Flashback: Blue Mondays
Your biweekly blast from the past looking inside the archives of the CBC
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Blue Monday
After the dust settled on the Canadian federal election last month, the Liberals held a minority government under Leader Mark Carney. In what CBC News said was a "startling upset," Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre lost his seat.
Poilievre was knocking on doors in an Ottawa-area riding when a CBC News reporter met him before the federal election of 2004. She said he was running in a seat that Conservative Party strategists were pouring resources into
because, like others across Canada, it was on their 'blue list' of possible winners.
"This is Main Street, Ontario," said then 24-year-old Poilievre (who was identified on-screen and by reporter Jennifer Ditchburn as Pierre Poilevre) as they walked in the riding. "You know, it's part rural, part suburban, [a] lot of middle-class families, and it would send a signal that the Conservative Party is here, in Ontario, to stay."
Leadership qualities
CBC News described the New Democratic Party's results in the 2025 election as "the worst showing of the party's history," noting "a repeated decline in the party's vote share and seat count" since its success under Leader Jack Layton in 2011. Leader Jagmeet Singh stepped down from his role that very night.
When the NDP elected its first leader in 1961, folksinger Joe Glazer led the convention in a rendition of This Land is Your Land before the contenders, Hazen Argue and Tommy Douglas, made speeches. Host Norman DePoe remarked on the "signs and shouting" among the crowd.
"This is a reminder not only of the hoopla that's now accepted here, but of the tremendous personalization of Canadian politics," added Robert McKenzie, his fellow broadcaster. "You'd almost think this was a presidential campaign coming up, a direct election in a few years' time for prime minister."
Space oddity
In 1972, the Soviet Union launched the probe Kosmos 482 to Venus, but it was "stuck in Earth orbit" after the rocket engines shut off too early, according to CBC News. A report from USA Today said it fell into the Indian Ocean on May 10.
When an empty American space station named Skylab was expected to fall back to Earth in 1979, a roomful of international reporters was assembled at the HQ of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington, D.C.
"The crash landing was at more or less the time predicted by the NASA experts," said Jan Tennant, anchor of CBC's The National, before a report about Skylab's demise from correspondent John Blackstone. "And it came down at more or less the place predicted by the experts: at the southwestern tip of Australia."
Tough customer
When Prime Minister Mark Carney met with the American president last week, Carney said Canada is "the largest client of the United States." In 1985, Ontario NDP Leader Bob Rae told CBC's The Journal that he was concerned Canada would become "a client" of the U.S. due to free trade.
Ready for anything
Sources told the Canadian Press earlier this month that Canadian Tire has made a bid for some the intellectual property of Hudson's Bay. If it succeeds, we hope to be able to pick up a striped blanket while buying survival supplies, as consumers did at Canadian Tire due to Y2K fears.
High rollers
A woman in Cold Lake, Alta., has started a roller skating group with the support of community members who were "excited and ready to roll," she told CBC News. In 1980, a CBC report said one Canadian company was making more than 2,000 pairs of roller skates daily to meet demand.
Fit for a king
Later this month, King Charles is scheduled to visit Canada's Parliament to deliver the speech from the throne, reports CBC News. Charles has been to Canada many times before, including a tour in 1975, when the then–Prince of Wales got a taste of Canada's North.
