Gallery: New Year’s 2015 celebrations from around the world

As Canadians were buying champagne and locating thematic hats, millions were already ringing in 2015 with fireworks and festivities.

Check out these photos of New Year’s Eve celebrations across the world, starting with the colourful display above Sydney, Australia’s iconic harbour.

Fireworks explode off the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the midnight fireworks display on New Year’s Eve on Sydney Harbour. (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Australia is among the first countries to ring in the new year on Jan 1. (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Fireworks explode over the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith)

It’s currently summer in Australia, meaning watching the show from your boat isn’t as unpleasant as it sounds. (SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Could you imagine wearing sun dresses on New Year’s Eve like these ladies in Sydney, Australia? (Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

Firework display from the top of the Sky Tower to welcome the New Year on January 1, 2015 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Dave Rowland/Getty Images)

Wellington, New Zealand is the first capital city in the world to see in the New Year. (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Ooooh, ahhhh, in Wellington, New Zealand. (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

People release balloons to celebrate the New Year during an annual countdown ceremony in Tokyo. (TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images)

People are gathered as fireworks explode over the Yokohama port during new year celebrations in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

People gather to celebrate the New Year at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Buddhists light candles during New Year celebrations at Jogye Buddhist temple in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015. (AP Photo / Ahn Young-joon)

Fireworks explode over the Victoria Harbor as celebrating the 2015 new year in Hong Kong, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Fireworks explode over Victoria Harbour for New Year in Hong Kong. (Isaac Lawrence/AFP/Getty Images)

A man wears an illuminated glasses celebrates the New Year during a count-down event in front of the National Stadium in Beijing.. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

People watch fireworks explode over Malaysia’s landmark Petronas Twin Towers during New Year celebrations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Lai Seng Sin)

North Koreans watch as fireworks explode over the Tower of the Juche Idea to usher in the new year, Jan. 1, 2015 in Pyongyang, North Korea. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin)

Fireworks burst above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin)

Fireworks burst over Marina Bay to bring in the New Year in Singapore on January 1, 2015. (MOHD FYROL/AFP/Getty Images)

Fireworks light up the sky as Filipinos welcome the New Year in Manila, Philippines. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Traditionally Filipinos welcome the New Year with firecrackers, fireworks and almost anything to make the loudest noise possible. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Revelers watch a laser show being projected on buildings as the countdown for the New Year begins in Manila. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

A Filipino watches a fireworks display at the Quezon Memorial Circle in suburban Quezon city, north of Manila, Philippines on Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

People watch as Dubai celebrates the New Year with a light and sound extravaganza at midnight at the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower. (KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images)

It’s was a balmy 22 C in Dubai as 2015 began, in case you were curious. (KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images)

A Iraqi Crowds cheer as the countdown and fireworks begin during a New Year’s Day celebration at Firdous Square in Baghdad. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

People light sparklers in Moscow’s Red Square. (AP Photo/Denis Tyrin)

People photograph fireworks as they celebrate the New Year in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Denis Tyrin)

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Videos of the Year: The Ghomeshi media scrum

This no doubt takes Scrum of the Year honours. Chaos ensued as Jian Ghomeshi tried to exit a courthouse in Toronto after surrendering himself to police in November and we were on the scene.

Check out more of our best videos from 2014 here.

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Den Tandt: Spring election for Stephen Harper in 2015? Not so fast

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes his way to his car during a recent trip to Auckland, N.Z. A bold prediction for 2015: But here goes: There will be no spring federal election. Harper will wait for the fixed date in October, as promised, despite his party’s recent uptick in the polls. Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

What’s ahead for 2015 in politics? Before we get to that, let’s take a peek at last year’s crystal-ball column and see how I did. It is, to put it charitably, a mixed bag.

First prediction: On Dec. 29, 2013, I wrote that for the coming year, “(Prime Minister Stephen) Harper will continue to resist the siren song of personal re-invention. That ship has sailed. The hockey book is out, the musical performances have become routine, but the PM remains who he has always been. His aversion to the media is locked in.”

Result: Well then. An A-plus! Except that even in 2013, saying “Harper will not change” was tantamount to saying the sun would eventually follow the rain. This PM had had countless opportunities by then to undertake a “charm offensive,” and had ignored them all. A bold call, it was not.

