The girls all had a PA Day on Friday, only twice this year do the high school and elementary school have it the same day. I took the day off and the four of us headed downtown in the afternoon. We were going down to see the season premiere of the Rick Mercer Report. Due to the early morning tragedy on the TTC subway line at Yorkdale, there were delays on all the subway routes. I was trying to figure out how to get downtown by avoiding the Yonge-Spadina line.

Before we left they had re-opened the subway north of Yorkdale. We drove to Kipling and parked there for $2. Our first stop was Chinatown to have dinner, we went to Xam Yu and had the BBQ pork noodles in soup and the deep fried shrimp balls. It was the same restaurant we went to with Uncle Tak back in January.

From there we walked down Spadina and along Queen and hit the Chapters at John St and Adelaide St. It is only a short walk to the CBC Broadcast Centre where the Rick Mercer Report is taped in front of a live studio audience every Friday. Our seats were third row on the floor.

This is the 10th season for his show.

The show will air on Tuesday September 18th, check it out, his flyboard segment is hilarious. “With great powers, comes great responsibility”.

This fridge may be unused for awhile. The studio portions of Hockey Night in Canada are filmed on the same floor.

We were close to the front of the line for meeting Rick Mercer. This was Gillian’s first time and Angela and Claudia’s second time.

The girls in front of Mr. Dressup’s treehouse.

Larger than life Rick Mercer.

The girls with his star in the CBC building.

This was the second last night of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), parked on Wellington was Gene Simmons tour bus. Kiss had a concert at the Molson Amphitheatre on Thursday night. Across from the bus is the Ritz-Carelton hotel and there was all kinds of activity out front and people waiting around.

There was a guy in a black leather jacket and long hair and he had some items that were autographed, so I thought maybe Gene Simmons was in the middle of the crowd out front. It turned out that it was VIP’s for the movie English Vinglish. The movie is an Indian drama directed by Gauri Shinde.

People milling about the front of the hotel, including us for awhile, trying to figure out who we were waiting to see.

The VIP’s got in their fancy Audi cars and drove across the street and then up a makeshift driveway on the Metro Hall square to more waiting fans and photographers.

We still weren’t sure who we were seeing, but interesting to be part of the crowd none the less.

It turned out the big star was Sridevi, a Bollywood actress. This was her first film in 14 years, she had come out of retirement.

Everything was TIFF, even the Toronto Star newspaper box. More importantly I noticed all kinds of Orville Redenbacher popcorn bags in the garbage can, I said to the girls we missed the free samples. But once we made our way to King Street, there was a couple of people handing out small bags of the Sweet & Salty popcorn. So good, Angela and I went back for seconds.

The movie was being shown at Roy Thompson Hall, there is a display of Audi cars in front of the venue. Eventually we made our way to the subway and headed home. It was a fun day with the girls.