Spice Girls hit Canada with a bang

MONTREAL (CP) -- The Spice Girls hit Canada with a bang Friday night.

"Are you ready to party? Do you like us?" asked Melanie Brown, a.k.a Scary Spice.

The response was deafening.

A sea of pre-pubescent fans waved their blue, yellow and pink glow-sticks and screamed their little hearts out.

The show was the first Canadian engagement for the foursome, formerly a fifthsome.

It was stop 15 on a North American tour that began June 15 in Miami. The group plays Toronto tonight, hits Vancouver on Aug. 11, and heads back to Britain after an Aug. 26 show in Dallas, Tex.

The stage at the Molson Centre was set Friday night when a giant video screen displayed a Spice-spaceship speeding through the stratosphere, and a baritone voice invited the audience to "boldly go where no woman has gone before."

Then it was rampant Spice-mania as the group kicked off with If You Can't Dance, Who Do You Think You Are?, and Do It.

The show had the audience won over from the moment it started, but there were a few doubts expressed before the screaming began.

Fans like 10-year-old Courtney Yanulavich of Chateauguay Lake, N.Y., who wore a five-Spice-Girls T-shirt, weren't sure what to make of the defection of Geri Halliwell -- Ginger Spice.

"I don't know yet," said Courtney, interviewed while waiting impatiently for the show to start.

Anyhow, her favorite in the group is Emma Burton -- Baby Spice.

"I like lollipops, and she does. She has blond hair and I do. Plus, I like her singing."

Her father, Frank Yanulavich, 42, a car dealer, winced only a little when asked how much he paid for a pair of tickets.

"I couldn't buy any tickets in the States," he said. "They were gone almost immediately. So we came up here hoping to find some tickets, which we did. It cost us $225 Cdn."

Janette Jeffers, 15, of Montreal, said she used to like Ginger Spice but now she's switched her allegiance to Melanie Chisholm -- Sporty Spice.

"She's exciting. She's, like, one of the coolest Spice Girls to be around, to have fun with, just to hang," Jeffers said.

"Just like one of your friends."

All in all, the Spice Girls didn't seem to mind working as a quartet. CFTO-TV in Toronto reported Friday that the group downplayed the loss of Ginger Spice in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

"Scary says that Ginger didn't actually sing that much and that her sudden departure didn't affect their dance routines either," the report said.

"Meanwhile, Sporty Spice says Ginger was always more of a talker anyway. That the rest of them like singing more than Ginger ever did.

"But it was Posh Spice who put it most bluntly," the report continued.

"Posh thinks losing Ginger was actually a good thing, because it gave the group, in her words, a kick up the -- you fill in the blanks (a - -)."