Three stars have roots in the same Ottawa neighborhood

Three stars attended these schools just blocks apart.

PopGoesTheNews.com How did three schools located less than a kilometre apart in an Ottawa suburb produce one of the world's biggest movie stars and one of the top-selling male recording artists? Oh, and a guy who married Drew Barrymore.

Robert Hopkins Public School, Henry Munro Middle School and Colonel By Secondary School helped shape the lives of three guys who have sold more than $7 billion worth of movie tickets and 60 million albums — and earned a combined six Oscar nominations, 12 Golden Globe nominations (including three wins), 20 Juno Awards, two Gemini Award nominations and a Grammy.

They didn't know each other and didn't attend the same schools at the same times, but Tom Cruise, Bryan Adams and Tom Green share common roots in the quiet Beacon Hill neighborhood just 14 km from Parliament Hill.

Tom Cruise, Bryan Adams and Tom Green.

Cruise was eight-year-old Tommy Mapother when he moved to Monson Crescent with his parents and sisters in the winter of 1971 so his father Thomas could take a job with the Canadian Armed Forces. Little Tommy spent grades 4 and 5 at Robert Hopkins Public School, where he was enrolled in special classes that helped him deal with his dyslexia. A scrappy kid, he lived with an abusive father in a poor household but showed early interest in acting (portraying the sun in a school play) and outdoor adventures (the family home was a short walk to the shore of the Ottawa River).

Cruise was attending grade 6 at nearby Henry Munro Middle School in 1974 when his mother packed her children into the car in the middle of the night and left the country. His parents were divorced soon after.

Tom Cruise lived on this Ottawa street for three years.

At the same time Cruise was going to school in Ottawa, a teenaged Bryan Adams was just a couple of blocks away at Colonel By Secondary School. The 14-year-old, whose father was a diplomat, showed interest in poetry and music during his brief time at the school. Despite only attending Colonel By for grade 9 — Adams was honored with a mural at the school in the mid-80s.

Tom Green, who went on to have a successful career in show business, is an alumnus of both Henry Munro Middle School and Colonel By Secondary School. He grew up on Eastvale Drive and, when he wasn't skateboarding with pals, honed his comedy skills at school talent shows. After perfecting his schtick on the local community cable channel, Green went south and became an international TV and movie star. (He also had a short-lived marriage to Drew Barrymore.)

Map and street view © Google.

It's old news to you!

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PopGoesTheNews.com If you followed PopGoesTheNews.com on Twitter in February, you — once again — got some news first!

The death of Canadian artist Steve Walker was reported by @jrkm_pop (and posted here) on Feb. 9, a full five days before Xtra.ca posted the "news."

It took People.com a whopping 20 days to catch up with @jrkm_pop. On Feb. 21 the magazine posted the "news" that Halle Berry's boyfriend Olivier Martinez is opening a restaurant in Miami Beach. It was old news to followers of @jrkm_pop, where it had been reported on Feb. 1.

And if you read the "news" on TorontoLife.com on Feb. 23 that J. Crew was opening in the Eaton Centre you likely had a feeling of deja vu. That little fact was reported by @jrkm_pop on Jan. 31 — nearly a month earlier!

It's not always the only place, but @jrkm_pop is always one of the first! Free of self-aggrandizing and navel-gazing, it sticks to bringing you informative tidbits of news and keeping you in-the-know.

Related...

2012/02/07 Madonna confirms Canadian tour dates

2012/01/04 You read it here first!

Ontario college produces Oscar-worthy students

PopGoesTheNews.com A Canadian college is going to have bragging rights no matter what film takes the Oscar this Sunday for Achievement in Visual Effects.

Graduates and professors of the Visual Effects for Film and Television program at Ontario’s Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology had a hand in all six films nominated in the Visual Effects category.

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, which is up for 11 awards including Best Picture, utilized the talents of Seneca graduates Tricia Kim, John Dinh, Karen Cheng and Rickey Verma as well as professors Mahmoud Rahnama and Kenny Tam.

Graduates Zac Campbell and Ken Lam worked as compositors (effects artists who combine computer-generated images with live action) on Rise of the Planet of the Apes. They’re up against visual effects created in part by graduates Clancy Silver (Real Steel), Geoff Sayer (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2) and Amy Daye (Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon).

Seneca president David Agnew is, not surprisingly, very proud. “We are delighted their careers are at a point where they can contribute to films of this caliber,” he said, “and we’re very proud that they’ve worked on films recognized by their peers as being worthy of an Oscar.”

Seneca has 10 campuses in the Greater Toronto Area. In 2005, the animated short film Ryan, produced in association with Seneca and featuring students and graduates of its Animation Arts Centre, was awarded an Oscar.

The Academy Awards air on CTV this Sunday.

