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Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making the headlines.

This week: It’s Spotify Wrapped week, the annual marketing ploy/data dump that reveals how good/bad our musical taste is (or at least, how Big Data categorizes our streaming picks). The data reveals the unparalleled success of – at least – two musical icons (one of whom is Canadian). Can you name that artist?

Meanwhile, Google and the Canadian government landed on a multimillion-dollar agreement after months of fraught negotiations. The agreement will benefit a beleaguered industry – do you know which one? And in very cool news: There are more planets! A planetary sextuplet wowed astronomers this week.

Finally, what’s the most affordable Canadian city to live? The answer might surprise you.

Do you remember these stories? Take our news quiz to find out.


1Spotify Wrapped, the year-end marketing ploy from the streaming service, dropped on Wednesday. According to the company, which of the following Canadian artists were most-streamed here in the true North?
a. Drake
b. Celine Dion
c. Allison Russell
d. Lawren Harris

a. Drake. It’s no surprise the global icon was the most-listened Canadian artist in Canada. He was bested only by Taylor Swift (the most streamed artist in the world) for the top prize. Meanwhile in Toronto – aka The Six, aka his birthplace – Drake and Swift traded spots, with the hometown hero coming out on top.

2Google and the federal government reached a $100-million agreement over Bill C-18 on Wednesday, after months of fraught negotiations. Under the agreement, Google has agreed to inject funding into which struggling industry?
a. The smart-city industry
b. The news industry
c. The gas extraction industry
d. The maple syrup industry

b. The news industry. The agreement will be widely welcomed by the news industry, whose advertising revenue migrated to tech giants, leading to the closing of local papers and newsrooms across the country.

3Sports Illustrated, once a standard-bearer of sports journalism, made headlines for all the wrong reasons. The magazine was accused of which journalistic no-no?
a. Making up all the names of the horses at the Belmont Stakes
b. Publishing artificial intelligence-generated stories under fake bylines
c. AI-generated photos of athletes on the cover
d. Making bets on the outcome of the Super Bowl

b. Publishing AI-generated stories under fake bylines. When confronted with the allegations, the magazine deleted the content in question.

4The government of Ontario this week agreed to upload the cost to maintain two of Toronto’s highways, the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway. In exchange, the city is giving up its opposition to which Ford plan?
a. Ontario Place redevelopment
b. Expansion of the Greenbelt into Toronto
c. A bid to further reduce Toronto City Council
d. A requirement that all new-build homes have at least two parking spots

a. Ontario Place redevelopment. This could save the city as much as $6.5-billion over the next 10 years, which Mayor Olivia Chow said could be used for affordable housing and public transit.

5Astronomers have discovered a six-planet solar system. Each of the planets is smaller than Neptune but larger than which other sphere out in the cosmos?
a. Pluto
b. Mars
c. Gallifrey
d. Earth

d. Earth. The planetary sextuplet has been found in close orbits around a star located about 100 light years away. The orbital periods of the planets occur in simple ratios because of the gravitational forces between them. (Gallifrey, famously, is the homeworld of the Time Lords in Doctor Who.)

6Alberta Premier Danielle Smith invoked the province’s sovereignty act for the first time this week, in response to proposed federal regulations that would do what?
a. Call for a net-zero electricity grid by 2035
b. Reject an entry visa for Tucker Carlson
c. Reban plastic straws and plastic bags
d. Outlaw all fuel-powered cars by 2035

a. Call for a net-zero electricity grid by 2035 The Clean ELectricity Regulations are aiming to achieve a net-zero electricity grid across the country by 2035.

7True or false: The Quebec Legislature unanimously adopted a motion in defence of Christmas.
a. True
b. False

a. True. The motion denounces attempts to “polarize” events that unite Quebeckers and that have been part of the province’s heritage for generations.

8Gaslighting was the Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2022. Which word did they select this year?
a. Authentic
b. Rizz
c. Implode
d. Dystopian

a. Authentic. “We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity,” the dictionary’s editor at large Peter Sokolowski said. The other words were all top contenders this year as well.

9This Canadian author won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for their debut novel, In the Upper Country.
a. Sarah Bernstein
b. Kai Thomas
c. Margaret Atwood
d. Eleanor Catton

b. Kai Thomas. The author, who is from Ottawa, won $60,000 for a novel telling the story of two Black women at the northern end of the Underground Railroad. The novel was also shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the 2023 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

10A new consumer report shows that electric vehicles are, on average, less reliable than their gas-powered counterparts. What are the most commonly reported issues?
a. Battery and charging problems
b. The EVs lack of a cool vroom, vroom noise
c. Too much leftover cash from not buying gas
d. Can’t drive more than 100 kilometres an hour

a. Battery and charging problems. “This story is really one of growing pains,” said Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “It’s a story of just working out the bugs and the kinks of new technology.”

11According to a new report from The Globe and Mail, what is the most livable city in Canada?
a. Sudbury
b. Victoria
c. Saskatoon
d. Toronto

b. Victoria. The capital of beautiful British Columbia topped our first-ever ranking of Canada’s most enjoyable places to reside.

How well did you do?

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