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.
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.
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.
b. Publishing AI-generated stories under fake bylines. When confronted with the allegations, the magazine deleted the content in question.
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.
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.)
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.
a. True. The motion denounces attempts to “polarize” events that unite Quebeckers and that have been part of the province’s heritage for generations.
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.
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.
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.”
b. Victoria. The capital of beautiful British Columbia topped our first-ever ranking of Canada’s most enjoyable places to reside.
Jessie Willms