But then, I dipped a toe in. “That said, Harper in 2014 will make a visible effort to re-engage — likely through more frequent speeches, perhaps even more frequent press conferences,” I wrote. “He will do so not by choice, but by necessity.”

Buzzer sounds and a big D-minus appears. My thinking then was that the Nigel Wright-Mike Duffy mess, which hit Harper personally and hard, would force him to extend himself in a bid to shore up his personal standing. But nothing of the kind happened. During his annual summer tour of the Arctic, the only time of year when Harper can be expected to be at all relaxed in the presence of the media, he simply … wasn’t. The PM’s personal interest in the search for the lost Franklin expedition was noteworthy. But his approach to communication was as hyper-controlled and severely limited as ever.

Second prediction: “The most interesting political fight in 2014, by far, will be between Liberals and New Democrats, with the focus narrowing ever more closely on Quebec,” I wrote.

Result: Again, wrong. C-minus. I was correct to suggest NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair would increasingly focus on shoring up his base in his home province. But rather than the Battle of Quebec, we saw that province’s internal debates effectively lopped out of the national political discussion by the provincial election in April.

With a federalist government holding a majority in Quebec City, a looming national unity crisis was averted — and so was the great tussle between federalist parties over which of their leaders could best represent Canada’s interests in a constitutional meltdown. The dominant political struggle of the year, meantime, was between Liberals and Conservatives, as the Tories continued to cast Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau as “in over his head,” and Harper as a steady hand in “dark and dangerous” times.

Third prediction: My third call was international: “This will be the year that the focus of geopolitical concern moves to the Western Pacific, where China is engaged in an increasingly tense regional standoff with Japan, centred on ownership of the Senkaku Islands,” I predicted a year ago. “That dispute is still simmering: But the great reversal in geopolitics in 2014 was, of course, Russia’s invasion of Crimea and subsequent destabilization of Ukraine.

Result: Again, I got it mostly wrong. D-minus.

So, 2015? Given last year’s results, I hesitate to venture a guess.

But here goes: There will be no spring federal election. The PM will wait for the fixed date in October, as promised, despite his party’s recent uptick in the polls, and despite the apparent allure of getting the campaign out of the way ahead of the much-anticipated trial of suspended former Conservative senator Mike Duffy, set to begin in April.

My reasoning is simply this: Harper likes to govern, and prides himself on steadiness and predictability. Barring a major unforeseen event, which can always happen, he will be inclined to do what he has said he will do, and govern through the end of this term.

When the election does come, the Conservatives will win it, narrowly, with a minority. The Trudeau Liberals will more than double their seat count, from the current 35, and replace the New Democrats as the Official Opposition. But there will be no immediate unseating of the Harper government by a Liberal-NDP coalition, as some have speculated will happen.

The reason is simply that the current crop of New Democrats and Liberals viscerally dislike and mistrust each other, including at the leadership level, in a way the NDP and Tories do not. Given his druthers, Mulcair will be inclined to keep Harper in power, with concessions, rather than allow Trudeau to road-test himself as prime minister.

It will be a turbulent year in Ottawa, leading to further upheaval: The new Harper minority won’t hold for more than nine or 10 months. In the interim, leadership machinations will begin in earnest within the Conservative and New Democrat camps. There will be one or more resignations: None of them will be Trudeau’s. The young Liberal leader will continue to bide his time, as the other two major parties reconstitute.

We’ll check back in a year, and see how I did.

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Blatchford: Moments of connection – one heart to another – cross language, cultural barriers

Lin Diran, right, father of Lin Jun, and translator Anna Liu, left, leave the courtroom during a break in the trial. (Dario Ayala / THE GAZETTE)

There were moments during the long trial where I think all of us regulars at the Montreal courthouse wanted to hug him.

Most of us resisted most of the time. It would have been taking a liberty.  Lin Diran is a dignified man.

He’s graceful too.

Several days, a rather odd woman showed up wearing a sort of makeshift Mao uniform, presumably in some sort of Universal Chinese Solidarity with him, and clasped Lin in a bear hug.  Lin didn’t linger, but neither was he rude. After all, she meant it kindly, if weirdly.

Photos from the family of Jun Lin in a file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Lin Family

He went out for smoke breaks with Katie Kempster and some of the others in the public lineup.

Katie is 19, smart as a whip, tall and gorgeous, with a heart the size of the Prairies. She has a Mandarin-speaking boss and from him got, and practised, a few phrases.

