after Shawn Michaels clobbered the Undertaker.

Creepy, I know.

Gordon Holmes is the wrestling correspondent for Comcast.net’s SlamCast wrestling coverage and the “Survivor” correspondent for Fancast.com. He was also trained to take a beating by WWE Hall of Famer Afa “The Wild Samoan” Anoa’i. You can follow Gordon on Twitter at twitter.com/gordonholmes.

It isn’t often that behind-the-scenes folks get recognized, but this is a huge week for Toronto’s Graham Yost.

Haven’t heard of him? Well, he does get in front of the camera much (quick related note: The man in the photo is Timothy Olyphant as Marshal Raylan Givens in “Justified.” Why? Because I couldn’t find a photo of Yost, that’s why). But he’s behind two of the week’s biggest television premieres, which is reason aplenty to name him our Canadian of the Week.

Yost is the creator and executive producer of “Justified,” the new FX series that kicked off Tuesday night to rave reviews from TV critics across the country. Here’s a clip (note: the original name of the show was “Lawman,” but it was changed after Steven Seagal’s A&E show premiered).

But even before “Justified” premiered, it was a pretty good week for Yost, who also serves as a writer and co-executive producer on “The Pacific,” HBO’s newest miniseries, which is sure to win a ton of Emmys. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are getting the headlines, but Yost — who also worked on “Band of Brothers” — is in the mix, big time, and his contribution is worth noting.

Below, check out the entire first episode of “The Pacific,” thanks to our friends at Fancast.com.