The Canadian Sainte-Justine hospital hosted their 6th annual beneficial triathlon today. According to the server Branchez Vous more than 80 teams attended the event, competing in skating, running and skiing in the Masionneueve Park in Montreal, Canada from 1pm. The latests news say that the event raised $526 637 – and all the raised money will go to support the Sainte-Justine hospital.

Many local personalities attended the event – some of them participating in the triathlon, some as observers only. One of the personalities who came to support this cause was no-one other than our own Sebastien Lefebvre from Simple Plan as the band has been supporting this hospital through their Simple Plan Foundation for many years now.

The whole event was hosted by the actress Julie Du Page, who took a picture with Sebastien earlier today and you can check out it’s full version in SimplePlan.cz’s gallery.

From past experience I can honestly say that no other weekend has been this crazy for the SP fans, as this one – and I dare say most importantly because of this Saturday, January 14th 2012, it will go down in Simple Plan’s history. This time though not because of some great thing the guys have achieved or some kick-ass show they just played. No, this time it was all in the hands of the fans themselves. Simple Plan fans managed something they have never before: to completely take over Twitter and its Trending Topics.

If you’re a social network newbie, or just try to stay away from Twitter as much as possible, here’s the deal: Trending Topics is sort of a system that Twitter uses to find out (and show to its users) the 10 topics, that people talk about the most in real time on this network – that means it shows the most popular topics on Twitter. And due to the fact that these 10 Trending Topics are shown to all the Twitter users, it is a very neat and interesting way of promotion.

And what exactly did the fans manage to “trend”? For some unknown reason, without any massive call to arms, “Pierre Bouvier”, started trending. And that started it all. When the fans managed to get the name “Chuck Comeau” up on the TT list as well, they were certain they must put the rest of the band up as well. So, shortly after that, you could spot “Seb Lefebvre”, then “David Desrosiers” and “Jeff Stinco” among the worldwide Trending Topics. But the fans were far from the end of this take-over. Even though he is not with SP as much as he used to, most fans still consider him to be the “6th member of Simple Plan” – and that’s why “Patrick Langlois” was the next thing to trend. The fans wrapped up this Saturday craziness with “Astronauts Love Simple Plan” and “Brazil Miss Simple Plan”, to show the whole world, who’s fans were on fire that day.

And how did the band react to these news? Because this was the first time ever (if we’re not counting some birthday hashtags from a year ago) that the members’ names got to be on the TT list, they were absolutely mind-blowned. This is how Pierre reacted (after being told by Chuck): “I’m a trending topic!! How awesome! Our fans rule!! Pierre Bouvier is the coolest!!! This might be one of the highlights of my life… HAHAH!”.

According to Chuck’s reaction when he appeared on TT, he was pretty surprised too: “You’re joking! Now i’m trending worldwide!! Wow! 1st time ever! SP fans are INSANE today! Thank you so much! You guys rock!”, soon adding: “I’m sitting in my hotel room in KL and I can’t believe how powerful the SP Family and the SP Astronauts can be. I’m blown away! Thank you! Must a LOT of people looking at the trending topics and asking themselves: who the hell is Chuck Comeau? LOL. Love it! Thank you, SPfamily”, and finally: “Well SP fans…you made Chuck Comeau very happy tonight. I love you guys!”

Sebastien expressed his ecstasy with a tweet saying: “Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo YEAH!!!!!!” and then of course when Jeff found out, he sent this beautiful message to his fans: “Wow! I just saw that I’m trending worldwide….you guys are the most crazy, sick, amazing, incredible, wonderful, brilliant fans in the world! I don’t even know what to write you guys, I’m so touched. Everything I think of sounds showoff-y or plain stupid so i’ll stick to: thank you! I’m an Astronaut too. Let’s say it how it really is: Simple Plan just has the best fans in the world. You guys are the reason why we’ve been at it for so long.”

And we can’t forget about Patrick’s reaction, who definitely didn’t expect a thing: “Just woke up from a nap and I see that I was trending worldwide! That’s crazy!! I guess I should nap more often!”

I still have no idea what exactly happened yesterday and what caused all this awesomeness, but the fans have definitely proved how strong they can be, when they join their forces. They proved it today also, when “Simple Plan Saved My Life” has topped the worldwide Trending Topics for hours. And what will trend next? Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook and it case something goes on, you’ll be the first to know.

A few days ago I’ve posted a couple of pictures from Seb’s a Chuck’s visit of one of the hospitals in Montreal, which both of them visited on December 23rd in order to bring some holiday cheer to the kids who had to stay there during Christmas. Simple Plan Foundation now released a few more beaufitul pictures from these visits and you can check them out in the gallery.

And speaing of making kids smile, as you know thanks to our yesterday’s report, today after noon, Chuck Comeau visited the Canadian International School of Hong Kong, where he was warmly greeted by local students, to whom he spoke in the school’s forum and even singed tons of autographs. Here are first pictures from Chuck’s visit of this school:

One day before Christmas Eve, that is on December 23rd 2011, Chuck and Sebastien went to three different hospitals in Montreal, Canada to spread a little Christmas joy to its patients: to play basketball with them, to play music instruments and mostly to talk and be with the children. The guys visited Maison Le Phare, St Justine Hospital and Montreal Children’s Hospital – all three institutions are fully supported by Simple Plan Foundation. Chuck commented on this visit by the following series of tweets:

“We had an amazing day visiting and hanging out with kids at St-Justine Hospital, Montreal Children’s Hospital and Maison Le Phare. The kids we met today are so inspiring. So strong and courageous. It’s an eye-opening experience every time. It teaches you to appreciate life. A huge thank you to all of them, their families, the nurses, doctors and volunteers who devote their lives to helping these sick children. With Christmas just around the corner, I hope we all take a second to realize how blessed and lucky we are to have good health and be alive.”

Let’s stop at Maison Le Phare for a while. This center contributes to the wellbeing of children whose lives are threatened by illnesses that require complex treatment. One of the types of therapy used in this institute is the so-called music therapy that Simple Plan and their foundation has been supporting for many years. Today, Maison Le Phare posted a couple of pictures from Chuck’s and Sebastien’s visit which you can now check out also in our gallery.

Sebastien and Jeff, both currently back home in Montreal, Canada, have recently went for a car drive through the city, which is apparently the new best spot to record videomessages. Even though Simple Plan promote “Don’t Drink And Drive”, seems like vlogging and driving is acceptable, so in this spirit the two guitarists taped a short special “Merry Christmas” video for their fans in Indonesia, where the guys are scheduled to play just in a couple of weeks.

The guys had a day off yesterday, which Sebastien decided to spend in a ZOO in San Diego, where Simple Plan are playing a show tonight. So he took a few members of the crew with him and together they recorded this video, which we can count as another one of the famous “Learning with Simple Plan” videos… well in this case “Learning with Sebastien” is probably more appropriate. Check it out: