13 News Stories You May Have Forgotten About That Made Canadians Say 'WTF' In 2022

The Sunwing party plane

Remember the Sunwing party plane incident?

If you don't, 2022 started with a bang for a bunch of social media stars and influencers who partied it up on a private flight to Mexico.

The trip, organized by 111 Private Club, featured such "unruly" behaviour that their return flight was cancelled, leaving them in a pretty sticky spot.

The news got so big that even Jimmy Fallon weighed in on the passengers, who ended up stuck in Mexico.

"What better way to teach someone a lesson than forcing them to spend more time in Cancun?" Fallon joked, before calling them "knuckleheads."

He had a point and, hopefully, they learned their lesson.

Jagmeet Singh's chair

For those not in the know, Jagmeet Singh and his wife Gurkiran Kaur welcomed a baby earlier this year.

However, merely days after the child was born, the NDP leader made the mistake of posting a picture with the newborn.

The issue? The photo showed him holding the child and sitting on a seat, tagged with the chair's manufacturer. And the rocking chair in question, valued at a whopping $1,895, was supposedly a gift.

Since then both Singh and his wife have deleted the picture, paid for the chair and worked with Canada's ethics commissioner to ensure all gifts received are declared.

Still, not exactly the headlines you're looking for when announcing news of your baby to the world.

A Canadian killed it on 'Jeopardy'

There's nothing quite like celebrating another Canadian's achievements, is there?

Well, earlier this year, we all got the opportunity to cheer along national hero Mattea Roach, who became the most successful Canadian of all time on Jeopardy.

Her winning streak earned her US$560,983 (CA$722,400), which she said she would use to pay off her student loans.

After all of those wins, Roach lost her winning streak by just $1 and it was on a clue about the U.S.

She said she hopes people remember her as a player who "was a lot of fun to watch" and, well, we can attest to that.

The Rogers outage

It's hard to forget this one.

On July 8, a huge Rogers outage across Canada brought internet services and calls to a standstill in the country.

It led to many disasters, from small businesses being unable to operate to people having difficulty reaching 911, as well as some unforgettable memes.

The situation was eventually resolved within a few days, and the company apologized and promised to pay over $150 million in outage credits.

Howie Mandel shared a little too much

There was a major TMI moment this year when Howie Mandel posted a truly wild video on TikTok — and not everyone was happy about it.

The Canadian celeb shared an extremely NSFW video of a prolapsed rectum on the social media platform.

"When my friend Neil bent over this happened," he said while showing a photo of the body part. "Does somebody know if this is COVID related? And if it is, what do we do about it?”

He then deleted the video... and pretended that nothing had happened.

His name, unsurprisingly, trended in Canada for a while afterwards. Sounds like quite a pain in the, well, you know.

Tim Hortons' lawsuit

While we're on the subject of companies getting into hot water, Tim Hortons also got into a spot of trouble in 2022.

An investigation into the Tim Hortons app found that it unnecessarily collected data without obtaining the right consent from its users. It also found that the app tracked the users' geolocations when they were not using it.

All of this led to four class action lawsuits, and the situation somehow got even more bizarre when the coffee retailer tried to rectify the situation.

Their proposed solution? A free baked treat and a cup of coffee to affected parties. But, as expected, that didn't go down too well either.

Timmies also made headlines again more recently when it issued a recall for its Soup Base Chicken Noodle. The reason for the recall? The presence of insects. Gross!

Justin Trudeau's haircut

The prime minister is likely to make headlines every now and then, but one thing that really captures the internet was when he got a questionable haircut earlier this year.

Justin Trudeau's 2022 haircut made him strangely resemble another famous Canadian — but not in a good way.

In fact, just hours after debuting the new look, Jim Carey (a misspelling of Jim Carrey) started trending on Twitter in Canada as people compared Trudeau's look to Carrey's character in Dumb and Dumber.

Since then, Trudeau has grown his tresses back out (phew!) and looks a little less Carrey-like.

However, another famous Canadian seemed to follow suit with a strange haircut this year — we're looking at you, Drake.

Has 2022 been the year of bad hairstyling?

Doug Ford and the bee

While we're on the subject of politicians, Trudeau's not the only one to have created a bit of a buzz this year.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford got into quite the sticky spot himself in August when he accidentally swallowed a bee on live television.

The incident occurred at a press conference as Ford was answering questions on health care. The premier abruptly choked mid-sentence, before exclaiming "Holy Christ, I just swallowed a bee."

He took it in good spirits though, by drinking a glass of water and even joked that it was "buzzing around inside."

Lisa LaFlamme's firing

On a more serious note, a story that hit Canadians right in the feels in August of this year was when longtime chief anchor at CTV National News Lisa LaFlamme announced that Bell Media had abruptly ended her contract.

The journalist issued a statement on her Twitter account, saying she had been let go due to a "business decision."

It's an understatement to say the news wasn't well-received by the journalist's legion of fans.

The outrage led to Bell Media releasing a statement about an internal workplace review being conducted.

Several Canadian brands also showed their support for the news anchor, including Wendy's, whose iconic mascot received a grey-haired makeover.

Fans of LaFlamme were happy to note that the news anchor did return to television shortly after, when she was on a different network, covering the queen's death, another extremely noteworthy event that took place in 2022.

Air Canada got slammed

Air Canada has had its share of bad press this year.

But perhaps nothing struck a chord more than when it was publicly called out as "the worst airline in North America..." by none other than Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis.

Lewis — who played the character Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movie franchise — took to social media in late August.

According to the actor, the airline kicked him out of his first-class seat and tore his ticket up without providing any information apart from the fact that the flight was fully booked.

Sounds like quite the rough ride.

Keanu Reeves' wedding gift

He's not the only celebrity who made the news that month.

Keanu Reeves is no stranger to delighting his fans, and he managed to do it again this year by showing up to a stranger's wedding!

According to Newsweek, the groom was hanging out in the hotel bar area before the wedding reception and spotted Reeves, who he invited to the wedding.

The John Wick star later made an appearance at the event and even took a moment to pose for some pictures.

Talk about a cool wedding gift.

That 'spidery' bus

A Canadian transit garage got everyone's spidey senses tingling in September when it was revealed that a bunch of western black widow spiders were discovered on a bus.

The creatures, which were found on a bus travelling from the U.S., caused the entire facility to be shut down as pest control was brought in to fumigate the building.

And while there were no disruptions to transit services due to the incident, it's still a nice little reminder to check what's on (or under) your seat when you're travelling. Eek.

A Canadian being the voice of TikTok

We've all heard her voice a million times and, as it turns out, she's Canadian!

In October this year, Kat Callaghan, a radio host in Ontario, revealed that she's one of the text-to-speech voices behind many of TikTok's most viral videos.

The Canadian made the announcement in the best way possible — through TikTok — where she put up a jaw-dropping clip to showcase her talent.

"Sometimes you guys make me say some pretty horrendous things," Callaghan also said. And she's not wrong!

"It's pretty messed up. But I kinda think it's funny. I don't mind it at all." Whew!