Kevin O’Leary avoids the remedial French rodeo. He waited until after the French-language debate to make his Conservative leadership run official, starting from the very Bell Media studio where he can no longer work. There's little point in rifling through old O’Leary tweets for evidence of past bombast. He keeps coming up with new material:

More tales from the “Cowbell Tour.” Bloomberg News reveals that’s what Justin Trudeau’s staff are privately calling his backroad junket. New highlights include him being baited with a selfie by Dalhousie students who really wanted to ask about indigenous rights, fielding a question about the lack of English-language mental health services in Quebec, insisting on answering questions in French, and revealing that his eight-year-old daughter may not want to be prime minister. (Good thing he has two other kids.)

Jian Ghomeshi is missed in the op-ed pages. Conrad Black urged the CBC to bring back the original host of Q at the end of a new rant on the state of the nation. It sounds like Jillian Sexton wouldn’t mind it either, judging by her column about why she stopped tuning in: “In the same way people remember exactly where they were when the Twin Towers fell," Sexton begins, "I can remember everything about the moment I learned Jian Ghomeshi was dropped from the CBC.”

Black Lives Matter get their wish to have police floats banned from Pride. Last summer's parade-halting demands won some support at Pride’s annual general meeting, following a Now Magazine piece in which BLM Toronto's leaders insist that their 2016 wasn’t all that great. (Meanwhile, BLMTO's co-founder, Sandy Hudson, faces new allegations from the University of Toronto Students’ Union, which is suing her over a severance deal.)

The oral history of Kon Kan’s “I Beg Your Pardon.” The 1989 single by Toronto DJ Barry Harris is recalled in a Boom 97.3 video reunion with its vocalist. Kevin Wynne ended up on the record because the city's most famous DJ, Chris Sheppard, liked his version better than another singer’s take—but Wynne walked away after the track became a hit. Its global success is partly because of the Starsound record store at Yonge and Gerrard, where Harris worked, and where an Atlantic Records executive first heard it spinning.

The Property Brothers construct an anthem for Trump’s America. One pair of HGTV stars faced flak for their religious affiliation, another one is getting divorced, but Jonathan and Drew Scott may well be renovating together forever. The duo have shunned their Canadian origins with a very Red State remake of the Flo Rida hit “My House,” filmed in their own Las Vegas digs, featuring their neighbour Carrot Top.

J.D. Roberts is having MuchMusic flashbacks. Fox News’s incoming White House correspondent offers a smoking hot take, tweeting that Green Day’s “Troubled Times” reminds him of 1984's “Two Tribes,” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. (The view is less contentious than accusations from CNN’s Bill Weir that Roberts has become a sellout.)