“Ni hao,” she would greet Lin with a smile. She started to tap out longer phrases using Google Translate and would show him the result on her phone; he would smile and nod with delight. Then she started baking at home — delicious, and of course duly vegan, treats — and bringing them to court, for all of us.

I think it was Katie who got  Lin out of his shell. Most of us were a little in love with her by this point, Lin included.

He arrived one morning and announced himself with a hesitant “bonjour,” the next day with a splendid “hello”: He has the instincts of a perfect Canadian.

We needed him to know we felt for him; he needed us to know that he knew, and appreciated it. It’s the loveliest thing, the universal human longing for community, for contact, and how it leaps language and cultural barriers as if they weren’t there.

By the time the trial of his son’s killer began last fall, Lin already had been to Montreal — a place he’d never even heard of until his only son, Lin Jun, announced he wanted to go to college there — twice, once in the aftermath of Jun’s murder, once for the preliminary hearing.

Thomas Murphy, rear, is escorted by a SPVM investigator after giving his testimonyin this file photo. (Dario Ayala / THE GAZETTE)

A lot of people knew him from TV and media. They’d approach him on the street, desperate to show him kindness.

“A lot of them talk to me,” he said through translator Siqi Zhang Monday, at a news conference arranged by the big law firm, Borden Ladner Gervais,  Lin’s chief benefactor, protector and bottle-washer. “But I cannot talk (in English or French). Warm-hearted people hug me.” He paused. “We can communicate by heart. They touch me. I can understand what they want to say.”

Zhang is one of four volunteer translators, one of whom was always with Lin throughout the 12-week trial. The others were Yvonne Lo, Weinan Wang and Anna Liu.

Lin and Zhang produced poetry of uncommon clarity together on Monday. When he was describing his sorrow, he said at one point that “between the sky and the land, the world cannot take this.” At another, he said, “I will burn in the sadness in my whole heart.”

He was uber-respectful about the Canadian justice system, but when asked if there was anything that struck him as peculiar, he replied quickly. “The accused keeps silent,” he said, wonderingly. “He did not say anything. We ask questions of witness. We don’t hear anything from accused from beginning to end.”

Feng Lin, a boyfriend of victim Jun Lin, leaves the courtroom after testifying at the murder trial for Luka Rocco Magnotta. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

Asked about his son being gay — Jun had been married to a woman once, but in Montreal, had a serious boyfriend — Lin and Zhang were brilliance.

“I never heard about this sexual preference, this concept of sexual preference before,” he said. He heard about it when he came after Jun’s death, he said, but only after Lin Feng , Jun’s boyfriend, testified did he fully understand. “So after his testimony, I knew this happened,” Lin said. “I hope myself as a father, I can be a happy father. I told my son ‘get married,’ and he had girlfriend, he obeyed us.

“But I think sexuality has no relationship to this case.

“I will respect his (Jun’s) choice, and no matter what his sexual preference, I love my son. I respect his freedom.” And he has had dinner with Lin Feng , and stays in touch with him and some of his son’s other friends.

Lin Diran will leave Montreal next month and return to China.

Lin Jun (pictured). in a file photo.

Now 60, he has no job. He used to work in post-production auto logistics; he was a manager, organizing the drivers and truckloads of cars from factory to delivery points.

His former wife is too heart-broken to work, and their daughter Mei Mei is left to try to put the Humpty-Dumpty of their family back together.

I fear he may feel somewhat a fish out of water back home, a bit between places, as it were. I hope he is warmed by the memory of all of those in this country who wish him well, who, as he put it, “care about me,” as indeed we do.

Lin Jun, who was killed by Luka Magnotta, is shown as a child in a photo provided by his family. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HANDOUT/LIN FAMILY

The law firm has set up The Lin Jun Family Trust, made possible by the pro bono work (inspired no doubt by the firm’s own magnificent contribution) of WebCakes, Pivotal Payments, Digital Days and HSBC. Donations can be made online at the secure website http://www.linjunfamily.com

As for me, I am warmed by the memory of the day he first showed up wearing his ridiculously cute fur hat. Katie wanted a picture, so I took one – the tall young Canuck, her friend Amanda who was in town for the day, and Lin.

They communicated by heart, just as he said.

Postmedia News

cblatchford@postmedia.com

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