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Canada To Zombies: Drop Dead, Eh

Canadian zombies dress for success. (An Occupy Vancouver "Zombie Walk" in October 2011.)
Sergei Bachlakov
/
Xinhua /Landov
Canadian zombies dress for success. (An Occupy Vancouver "Zombie Walk" in October 2011.)

Apparently, the undead aren't even welcome in the ever polite Great North.

This week, Canadian Member of Parliament Pat Martin rose (from his seat, not a grave) to ask Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird if he is "working with his American counterparts to develop an international zombie strategy so that a zombie invasion does not turn into a zombie apocalypse?"

To which Baird replied: "I want to assure the member and all Canadians that I am 'dead-icated' to ensuring that this never happens. I want to say categorically to this member, and through him to all Canadians, that under the leadership of this prime minister, Canada will never become a safe haven for zombies, ever!"

This all came up because Quebec's public security department, as American preparedness planners have done before, is going to discuss a hypothetical (we certainly hope!) zombie attack at a safety seminar.

Zombies have been all over the news this week. There was Sunday's return of The Walking Dead on AMC. And then there was the news that some TV stations' emergency broadcast systems had been hacked and that a warning about "bodies of the dead ... rising from their graves" had gone out over the air.

Now there's word, according to the Great Falls Tribune, that "the hoax reached around 10 stations in Montana, Michigan, California, Utah and New Mexico, said Greg MacDonald, the CEO of Montana Broadcasters Association."

So far, we haven't gotten any comment from any zombies. Our friend Linda Holmes over at Monkey See might be able to.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.