Even amid a street riot, Canadians are irresistible

Photo by Rich Lam/Getty Images

Australian Scott Jones kisses his Canadian girlfriend Alex Thomas after she was knocked to the ground last week by a police officer's riot shield in Vancouver, British Columbia. Canadians rioted after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins.

Details of the Famous Vancouver Riot Kiss Photo Revealed

Couple claims the photo wasn't staged, and that the woman was knocked to the ground.

By Josh Voorhees, Slate.com
A Canadian newspaper has named the kissing couple caught on camera by photographers documenting Wednesday’s Vancouver riots, and detailed how the iconic embrace unfolded.
The Globe and Mail reports that the pair in question is an Australian, Scott Jones, and a Canadian, Alex Thomas, who have been dating for several months. Jones is said to be a 29-year-old aspiring stand-up comic and, according to the way his mother tells it, may just be the best boyfriend ever.
The photo of the couple, taken during the riot that began after the hometown Canucks lost game seven of the Stanley Cup, quickly became an Internet sensation and fueled speculation that the embrace was staged.
According to Jones’s mother, that wasn’t the case.
She tells the paper that the couple was at the game and got caught between police and rioters as they were leaving. Thomas was knocked to the ground by an officer’s riot shield, and Jones leapt to the ground after her to comfort her with a kiss.
“I just thought, yep, that would be Scott because he’s a bit of a dreamer and he wouldn’t have even known there was a riot going on around him, quite possibly,” Jones’s mother, Megan, said.
The story lines up with the photographer’s take on what happened. He said that he initially snapped the photo thinking it was of someone hurt. “I looked back and thought someone was injured and I shot that,” Rich Lam told msnbc.com. “I framed it up, juxtaposed with the policemen.”
It wasn’t until his editors were sorting through his digital images that anyone realized just how amazing of a shot it was.

Proof that Canadians are irresistible to the foreigners who love them.