The role of Elmer the Safety Elephant is to teach young children how to stay safe. From the day he first appeared over 50 years ago, he was an instant hit with kids. The character and his message are as relevant (and as much needed) today as ever.
Elmer the Safety Elephant was born in 1947. That year, his impact was dramatic. Traffic collisions among Toronto children dropped an astonishing 44 per cent – even though vehicle registrations increased by 10 per cent!
Costumes were created so Elmer could appear in schools and at events.
Elmer's original safety rules were based on a study of collisions involving children 5 to 9 years of age. The study showed that the vast majority of mishaps could be traced to six hazards. This resulted in the slogan "Elmer and I never forget" and six traffic safety rules. Elmer now has seven traffic safety rules, and addresses many aspects of child injury prevention, including playground, fire, school bus, railway, home and Internet safety.
A CBC Television clip from 1955 takes a look at how Elmer the Safety Elephant came to be and how his message is bringing safety to the streets.
FF – Yeah, Elmer the Safety Elephant. Remember when you had the big costume? It must have been right out of high school or something.
LF – Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s when I’d just moved in with Greg Allen. So I’d left my neighborhood and my mom and our Ontario Housing and moved in with my grade 12 theater teacher. It was one of my first jobs ever. And I was super excited because it took me out of the factories and into the world of acting. And I was very excited.
We had our own truck with Elmer the Safety Elephant’s face on the side of it. I went with a partner and we would do two schools a day. She would drive and then we’d get there and I would put on my Elmer outfit, which made me seven feet tall, with the head. And inside the actual costume was a hula hoop. So if I took my hands and held the hula hoop I could shake it from side to side and the kids really liked that.
The other thing was, and so we’d go and I would do a kind of a Barney voice, really, is what it sounded like.
It was like: “Hey kids, make sure you look both ways before you cross the street!” And then I would shake the hula hoop and they would laugh. And I’d teach them all about road safety and stuff.
The weird thing was, though, we were at one school, I think at the time I was either twenty or twenty-one and smoked. And so, I got fired when one of the principals caught Elmer the Safety Elephant smoking in his Elmer the Safety Elephant truck and thought perhaps this wasn’t a good image for the children – or for anyone – to see! (laughs).
So after the Barney voice I’d go into the truck and light up a cigarette like I was some badass of acting. Like some rebel. Full-on Jimmy Dean posing in the window with a cigarette.
So that was the end of Elmer for me.
But it was, I had a good time until then. And it paid good money and I loved it. I don’t think I should’ve been fired. I should have just, I should've at least had a warning.
It had to be funny. It must have been funny to see me, like, “Is Elmer the Safety… is there a guy smoking? Elmer the Safety Elephant!” It’s funny.
Elmer Booklet Movie with Music from Ferreira Fest on Vimeo.
Direct link/ URL: http://vimeo.com/114838432
Elmer Book Cover Movie with Music from Ferreira Fest on Vimeo.
Direct link/ URL: http://vimeo.com/114844795
(Sorry - this video has since been taken offline. As of September 2016 it is no longer available.)
MOTIVE (Season 3) (Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT, beginning March 8 on CTV)
The dramatic Season 2 finale of original Canadian crime drama MOTIVE saw Detective Angie Flynn's (Kristin Lehman, THE KILLING) past and present fatally collide when her involvement in a new trial about an old case called everything she stood for as a detective into question. With Sergeant Cross (Warren Christie, ALPHAS) at the centre of it all, and the personal toll he paid as the price in the end, viewers were left wondering if Angie was calling it quits as a member of the homicide team.
The third season picks up six months later – with a burnt-out Angie having left the homicide team. But a case with direct personal implications for her beloved partner Detective Oscar Vega (Louis Ferreira, SGU STARGATE UNIVERSE) draws her back into the fold. MOTIVE also stars Brendan Penny (THE ASSISTANTS) as the team's ambitious Detective Brian Lucas and Lauren Holly (NCIS) as the team's lead medical examiner, Dr. Betty Rogers.
I believe I only saw Declan II a couple of times and when I did (and realized he was the "new" Declan) I was kind of surprised. He looked so different and his character did not stand out like the original Declan* did. (*that was a loss for Breaking Bad, in my opinion - they shouldn't have killed Declan (Louis) so soon; I thought he was a very interesting character that provided a substantial addition to the tension level building at that point in the series).Thanks for your thoughts, Jeff!
Declan I
The character that played Declan was nothing like Louis, he was sort of a non-descript short and stocky Colombian guy with a shaved head. He didn't seem to have even as much camera time as Louis, either. I think they edited the episodes as much as they could so they could air the entire series in a few months (start to finish).
His henchman were some real characters, too! I ate lunch across the table from the guy with the spiked hair when I was working on The Night Shift and he was still looking the part he played on Breaking Bad! (He didn't say much; I think he might have been from Eastern Europe although I thought he looked Hispanic) I also chatted with the fellow that drove the truck that was covering the schoolbus hatch when Declan ordered him to.
Metástasis was very well-done, given their time and budget constraints and they came up with some interesting actors, plot variations and locations in the process. Vamonos Pest was a building demolition company, for example. The guy who played Saul was pretty funny although I didn't like him so much at first. Walter Blanco was superb, almost as good as Bryan Cranston after a while - you could tell he really took to the role once he got warmed up a while. So was Cielo (Skyler), Maria (Marie) and Juana (Jane) - I miss them all!
The story: Tony Danza stars in this drama based on the true story of Jerry Rosenberg - the world's first convict-turned-attorney. When two cops are dead, and he's the chief suspect, Jerry finds himself in a maximum security prison awaiting the death penalty. One night, as a fellow inmate is executed, Jerry resolves to save himself by studying law.According to Louis this is not his first professional credit, but it is the first one listed on IMDb where he had a role that was listed in the movie's playoff. He plays Bobby, a young inmate in the prison who becomes one of Jerry's friends and students.