THE WORLD OF JAN. 1, 2018 WAS A MUCH MORE FOREIGN PLACE THAN WE REMEMBER. HERE’S A QUICK GUIDE TO THE PEOPLE AND PLACES WHO GREETED NEW YEAR’S DAY, 2018, WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST IDEA OF WHAT WAS TO COME.
In 2018 the world learned that Tide Pods are not food, the word “Yanny” can sometimes sound like “Laurel” and that India may not like Justin Trudeau as much as he thinks. The world of Jan. 1, 2018 was much more of a foreign place than we remember. Here is Tristin Hopper’s quick guide to the people and places who greeted New Year’s Day, 2018 without the slightest idea of what was to come.
FORD RISES
By any measure, Doug Ford is very much in the political wilderness. A oneterm city councillor, he lost the 2014 Toronto mayoral election to John Tory and has spent the previous three years managing the family business, Deco Labels and Tags. As 2018 dawns, Ford is trying to gin up support for a renewed mayoral run, and writes a New Year’s Eve column in the Toronto Sun. In only three weeks, the sudden resignation of Ontario Progressive Conservative party leader Patrick Brown will set off a series of events that make Ford one of Canada’s most powerful politicians.
FALSE ALARM
Jan. 1 is a public holiday in Hawaii, so New Year’s Day is likely a day off for a man the world will soon know as “Hawaii emergency employee.” His years at the Emergency Management Agency have been plagued by screw-ups, apathy and a staggering inability to discern routine drills from actual disasters. On Jan. 13, this record of incompetence will reach its conclusion and he’ll send out a statewide alert telling Hawaiians they have mere minutes to take cover before the island is flattened by nuclear war.
BRETT WHO?
U.S. judge Brett Kavanaugh doesn’t get his name in the newspaper all that often. For 12 years Kavanaugh has sat as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia — a place not known for getting high-profile cases on its docket. Kavanaugh still has six more months of relative anonymity until the June retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy will thrust him into one of the most contested nomination battles in the history of the court.
TEAM BRONCO
The Humboldt Broncos are entering 2018 on a bit of a losing streak. A Dec. 22 game against the Melfort Mustangs marked the team’s third consecutive loss. But December also brought some welcome news: Bronco captain Logan Schatz was made the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League’s player of the month. When the team hits the ice again in the New Year, Schatz — who has a habit of wearing bow ties on game day — will be the league’s third-highest scoring player. Schatz will be killed instantly when the Broncos bus is struck at a rural intersection on April 6 by a truck carrying peat moss. Fifteen others will die in the collision.
A RIO TREASURE
As the people of Rio Di Janeiro nurse hangovers, Brazil’s National Museum is closed for New Year’s Day. This year will mark its 200th birthday and curators are planning events. Although Brazil’s economic crisis has winnowed the museum’s budget, it can still lay claim to one of the richest collections in the hemisphere: The oldest human skeleton ever found in the Americas, sarcophagi from Egypt, and frescoes from Pompeii. Indigenous languages that are no longer spoken exist solely on Museu Nacional tapes. One thing the museum doesn’t have is a working fire suppression system, which will lead to its near-total destruction in only eight months.
CHAIRMAN MUSK
For nine years, a cherry red 2008 Tesla Roadster has served as the daily driver for Tesla CEO Elon Musk. By Christmas 2017, however, it’s being polished, stripped of its batteries and mounted atop a heavy-lift space rocket. Musk said he’d fire his car into space, but the world won’t believe him until Spacex releases photos of it speeding away from earth. It’s one of the last good things to happen to him in 2018. By year’s end, an overworked and increasingly erratic Musk will have been forced out as Tesla chairman.
A MALIAN IN PARIS
It was four months ago that 22-year-old Mamoudou Gassama first moved to Paris. The French capital is the latest stop on an odyssey that began when he left his Malian village at the age of 17. As a migrant, he works under-the-table at Paris construction sites and shares a squalid room with three brothers and several cousins. On a Saturday evening in May, he will be fetching dinner when he’ll see a crowd gathered below a child dangling from a fourth-storey balcony. Gassama will deftly scale the building and pull the boy to safety — a smartphone video of the feat quickly making him one of the country’s most celebrated figures. A grateful France will swiftly offer Gassama citizenship and a job in the Paris Fire Brigade.
MY BUTTON IS BIGGER
The North Korean regime is celebrating the new year in much the same way it always does: By threatening fiery death to all their enemies. “The whole of (the U.S.) mainland is within the range of our nuclear strike and the nuclear button is on my office desk all the time; the United States needs to be clearly aware that this is not merely a threat but a reality,” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un writes in a year-end address. U.S. President Donald Trump shoots back on Twitter that his nuclear button is “bigger” than Kim’s. Very few assume that 2018 will be the year the first-ever meeting between a North Korean dictator and the sitting U.S. president is hosted.
LIVING IN PARADISE
The Paradise Post, the twice-weekly newspaper of Paradise, Calif., is wrapping up 2017 with a series of feelgood news stories. Their newsmaker of the year is Casey Taylor, the principal of a local charter school. On Christmas Day, a pair of high school sweethearts proposed to one another. The Gold Nugget Museum is opening an exhibit on outdoor living. In 10 months, the museum and 95 per cent of the town will be gone, burned by the largest wildfire in California’s recorded history. Although the precise death toll is unknown, at least 38 will die before they could leave their homes.
HIT SQUAD
Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi is only four months into a new job as a columnist at the Washington Post. On Jan. 1, he is wrapping up a column condemning Saudi Arabia for lauding anti-government protests in Iran while banning demonstrations at home. Although Khashoggi is virtually unknown in the west, he’s well-known in the Arab world. His liberal leanings have occasionally gotten him into trouble, but the pressure has risen after a series of power grabs by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. With friends beginning to disappear, Khashoggi was forced to flee his home country in mid-2017 for exile in the U.S. The 59-year-old has ample reason to distrust the prince, but even he will not suspect the de facto Saudi ruler is 10 months away from dispatching a hit squad to murder Khashoggi in a Turkish embassy.
A QUIET THAI CAVE
The traditional Thai new year of Songkran falls in April, but the country also celebrates every Jan. 1. Just a few people mark it at Thailand’s gorgeous, albeit remote, Tham Luang-khun Nam Nang Non Forest Park. In June, this quiet corner will become the most famous place on earth. The Wild Boars, a local soccer team made up of 12-year-old boys, will become stranded by floodwaters in a cave, sparking an epic international operation. By the next New Year’s Day, this formerly quiet region will be filled with vendors, a new museum, an under-construction resort and more than 16,000 tourists per day.
BOURDAIN STRUGGLES
Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain is a bestselling author and an Emmy Award-winning TV host but just before Christmas he received a new accolade: An honorary doctorate from the Culinary Institute of America. “You may henceforth address me as ‘Dr.’ Bourdain,” he tweets. He’s long struggled with depression, and has fought heroin and crack cocaine addiction. In 2018 Bourdain will seek medical help for depression, but to his friends, co-workers and even his mother he’ll retain a facade of quiet contentment. On June 8 Bourdain will be shooting his CNN show in France when he’ll fail to show for dinner at an Alsace hotel restaurant with friend Eric Ripert. Despite Bourdain showing a “dark mood” over the prior days, Ripert’s first thought is that the chef impulsively decided to eat somewhere else. Only the next morning will he and hotel staff discover that Bourdain has hanged himself in his upstairs room.