Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
The first group of students has recently graduated from a special program aiming to boost Indigenous talent on TikTok, helping social media users on the path to becoming social media stars.
In Deanne Hupfield’s most popular TikTok video, which has one million views, she’s teaching viewers footwork that can accompany a jingle dress dance.
“It went viral,” she told CTV News. “It went viral the first day, and it gave me a lot of anxiety.”
That footwork was part of her homework as one of the people chosen to be a part of TikTok Canada’s accelerator program for Indigenous creators.
“I was to post a video under 30 seconds doing something I’ve never done on Tiktok before,” she said.
Hupfield teaches powwow dancing, and her videos on TikTok feature her going through the steps or performing in regalia.
She now has 70,500 followers on TikTok, but when she applied to the TikTok Accelerator for Indigenous Creators, which started in November and ran through December, she had only just begun her social media journey.
“At that time, I only had four videos up on Tiktok, because I only put enough videos to apply to the program,” Hupfield said.
The accelerator, which is presented by the National Screen Institute, is about amplifying Indigenous content creators.
Sherry McKay mentored Hupfield in the program, partly chosen for her success as an Indigenous creator already thriving on the platform.
McKay has more than 500,000 followers and more than 17 million likes.
Some of her teachings as a mentor were about how creators should believe in themselves.
“Talking about things like imposter syndrome and claiming our space in the digital area as Indigenous people,” she told CTV News.
“Just saying: ‘Claim those gifts. Get out there and do what you’re already doing but be confident in it.’”
McKay creates comedy skits and shares stories on her TikTok, among other types of content.
Having a lot of followers isn’t always a for sure thing, McKay said, adding that she’s wondered, “How long is it going to last, am I just a trend?”
The program, which teaches storytelling techniques that may be successful on the platform, as well as technical skills and personal branding, also teaches the business side of Tiktok.
“There are various levels of popularity on the platform,” Lindsay Lynch, director of creator partnerships and community at TikTok Canada, told CTV News. “People will have millions of followers and be able to make millions of dollars.”
Sometimes even one video can catapult a person, as in the case of Nathan Apodaca, the Indigenous man who captured a much sought after feeling of peace in a 2020 TikTok of him skateboarding to Fleetwood Mac while drinking cranberry juice.
After he became a meme, he garnered millions of followers.
Success on social media is about staying true to yourself, according to Hupfield and McKay.
Indigenous Tiktok has more than a billion views, and with the success of the Indigenous accelerator program, Tiktok is gearing up to build on it for this year.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Auston Matthews will miss the Maple Leafs' must-win Game 6 against the Boston Bruins.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.