Good morning. We’re rounding up some of 2024’s biggest scene-stealers – more on that below, along with Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s assurances from the Prime Minister and the gear that transformed the lives of The Globe’s staff this year. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Dominique Pelicot gets the maximum 20-year sentence for the mass rape of his wife, Gisele
- Canada plans an oversight body to ensure businesses, governments crack down on forced labour
- Trump’s 51st state jokes are a bullying technique, a former adviser to Trudeau says
Canada's Maude Charron at the Paris Olympics.MIGUEL MEDINA/Getty Images
2024 in Review
They stole the show
There’s been no shortage of spectacle over the past 12 months. Luca Guadagnino’s tennis flick Challengers culminated with a 24-second rally – shot from the perspective of the tennis ball. Paris gave us a rain-soaked, overstuffed Olympics opening ceremony – then, four months later, delivered Notre Dame Cathedral, reborn from the ashes and reverberating with light. Shots rang out in Butler, Penn., and a bloodied Donald Trump dropped to the ground – but before the Secret Service could sprint him from the stage, the once-and-future president paused, raised his fist, and mouthed the words “fight, fight, fight.” (Fight, Fight, Fight is now the name of Trump’s new perfume line, with “a fragrance your enemies can’t resist.”)
Those were the moments that stuck with me this year, but I wanted to know how they stacked up against my colleagues’ picks, so I asked a few of The Globe’s writers for the 2024 performances that rattled around in their heads. Most were great. One was extremely awful. All of them are memorable.
Colman Domingo, left, and Clarence Maclin in "Sing Sing."The Associated Press
Colman Domingo in Sing Sing
Thanks to the 2023 biopic Rustin, Colman Domingo busted out of the hey-it’s-that-guy character-actor box he had somehow found himself in, having enlivened the small corners of his many, many, many projects, from HBO’s Euphoria to Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk.
But it’s this year that should be heralded as the Era of Domingo, as the actor’s lead role in the prison drama Sing Sing elevated him into the rarest echelon of the arts. Here, at last, is a performer who approaches every opportunity as if it might be his last – this is final-supper acting. And with Sing Sing, a film that allows Domingo to toy with notions of creativity and autonomy, freedom and isolation, the star makes an absolute five-course meal out of it. – Barry Hertz, film critic
Neil Young in Toronto, before he cancelled his summer concerts.Tom Pandi/Supplied
Neil Young in New York
Neil Young let down a lot of Canadians in 2024, cancelling several concerts here with his band Crazy Horse because he lost the will to perform. “A couple of us really hit a wall,” he later explained. “I just woke up one morning on the bus and I said, ‘I can’t do this, I gotta stop.’”
After a summer off, Young, 78, came back on Sept. 23 and 24 at the small Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y. He opened the first concert with I’m the Ocean, about going against the flow: “People my age, they don’t do the things I do.” There was a reflective and redemptive theme to the set list: Journey Through the Past (“Will I still be in your eyes and on your mind?”), From Hank to Hendrix (“Here I am with this old guitar, doing what I do”) and Big Time (“I’m still living the dream we had, for me it’s not over”).
After seemingly facing musical mortality with the ancient Crazy Horse, a revitalized Young meshed with a new band, the Chrome Hearts, that was younger and tighter. His voice was shaky the first night; stronger the second. Though the shows were short by his standards, potent versions of Powderfinger and Down By the River suggested the veteran performer has embraced the idea of strength through efficiency. – Brad Wheeler, arts reporter
A sweet silver for Maude Charron.Amanda Perobelli/Reuters
Maude Charron in Paris
If you were to put it in gig terms, a regular-season NHL game is to the Olympics what a high-school band is to Led Zeppelin. Same planet, different worlds.
I dug seeing Canada clean up at swimming and come back in soccer at Paris 2024. I really enjoyed watching panicked, ticketless journalists trying to sneak into the stands for Nadal vs. Djokovic. But my standout performance of the year was watching weightlifter Maude Charron trade her 2020 Olympic gold for silver.
