As a gauge of pop stardom in Canada, having your face splashed across a nation’s worth of Tim Hortons coffee cups is probably the ultimate sign that you’ve made it to the top.Amiable Pickering native Shawn Mendes returns to the GTA this week for a sold-out homecoming show at the Rogers Centre on Friday, at a moment when he’s attained perhaps the greatest cultural ubiquity he’ll ever enjoy in this country, appearing on Timmies cups from coast to coast and giving his suburban hometown some love in his very own TV commercial for the chain. It really doesn’t get any bigger than this, folks.The 21-year-old chart-topper, currently riding high (again) with the inescapable single “Senorita” — a duet with maybe/maybe-not girlfriend Camila Cabello that became Mendes’s first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 this summer — has also used all the attention this trip home has been getting to wield his runaway popularity for good, announcing the formation last week of the Shawn Mendes Foundation. The charity, which has already raised some $1 million US in donations, aims to support causes that the singer’s young fan base holds dear and, as the singer put it in a news release, “to help provide them with a platform that inspires positive change” by asking them for suggestions as to where its money should be spent. Some of the proceeds from those coffee sales will go to the Shawn Mendes Foundation, as will all of the cash collected from the $40 Mendes ballcaps being sold at the Roots pop-up shop that went up inside an elaborate rose garden near the Rogers Centre this past Wednesday.With all this going on, it’s not surprising that Mendes is a little short on time to talk with the media these days. He did, however, concede to do a brief email interview with the Star over the Labour Day weekend. And yes, his publicist swears on her life that it was indeed Mendes doing the typing.Here is that harml ...
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