Can you say dual-citizenship?

People.com reports that actor Vince Vaughn and his Calgary gal, Kyla Weber, are expecting their first child. Vaughn married Weber early this year.

“They’re having so much fun together and they’re so excited to be first-time parents!” a source tells the magazine.

Vaughn told People in September that after years as a bachelor he was ready for his life “to be about other people and other things.

“It’s the first time that I really want to have kids.”

Apparently! Congrats to the parents-to-be.

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.

News flash: Not all Canadians know each other.

E! Online’s Hollywood Party girl was shocked — shocked! — to discover recently that not all Canadians know each other.

“90210″ star Shenae Grimes (of Toronto) was asked if she ever bonds with her fellow countryman, “Glee” star Cory Monteith, who hails from Calgary (as any good COTW reader already knows).

“God, I wish I knew who that was,” Shenae replied, also noting she hasn’t gotten a chance to see “Glee,” which airs on Fox (her “90210″ airs on The CW).

In fairness, I’ve been surprised at just how many Canadians really do know each other. At the same time, Calgary and Toronto are more than 2,000 miles apart.

The Party Girl’s post ends with a simple suggestion that the two rising TV stars meet because they might make a nice Canadian couple.

And that’s an argument we can get behind.

In case you’re wondering, Calgary is the best Canadian city in which to have a heart attack.

That’s coming from a study conducted by scientists at the University of Calgary, so take that for what it’s worth — either favoritism or wishful thinking.

Nonetheless, they claimed that Calgarians are more likely to survive cardiac arrest because they have “quick and easy access to life-saving angioplasty treatment 24 hours a day at Foothills Medical Centre,” according to a CBC.ca report.

“Treating people immediately with angioplasty can lead to lower death rates and better outcomes,” researcher William Ghali told the CBC.

The researchers said Alberta is on par with the national average in terms of providing angioplasty treatment, but Ontario leads the nation with more than 70 percent of adults having access to such treatment.

New Brunswick is pulling up the rear, with only about 15.8 percent of adults in close proximity. On top of that, there’s a paramedic who’s spending all of his time at Tim Hortons, complaining about the coffee, and then complaining about getting banned from Tim Hortons.

Wrestling fans, Monday night was a big one in Bret Hart’s journey back to WWE and the road to Wrestlemania 26.

Hart came face to face with Vince McMahon, whom he’s been mad as hell at since “The Montreal Screwjob” 12 years ago, and, well, check out the recap from our friends at InsidePulse.com for the rest.

Another awards show, another chance to congratulate Calgary’s Cory Monteith, star of Fox’s “Glee,” and his castmates on taking home the best comedy series cast honors at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Saturday night.

This honor is particularly special as it is voted on by other actors and it demonstrates the recognition of the fine work that Monteith and Co. are doing on their fresh, young show.

Click on the video below to see one of our favorite Cory scenes from this season:

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After a week of voting, a handful of Canada’s largest and well-known cities are in danger of not even making it on the board in a new version of Monopoly Canada.

Hasbro, the company that makes the game, has opened a public vote to decide which cities will occupy the 22 spaces on the board that were originally named for streets and areas in Atlantic City, N.J. (a la, Boardwalk, Park Place, St. Charles Place, etc.).

With 65 cities in the running for 20 of the spaces, Winnipeg and Edmonton aren’t making the cut, and Toronto is barely hanging on in 20th place.

The final two spaces — the “low-rent” spots occupied by Mediterranean and Baltic avenues in the original game — will be decided by a separate wild-card vote based on nominations of any and all cities in Canada.

People can vote for three cities each day until the vote closes on Feb. 7, 2010. The city that receives the most votes will be placed on the highest rent property traditionally held by Boardwalk.

The wild card vote for the two low-rent spaces will take place from February 8, 2010 until February 21, 2010.

Canadian of the Week thinks that in addition to the great cities that will occupy the spaces on the board, some uniquely named bergs might qualify as game pieces to go along with what’s sure to include a hockey player, a maple leaf and a totem pole:

Medicine Hat
Red Deer
Wood Buffalo
Whitehorse
Yellowknife
Moose Jaw
White Rock

Here’s a look at the current leading cities and their percentages of the vote, as of midnight Wednesday:

Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. 5.4

Calgary 4.7

Chatham-Kent, Ont. 3.7

Quebec City 3.4

Trois-Rivieres, Que. 2.9

St. John’s, N.L. 2,8

Kawartha Lakes, Ont. 2.7

Medicine Hat, Alta. 2.7

Montreal 2.6

Victoria 2.5

Windsor, Ont. 2.4

Shawinigan, Que. 2.3

Kelowna, B.C. 2.3

Sarnia, Ont. 2.3

North Bay, Ont. 2.1

Vancouver 2.1

Ottawa 2.1

Gastineau 2.0

London, Ont. 2.0

Toronto 2.0

The Olympic torch warmed the heart of 95-year-old Audrey Forzani, who on Tuesday officially became the eldest person to carry the torch on its cross-country trek to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Games.

Forzani returned to her old neighborhood of Renfrew in Calgary, Alberta, which was where her Italian immigrant parents settled 100 years ago, to get her torch lit and carry it on her wheelchair through a stretch of the city where she raised her three boys, who all played football in the CFL.

For more on the story, check out the Calgary Herald.

Canadians came up big at Sunday night’s Golden Globe Awards, with director James Cameron taking home the top prizes as he won for Best Director and his film, “Avatar,” claimed the trophy for Best Motion Picture, Drama.

The Kapuskasing, Ontario, native who’s long lived in Los Angeles has had a heck of a year with the release of his long-awaited and highly anticipated adventure film to the far-off planet of Pandora. The film was Cameron’s first since a little thing called “Titanic” was released 12 years ago, and it seems the wait didn’t hamper the new film’s performance. In addition to claiming some major awards, it’s approaching $500 million gross revenue at the box office, according to boxofficemojo.com, putting it third place all time after “Titanic” ($600 million) and “The Dark Knight” ($533 million).

Elsewhere, screenwriter and director Jason Reitman took home a Best Screenplay award with co-writer Sheldon Turner for “Up in the Air,” which starred George Clooney. Reitman, of Montreal, also directed the film, but lost in that category to the aforementioned Cameron.

FInally, Calgary’s Cory Monteith was not nominated for an individual acting award, but his show “Glee” won the top prize for Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy, knocking off heavy hitters such as “30 Rock,” “The Office” and “Entourage,” and another highly touted newcomer, “Modern Family.”

See all the Golden Globe results here.

For all the wedding and breakup movies he’s done, it took a good Canadian woman to get Vince Vaughn to settle down.

The 39-year-old actor married his Calgary cutie, 31-year-old realtor Kyla Weber, in a small, private ceremony outside his hometown of Chicago on Saturday, according to People.com.

Canadian of the Week told you back in March that Weber’s proud dad spilled the beans that Vaughn had quietly proposed to Weber. Their relationship has been kept mostly out of the spotlight, likely because of Vaughn’s most recent, highly publicized fling with Jennifer Aniston.

Vaughn told PEOPLE in September that after years as a bachelor he was ready for his life “to be about other people and other things.

“It’s the first time that I really want to have kids.”

Vaughn’s new wife isn’t his only connection to Canada. His mom was born there and was also a realtor.