Late in her career, Charron’s weight category was eliminated. In order to keep competing, she had to drop a level. She finished second, sandwiched between a defending Olympic titleholder from Taiwan and a defending world champion from China.
For most, that’s a disappointment. For Charron, it triggered the mother of all celebrations. She wept backstage. Then she wept on the podium, prompting the other medalists to weep and embrace. If China and Taiwan ever make up, Charron deserves a little credit.
Charron wept through the media receiving line. By the end, the guy in charge of getting the athletes to the post-event press conference looked like he might weep, too. He could not hurry Charron along.
“I didn’t come here for a medal,” she said, weeping. “All I came here for was an experience.”
What a great description of what the Olympics is about. An epic show, and everybody who was there wins. – Cathal Kelly, sports columnist
Moo Deng continues to delight.Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images
Moo Deng in your TikTok feed
This year, no other creature captured the internet’s collective heart like Moo Deng. Born in the summer at a zoo in Thailand, the glossy, potato-shaped pygmy hippo became a sensation with videos of her gleefully nipping her minders, mowing down fruit and awkwardly prancing around her enclosure, generating millions of views on TikTok.
Her fame surpassed social media, however: She got her own skit on SNL, became the namesake of a new cryptocurrency and predicted the U.S. presidential election. (When presented with two plates of fruit bearing the candidates’ names, she chose Trump.) Other cute animals may have also gone viral – see: Pesto the penguin; Cinnamon the runaway capybara – but watching Moo Deng bite water from a hose was the ideal form of escapism in a trying year. – Samantha Edwards, online culture reporter
Joe Biden at the presidential debate in Atlanta.Marco Bello/Reuters
Joe Biden in his one presidential debate
It’s almost impossible to rewind your brain to where things were in late June. Joe Biden was the only person standing between the world and a second Donald Trump presidency. Most American voters thought he was too old, so everything was riding on him disproving that notion in the first presidential debate. Instead, Biden turned in a horrifyingly addled and feeble performance – forcing the issue of his competence and age into the open, and setting off weeks of increasingly loud demands from Democrats that he step aside.
On July 21, he finally did, paving the way for his running mate, Kamala Harris, to take over the ticket. She hauled in truckloads of fundraising, proved to be a vastly improved campaigner from her earlier primary run, and spent the late summer and fall spritzing the “politics of joy” around the country while flirting with the top of the polls.
In the end, Trump won the election, of course. But that one June night in Atlanta set off a domino tumble of dramatic plot twists on the biggest political stage in the world. Maybe a moment that doesn’t change the outcome can still change everything. – Shannon Proudfoot, feature writer
The Shot
‘Carney is not an option. That discussion has concluded.’
Dominic LeBlanc after he was sworn in at Rideau Hall.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
A cabinet shuffle could come as early as tomorrow, but the newly minted Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc isn’t worried about being relegated to another post: The long-time Justin Trudeau ally says the Prime Minister assured him that he’ll hold onto the finance portfolio, and that talks with former central banker Mark Carney have broken off. Read more about the conversation here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: Fifty days, -20 C weather, no winter gear and one jar of peanut butter – somehow, 20-year-old hiker Sam Benastick managed to survive a remarkable ordeal in the B.C. wilderness.
Abroad: The U.S. reported its first severe case of bird flu in a human and California declared an emergency over the virus, with 60 per cent of the state’s dairy cattle herds testing positive since late August.
Big deal: Canadian waste management giant GFL – which had its Toronto office building hit with bullets in October – is in exclusive talks with Apollo Global Management to sell its environmental services division for around $8-billion.
Big impact: From cushy running shoes (yes, they’re Hokas) to a portable pizza oven and a high-tech face mask, The Globe unwraps 21 items that changed our lives for the better in 2024.