BREAKING Average hourly wage in Canada now $34.95: StatCan
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
George Maharis, a stage-trained actor with rough-hewn good looks who became an icon to American youth in the 1960s as he cruised the country in a Corvette convertible in the hit television series "Route 66," has died.
Maharis' friend and caretaker Marc Bahan said in a Facebook post that he died Wednesday. Bahan told the Hollywood Reporter, which first reported Maharis' death, that he died at his home in Beverly Hills, California, after contracting hepatitis. He was 94.
On "Route 66," Maharis played Buz Murdock, a hardened survivor of New York City's Hell's Kitchen. His co-star Martin Milner, who died in 2015, was Tod Stiles, a young man raised in wealth who upon his father's death was left with nothing but a shiny new Corvette.
The pair decided to travel the highway author John Steinbeck had dubbed "The Mother Road." Each week brought a new adventure in a new city, and audiences tuned in in droves.
"Route 66" was the rare series at the time that was filmed on location, moving to new towns and cities for each new episode. It featured as guest stars future stars including Robert Redford, James Caan, Robert Duvall and Alan Alda in some of their earliest roles.
The storied highway itself was as much a star of the show as Maharis and Milner. Since bypassed in favour of bigger, faster interstates, it stretched unbroken from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean and was venerated as a driving force behind the country's 20th century westward migration.
"Route 66" was said to have been inspired by Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road," and it spawned its own hit song, an instrumental composed by Nelson Riddle. The more familiar tune, "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66," was not connected to the series.
Maharis left the show after the third season -- it would continue for one more without him -- and never again achieved the same fame.
He got a name check that introduced him to subsequent generations in director Quentin Tarantino's 2019 "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," when fictional actor Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, says he was considered for the Steve McQueen role in "The Great Escape" along with three Georges: "Peppard, Maharis and Chakiris."
A native New Yorker, one of seven children born to Greek immigrants, Maharis really was raised in Hell's Kitchen. His parents ran a successful restaurant, and they wanted George to join the family business.
"Growing up in Hell's Kitchen, at least for me, was all about 'I'm not gonna stay here,' " he said in a 2007 interview. "Life is all about the journey, the going. I had to get out."
He hoped to be a singer but damaged his vocal cords, so he switched to acting. After training under Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner at the Actors Studio, he began appearing in off-Broadway plays.
Excellent notices for his work in Edward Albee's play "Zoo Story," and in appearances on the television drama "Naked City," attracted attention. After a small role in the 1960 film "Exodus" and a few other parts, he landed "Route 66."
After leaving the series, Maharis was cast as a star in such films as "Quick Before It Melts," "The Satan Bug," "Sylvia." "A Covenant with Death." "The Happening." "The Desperadoes" and "Land Raiders."
In 1970, he returned to weekly television, playing a criminologist in "The Most Deadly Game," but the show lasted only one season.
Maharis kept acting in the ensuing decades, appearing in such TV movies as "Escape to Mindanao" and "Murder on Flight 502," "Disaster in the Sky," "Crash of Flight 401," "Death in Space" and on TV series including "Fantasy Island," "The Bionic Woman" and "Murder, She Wrote."
------
The late AP Entertainment writer Bob Thomas provided biographical material for this story
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
Andy Kim's 'Rock Me Gently' is marking a major milestone, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Oprah Winfrey said on Thursday evening that she has long played a role in promoting unhealthy and unrealistic diets.
A southwestern Ontario woman has received an $8,400 bill from a hospital in Windsor, Ont., after she refused to put her mother in a nursing home she hated -- and she says she has no intention of paying it.
Toronto police say a man who allegedly attempted to access Drake’s Bridle Path property was taken to hospital on Thursday after an altercation with security guards.
If you're cruising down a highway and realize you have a flat tire, you may want to think twice before stopping to fix it on the side of the road.
Dangerous storms crashed over parts of the U.S. South on Thursday even as the region cleaned up from earlier severe weather that spawned tornadoes, killed at least three people, and gravely injured a boy who was swept into a storm drain as he played in a flooded street.
The National Post is reporting that Rex Murphy, the pundit and columnist who hosted a national call-in radio show for decades, has died.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.