Only in Canada.

It’s been over a week, but the ripple effect of Canada’s winter Olympic gold-medal victory over the United States in Men’s Hockey still has people buzzing, and today one of the more entertaining stories surfaced.

The president of Air Canada said a plane that was bound from Vancouver to Montreal sat on the tarmac the afternoon of the big game because several passengers refused to get on board — they were watching the game on TV screens in the airport.

He didn’t say how long the flight was delayed. Get the full story at CBC.ca.

It is difficult to fathom the weight on Joannie Rochette’s shoulders as she prepared to compete in figure skating at the 2010 Winter Olympics just two days after her mother Therese died of a sudden heart attack in Vancouver.

With her entire nation and the world watching, the 24-year-old Montreal native has gone about her Olympic dream, no doubt in loving tribute to her mother, and has said she will not do interviews until she’s done competing. But Skate Canada Chief Executive William Thompson said, “It is providing her with stability in a very uncertain time of her life. The Olympic Games has always been her dream and her mum always supported that dream.”

Dan Jansen recalled on NBC’s coverage that he learned of his sister’s passing the day he was set to compete in speedskating. Emphasizing that everyone grieves in their own way, Jansen remembered falling on the ice twice in his races that day, but hoped that Joannie Rochette would have a better experience as she prepared to compete in figure skating just two days after her mother’s sudden death.

Jansen said he sent Joannie an e-mail to explain what he’d been through and gave her some words of encouragement to help her get through, and he advised her to skate with her mother in her heart.

Joannie’s father, Normand, sat emotionally in the crowd as his daughter warmed up. she teared up as the crowd cheered when her name was announced.

Joannie turned in a riveting and brave performance that earned her a personal best score from the judges, but Tuesday night wasn’t about numbers or judges.

She sobbed in her coach’s arms as she left the ice and her father stood and cheered along with the rest of the packed arena.

In the face of tragedy came great triumph, and that kind of emotion and perseverance is what the Olympic Games are all about.

Well done, Joannie.

The Great White North was ready for a party as its national hockey team faced off with its American rival on Olympic ice Sunday.

Alas, the Americans came through with an unlikely victory — and much of Canada watched it unfold before its eyes.

CTV says 10.6 million Canadians watched the contest, making it the most watched sports event in Canadian television history. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100222/entertainment/oly_tv_ratings

Here’s a little perspective for Americans, who may be thinking about the fact that 106 million people watched the Super Bowl a few weeks ago: Canada only had about 33 million people. That means about one-third of the nation was watching a qualifying round hockey game.

But what a disappointment it turned out to be.

The Canadians will have to work for another shot at the Stars & Stripes as they’ll now need to win a qualification match to get into the tournament bracket.

It seems to be the most downplayed reunion in recent memory, but J.D. Fortune will be performing with INXS when it takes the stage at the 2010 Olympics Victory Ceremony on Wednesday at BC Place in Vancouver.

The singer confirmed the news on his Web site, and the band made mention on it on its Facebook page, writing, “We have sold out our show at the Vancouver Winter Olympics on Feb. 24th and are excited to be playing for the Canadian fans. JD Fortune will do a special guest appearance at the show.”

Back in December, when the list of performers was first announced, we here at COTW speculated that Fortune would perform with the band, given the Canadian-heavy lineup for the Olympics concerts and the fact that without Ontario native Fortune, INXS is purely Australian band.

The band is set to tour the world this year, but it still isn’t clear whether Fortune will be on board, given all this “special guest appearance” business.

Talk about “third time’s a charm.”

Check this out: On the third day of the third Olympics ever held in Canada, 33 years (and seven months) after the Olympic cauldron was first lit in the Great White North, Canada won its third medal of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

And this one was gold.

The big story at the 2010 Winter Olympics has been the question of whether Canada would be able to — for the first time — win a gold medal on Canadian soil. It didn’t happen when Canada first hosted the Summer Olympics in Montreal in 1976, and it didn’t happen when the Winter Olympics came to Calgary in 1988.

But with a blistering 23.17-second time and a 26.76 score from the judges in the men’s moguls, 22-year-old Quebec native Alexandre Bilodeau made it happen, and there was immediately no doubt about who’d be named Canadian of the Week.

Check out his gold-medal run here

Congrats to Alex and all of Canada!

Things are heating up in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics, which get started on Friday, and while most American kids might ask, “What would Brian Boitano do?” Canadian kids are more likely to wonder, “What would Elvis Stojko do?”

Yahoo Canada has them covered. Stojko, who’s apparently taking a break from promoting his debut album, is serving as a commentator for Yahoo Canada for the Games, and he kicks off his coverage with some advice for the athletes.

Check it out:

In this second video, Stojko recalls some of his favorite memories of competing on the world’s largest athetics stage.

Check out more Winter Olympics coverage from Yahoo Canada right here.

“Lost” is back and as it heads into its final hours with more buzz than ever it’s time to honor our favorite Oceanic 815 survivor as Canadian of the Week.

Evangeline Lilly had never held a lead role before she captivated viewers as fugitive Kate Austen who was among the few survivors of arguably the most famous fictional plane crash in entertainment history. But over six seasons, she’s made a name for herself as an action lady and the central figure in the greatest love triangle on the island.

Now, as the sixth and final season kicks off and the countdown to the highly anticipated finale begins, it’s worth taking a look at how far Lilly has come from the now-infamous LiveLinks commercials that reportedly still air in Canada.

Unfortunately for Lilly’s fans, she’s talking about calling it quits on acting once the show ends. She told Eonline’s Kristen Dos Santos that she’s just “not passionate about acting the way you probably should be to call yourself an actor.”

Lilly said she’d like “to have some quiet space,” and that she would like to “drop off the radar a little bit and enjoy a little bit of normalcy again.”

See the full interview here:

For now, we’ve still got her and we’ve got a few more months of what will certainly go down as one of the most unique, epic and engaging series in American television history.

Check out a teaser for Tuesday night’s episode, and fasten your seat belts!

One of Canadian of the Week’s favorite new blogs is Ghouls on Film (ghoulsonfilm.net), where the horror movie genre is written about women, by women, and for women. You could maybe say it’s like Lifetime, but maybe Deadtime, if you know what I mean…

Anyway, the site is beginning a series of tributes to some classic scream queens and it just so happens they’ve started with Vancouver’s own Yvonne De Carlo.

As it turns out, she wasn’t always Lily Munster. In fact, the show only ran for two seasons (followed by two movies), and the 1940s and ’50s were considered the prolific period in the life of the actress who was once dubbed “the world’s most beautiful woman.”

Check out ghoulsonfilm.net for the rest of the story.

Yesterday, we reported that Vancouver was among the least affordable cities in the world to live in, today we find out there might be a good reason why that’s the case.

British Columbia’s coastal jewel was among the 10 most beautiful cities in the world, according to a list from Forbes Traveler.

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Vancouver was the only Canadian berg to make the list, which was led by Cambridge, England, and Tokyo. Also included were Paris, Sydney, Florence and Venice. Three U.S. cities made the list: Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

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Here’s what Forbes had to say about Vancouver, which is just days from having the world’s eyes cast upon it for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games:

“While Paris is hailed for its man-made design and structures, Vancouver is noted for its natural beauty. In this coastal city open air is abundant — from the green west-end campus of the University of British Columbia to the enormous Stanley Park just outside downtown. In addition, both the snowcapped Coast Mountains and the Pacific Ocean provide a beautiful backdrop, and the city’s diverse cultures and foods offer a resounding finishing touch.”

It’s true. Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve visited, and the food is fantastic.

A new report says that Vancouver is the least affordable city in the world, when measuring median housing sale prices to median household incomes, according to an article from The Canadian Press.

The report, released by Demographia International, a group that wants to encourage major cities to allow more housing to be built on the fringes of cities, said other Canadian cities — notably Toronto and Montreal — are also highly unaffordable.

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But Brent Gilmour, acting CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute, said the report is too simple and doesn’t account for all kinds of other factors, including shorter commute times, less need for cars by people who live in the city, and other elements of city planning that make city neighborhoods better options.

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