It's been a few days since Apple finally committed to a firmish time frame for the launch of an iTunes Music Store for our buddies up there in Canada; suppose the wild celebratory revelry is winding down yet, or did the major cities hold off on throwing the actual parades until the weekend? At the time we were too overwhelmed by iPodular plot twists to give the subject of the iTMS Canada the attention it deserved, but Uncle Steve's announcement that Apple's finally going to launch it within the next four or five weeks is a major milestone for Canadian Apple fans, who, despite the typical restraints of normal time flow, have been waiting for iTMS access for approximately twelve years longer than the U.S. version has existed. (Neat trick.)

But all is not joy in Canuckville, because while a Canadian iTMS is imminent, Apple still hasn't committed to a Great White North expansion of that other great money-sucking convenience that U.S. Apple fans have enjoyed for the past few years: Apple retail stores. There have been whispers, of course-- some of the first concretish rumors of a planned Canadian retail invasion surfaced last February and named the Yorkdale Shopping Center and Toronto Eaton Centre as two of the first Canadian locations slated to play host to Apple's little slices of retail heaven. The question of when, however, has been as steeped in mystery as Apple's iTMS plans. More rumors alluded to internal Apple documents showing that Canada was supposed to have beaten both Japan and England to the retail scene, with the first two Canadian stores planned for openings before the end of 2003; instead it looks more than likely that Canada will continue to lack an Apple retail presence until 2005 at the earliest.

So why the delay? Well, we can't say for sure, but our best educated guess is that Steve went ballistic when he saw the third-season premiere of Degrassi: The Next Generation and immediately noticed that the actor playing Emma's brain-damaged biological father Shane McKay was clearly not Bill Parrott from the original Degrassi Junior High series. Whatever the reason, though, AppleInsider now reports that Apple is still planning to do the retail thing in Canada sometime in the "coming months." (Apparently Manny's bikini car wash scene in Season 4 made up for the ersatz Shane.) If you want to get a little more specific, Yorkdale reps narrow the range slightly to "mid-2005," though they claim that a finalized lease with Apple is still "pending," so anything could happen.

For those of you interested in the "where" as much as the "when," AppleInsider also notes a new mall alleged to be an Apple retail destination: Vaughan Mills, which claims that "nearly one quarter of Canada's population" is "within 97 km" of the mall-- a mere 60-mile radius. (We don't know much about Canadian population density, but somehow that seems overly optimistic. Sure, we know that vast swaths of Canada are emptier than Microsoft's Longhorn promises, but a quarter of the country's people all living within an hour's drive of the same mall? Spread out a little, guys-- you have the space.) If you're skeptical of the population claim, you may not put much stock into the mall's scheduling info, either; it claims to have a target opening date of this coming Thursday, and AI says that Apple will be "one of its first anchored tenants."

But hey, why not keep the rose-colored glasses spot-welded to our heads? Attention all Canadians: not only do you get the iTMS in less than a month, nearly a quarter of you will be less than an hour's drive away from an Apple retail store in just a few days! Enjoy the thought while it lasts-- and when it stops lasting, remember, "mid-2005" isn't exactly the end of the world, either. That comes in 2008 when we get invaded by the Giant Space Bees.