Couple randomly attacked, 1 stabbed, by group of teens in Toronto, police say
A man has been transported to hospital after police say he was stabbed in a random attack carried out by a group of teens in Toronto on Friday night.
On the eve of the RBC Canadian Open, news of a merger between the PGA Tour, European Tour and LIV Golf shocked the golf world -- including one of Canada's best players.
"Nothing like finding out through Twitter that we're merging with a tour that we said we'd never do that with," Mackenzie Hughes, a PGA golfer of Dundas, Ont., wrote on Twitter.
It's the second straight year the Saudi Arabian-funded LIV Golf will be at the centre of discussion at Canada's lone PGA Tour event.
Last year, the breakaway tour held its first event during the same weekend as the Canadian Open and poached some of the PGA's best golfers with enormous signing bonuses, including Dustin Johnson, then the face of the Canadian tournament.
At the time, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan slammed LIV Golf, which came under heavy criticism as the latest example of "sportswashing" due to Saudi Arabia's long-standing history of human rights abuses.
Now the tours are merging. The agreement combines the Public Investment Fund's golf-related commercial businesses and rights -- including LIV Golf -- with those of the PGA and European tours. The new, for-profit entity has not been named. The PGA, however, will retain its not-for-profit, tax-exempt status.
Hughes wasn't the only golfer caught off guard by the decision.
"I feel betrayed, and will not ... be able to trust anyone within the corporate structure of the PGA Tour for a very long time," Wesley Bryan tweeted.
The Canadian Open starts Thursday at Toronto's Oakdale Golf and Country Club. Golf Canada did not immediately respond for comment.
Adam Ali, a professor at Western University whose current research focuses on the role of sport for international development, says news of the merger isn't overly surprising.
The Saudi regime benefits by further legitimizing itself in the global sports landscape -- as it has with soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo's transfer to the Saudi Professional League -- and the PGA Tour gets a massive influx of money, he says.
Ali said much of the criticism directed at the PGA will centre on the Saudi regime's human rights violations and its discrimination of women and the LGBTQ community, but the United States has issues of its own.
"We also can't ignore the ways in which the rights of women, whether it be abortion rights, trans folk, queer people, gender non-conforming individuals are under attack in a fairly profound way as well in the United States," he said, citing the Human Rights Campaign's declaration of a national state of emergency for LGBTQ people in the United States on Tuesday.
"It seems like citing this kind of criticism is wielded only when Saudi interests don't align with the interests of a Western sport organization, but when they do the critiques aren't as apparent."
Western University lecturer Colin McDougall, an expert on sports management marketing who has written about LIV, said having a rival tour netted some positive results for PGA players from a business perspective. He used the PGA's decision to help players with expenses -- something the tour didn't do before LIV arrived -- as an example.
Now with the loss of a market competitor, McDougall isn't sure it'll ultimately benefit the players.
"For the Canadian market, I would say try to imagine Rogers, Bell and Telus merging together into one for-profit communications offering," he said. "Reverting back to what I would characterize now as a global monopoly, I think people will see the amount of money that the players are making and think that it's significant and high, but the proportional amount of money that is going to the players versus the amount that's being accrued by the operator, I think will go down.
"I don't see this new sort of unified structure as being one that is delivering a commensurate amount of compensation to the people who are creating its value."
The field for this year's Canadian Open -- which doesn't include any LIV players -- is already set. The effect this merger will have on the event going forward is not yet clear.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 6, 2023.
A man has been transported to hospital after police say he was stabbed in a random attack carried out by a group of teens in Toronto on Friday night.
Ron Ellis, who played over 1,000 games with the Toronto Maple Leafs and was a member of Canada's team at the 1972 Summit Series, has died at age 79.
The wildfire that prompted the evacuation of more than 3,000 people near Fort Nelson, B.C., was caused by a tree falling on wires, according to the municipality's mayor.
The final of the 68th Eurovision Song Contest kicked off Saturday in the Swedish city of Malmo after days of protests and offstage drama that have tipped the feelgood musical celebration into a chaotic pressure cooker overshadowed by the war in Gaza.
From London, to Grand Bend, Collingwood and Guelph, here are some highlights of Friday night and Saturday morning's northern lights display.
The rolling hills leading to the hamlet of Rosebud are dotted with sprawling farms and cattle pastures -- and a sign sporting a simple message: No Race Track.
Irresponsibly using a credit card can land you in financial trouble, but personal finance columnist Christopher Liew says when used properly, it can be a powerful wealth-building tool that can help grow your credit profile and create new opportunities.
Where you live plays a big factor in what you pay at the grocery store. And while it's no secret the same item may have a different price depending on the store, city or province, we wanted to see just how big the differences are, and why.
A growing number of civilians and police officers are demanding the dismissal and arrest of Haiti's police chief as heavily armed gangs launched a new attack in the capital of Port-au-Prince, seizing control of yet another police station early Saturday.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
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.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
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.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.
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.