Movie poster too hot for Toronto

PopGoesTheNews.com A poster for the hockey comedy Goon is evidently too racy for Toronto. About 40 copies of the poster, which shows Canadian actor Jay Baruchel striking a sexually suggestive pose with his tongue and fingers, were stripped from bus shelters on Wednesday.

At the Toronto premiere of Goon at the Scotiabank Theatre, Baruchel said the City of Toronto is being "uptight" and cited the decision to remove the posters as another example of the cultural divide between Ontario and Quebec. (Baruchel was born in Ottawa but raised in Montreal.)

But Baruchel's co-star Liev Schreiber said that as a father of two young children he can "appreciate somebody being offended or not wanting that out there on the streets."

The posters had been up for about two weeks. A city official claims there was no order to remove the posters but it did pass complaints on to the company responsible for outdoor advertising.

The brouhaha over the poster can only help draw attention to Goon, which was shot in Winnipeg and opens in cinemas on Friday.

See photos of the Goon stars in Toronto at StarsInCanada.com.

Tabloid publishes photo of dead Whitney Houston

PopGoesTheNews.com The National Enquirer is making headlines of its own this week by publishing what it claims is the body of Whitney Houston.

The superstar is shown wearing a purple dress accessorized with diamond earrings and a brooch while laying in a gold casket. The tabloid claims Houston was also wearing gold slippers.

The picture was reportedly snapped during a family wake at the Whigham Funeral Home in Newark, NJ. The owner of the funeral home is refusing to comment.

The controversial issue of the Enquirer goes on sale in major cities in Canada tomorrow and will be available elsewhere by Monday.

Houston died on Feb. 11 at the age of 48 in the bathroom of her room on the fourth floor of the Beverly Hilton hotel. The exact cause of her death has not yet been determined pending toxicology tests. Her funeral was held Saturday in Newark and she was buried in a private ceremony the following day.

Earlier, the Enquirer published an interview with Tina Brown, the sister of Houston's ex-husband Bobby Brown, who claims to have smoked crack with Houston.

Houston is not the first celebrity to appear dead on the front page of the Enquirer. The tabloid famously published a photo of Elvis Presley in his casket in 1977. A former editor later said the publication bought the photo from Presley's cousin Bobby Mann for $18,000.

Canadian artist Steve Walker dead at 50

Steve Walker

PopGoesTheNews.com Celebrated Canadian artist Steve Walker, whose work focused on scenes of men together, is dead at 50.

Born in Ottawa, Walker was 19 when he moved to Toronto to study theatre at university. Deeply affected by the impact HIV/AIDS had on the gay community, he gave up his goal of being an actor and started to paint.

"Maybe, just maybe, I could help find a cure for the hatred, fear, and ignorance that surrounded so many young men around the world as they lay in hospital beds and drew the last breaths of unfinished lives," he wrote.

Walker said his paintings portrayed themes of love, attraction, hope, despair, loneliness and "the power of a person touching another."

His works, on display at bars and restaurants in Toronto's gay neighborhood, captivated the public and he was soon exhibiting and selling his paintings at galleries all over the U.S. and Canada. Walker's paintings were also widely published in magazines and calendars.

Walker lived for years in a  modest apartment at Wellesley and Jarvis St.

"I see my work as a documentation, an interpretation, a crystallization of singular moments rendered in line, color, light, shadow, using a hundred brushes, a thousand colors, and a million brushstrokes," he wrote. "I strive to make people stop, if only a moment, think and actually feel something. My paintings contain as many questions as answers."

A funeral service will be held at Our Lady of the Visitation Church on Bank St. in Ottawa on Feb. 25 at 11:00 am. A memorial to celebrate Walker's life will also likely be held in Toronto at a later date.

Walker once wrote: "I hope that in its silence, the body of my work has given a voice to my life, the lives of others, and in doing so, the dignity of all people."

Madonna confirms Canadian tour dates

PopGoesTheNews.com Madonna announced this week she's hitting the road in support of her upcoming album MDNA — but it came as old news to followers of PopGoesTheNews.com on Twitter!

On Jan. 31, @jrkm_pop tweeted news that Madonna's tour will stop in Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto in early September. A day later, @jrkm_pop tweeted that the Canadian tour would include "a huge outdoor show" in Quebec City on Sept. 1.

Today, Madonna confirmed she will perform Sept. 1 on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City in addition to concerts at Montreal's Bell Centre on Aug. 30, Ottawa's Scotiabank Place on Sept. 10 and Toronto's Air Canada Centre on Sept. 12. She's also set to play Vancouver on Sept. 29.

Of course, it's not the first time @jrkm_pop has given you the news first — it's simply another reason to follow!

If you want to know what's going on in popular culture (with a Canadian twist) you have to follow PopGoesTheNews.com on Twitter!