Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Fernando Franco de Oliveira is nearly unrecognizable from how he appeared a decade ago.
In those ten years, the Brazilian tattoo artist has covered nearly every part of his body in ink and undergone surgery to give himself horns, a forked tongue, pointed orc ears and even going as far as to cut off his nose.
De Oliveira, who owns a tattoo studio in the southern Brazil city of Tatui 150 kilomtres west of Sao Paulo, says he’s been primarily inspired by skull imagery and “The Lord of The Rings.”
“In a way, I'm like the main attraction of my own studio,” he told CTVNews.ca in a video interview, adding that clients love his appearance and passersby often stop to snap selfies with him.
“About 70 per cent of people who see me on the street, they want to take photos with me and they find me interesting,” he said.
While he draws stares from strangers, de Oliveira says friends and family aren’t shocked by his appearance anymore.
“Most of my friends are already used to my appearance,” de Oliveira said, adding that his family members took some time to get used to his transformation. “When I first started tattooing myself and doing all these modifications, it was a big shock to them.”
In 2006, he started covering himself, head-to-feet, with tattoos of dragons, clowns, bulldogs and other creatures.
His ink is so extensive that he was recognized in 2014 as the most tattooed person in the country by RankBrasil -- a Brazilian organization similar to the Guinness Book of World Records, but which only registers and ratifies records and other oddities in the Latin American country.
De Oliveira calls the eight years he spent getting the tattoos “by far the most painful experience I've gone through.”
But as he inked more and more of his body, he began altering his appearance in other ways too.
De Oliveira began by stretching out his ear lobes; then injecting ink into his eyes turning them black; adding horns to his head; replacing his teeth with vampire dentures; and even splitting his tongue in half.
He eventually covered his facial tattoos by dying his skin blue and had his ears re-shaped to resemble those of an orc – a race of monstrous humanoids who represent the corrupted versions of elves and men in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”.
“But I would have to say that the most life-impacting, impacting modification I've done was with my nose,” he said, explaining he had it surgically removed in March and it’s taken several months to heal.
“It's still very painful because when I take a shower a lot of water goes into my nose.”
As for enduring the pain of people’s judgment, de Oliveira tries not to let it bother him. Many people think he’s either a Satanist or Satan himself, he said, “because I come across as a someone terrifying.”
“But the truth is, I'm not. I have God in my heart.”
And de Oliveira says his transformation isn’t complete, as he still hopes to narrow his jaw line and get rid of excess skin to more resemble a skull, and also attach more horns to his head.
“Everybody -- most people in the world -- they're all alike. They're the same. And I wanted to be different. I want to stick out.”
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is accusing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of welcoming 'the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists,' after the Conservative leader was photographed meeting with protesters, which his office has defended.
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
Police tangled with student demonstrators in Texas and California while new encampments sprouted Wednesday at Harvard and other colleges as school leaders sought ways to defuse a growing wave of pro-Palestinian protests.
For centuries, people have wondered what, if anything, might be lurking beneath the surface of Loch Ness in Scotland. When Canadian couple Parry Malm and Shannon Wiseman visited the Scottish highlands earlier this month with their two children, they didn’t expect to become part of the mystery.
One of the two pilots aboard an airplane carrying fuel reported there was a fire on the airplane shortly before it crashed and burned outside Fairbanks, killing both people on board, a federal aviation official said Wednesday.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.