in a series of basic knowledge questions about Canada. Broadcast throughout Canada, the show Talking to Americans tickled many Canadian funny bones, as Americans unknowingly took Mercer’s questions to be legitimate. And many of the questions focused on Canada being a frozen tundra.
Ironically, a lot of the naïvete of Americans could be attributed to Canadians themselves, who export comedy oversimplifying Canada’s identity as a land mass of ice and snow. It’s a strange relationship, in which Canadians enjoy talking up the nastiness of Canadian winters, but then roll their eyes when the Americans take these claims at face value and repeat them as truisms. The story of the hapless American showing up at the border in July with skis attached to the top of his car and seeking directions to the snow fields is a Canadian urban myth that never fails to amuse despite the inability to actually identify such an occurrence.
Mercer, posing as a serious broadcaster for the CBC, parlayed the Canadian identity of a winter haven to comical results. One such exchange broadcast on his special showed him telling Americans the challenges faced by Canada’s capital building. Mercer explained to his bemused subjects that this Canadian building was essentially comparable to America’s Capitol building, however, it was slightly downscaled and made of ice. Mercer’s hope was that by appearing as a legitimate Canadian reporter, and feeding on America’s misconceptions about Canada, respondents wouldn’t blink an eye at this piece of news. There was much glee among Canadians at what Canadians most enjoy, namely seeing Americans make fools of themselves on our national television. Of course none of this ever makes its way to the American media so the joke loses its ability to humiliate.
Our national capital building — “It’s an igloo.” Or so Mercer explained to the Americans he talked to on the street. “Canadians are worried about global warming so we are considering putting a dome over it, to preserve our igloo.”
The segment showed Americans taking Mercer’s microphone and agreeing that the dome would be a splendid idea, and that in building the dome over the ice building, Canadians could create more revenue by making it a tourist destination.
In a major coup, Mercer was even able to get Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to appear on camera to say “Congratulations Canada on preserving your national igloo.”
Canadians throughout the country laughed at the ways major American politicians could be exposed as being so ignorant about Canadian culture. What Mercer really revealed, however, was exposing how successful Canadians had been in exporting the very image he was exploiting for humorous effect. It’s an identity Canadians are very comfortable perpetuating.
American comedians use the same formula as Mercer when they try to appease Canadians when visiting the country. The jokes almost follow the same “paint by number” creation. They cater to the Canadian audience, and allow the visitor to portray themselves as part of Canadian culture, by creating jokes about the winter, followed by jokes about airplane food, and bad drivers. Canadians can’t get enough of them.
When popular American late night talk show host Conan O’Brien brought his show to Toronto in February 2004, he put to good use this poking of fun at all things Canadian. Hockey, winter coats, and igloos came out in full force. O’Brien’s segments were full of winks and nudges to the cold weather, and to hockey, with sketches featuring members of the Toronto Maple Leafs. It made perfect sense.
Outdoor hockey in Alberta, pre–First World War.
Conan quickly discovered during his time in Toronto that Tie Domi, at the time arguably the most popular Maple Leafs hockey player, was one of the most significant cultural icons of the city. An unknown figure to anyone south of the border, Domi was an icon that was uniquely Canadian. Like Mr. Bean of Britain, or The Crocodile Hunter in Australia, Domi represented Canada. O’Brien was keen enough to discover that hockey was the defining characteristic of Canadian culture, and leaped at the opportunity of casting Domi in one of his sketches. Not surprisingly, the live Toronto audience lapped it up.
Not only did Conan’s live audience laugh, but at times proved these stereotypes true, as audience members would randomly chant “Go Leafs Go” during segments when Conan interviewed proud Canadian Mike Myers. Myers gleefully contrasted the differences between America and Canada, and embraced the crowd.
Despite dozens of stereotypical Canadian characterizations featuring cold weather dwellers, and igloo jokes, the only time Conan’s crew caught the ire of Canadians, and in particular Canadian politicians, was when his NBC crew went off the climate script, and did a segment involving a puppet dog poking fun at French culture in Quebec. The furor made its way to Parliament after the segment aired, further illustrating the point that Canadians will laugh, tolerate, and perpetuate jokes about their hockey-loving, cold-weather hoser image, but jokes about the more subtle tensions between Francophones and Anglophones are off limits.
While Canada is a nation made up of both French- and English-speaking Canadians, and has a unique culture, with their ancestors first fighting against one another and then living together, it’s not something to be rubbed too sharply or put at the forefront of discussion. It certainly isn’t something to be mocked. It’s a very delicate relationship, and one upon which politicians are leery about treading. A foreign comedian using a puppet dog to insult the French, put politicians from all sides, French and English, on a hot seat, and created a reaction the O’Brien crew simply could not anticipate. They eventually apologized having learned what humour was tolerated in Canada. In the world of comedy, it’s best to stick with something Canadians as a whole accommodate — the Canada identity as a Winter Wonderland. That’s funny.
The Queen of the Ice, 1903.
Comedy is not the only place in which the winter climate and Canadian culture meld. It abounds in literature. With poems and stories detailing Canadian winters, the country’s cold vast landscape is a source of wonderment, and inspiration to writers who travel throughout its length (and width).
It inspired Canadian novelist and poet George Bowering to write: “This is a country of silent wind piling drift snow in Rocky Mountains, trenches of quiet death, lonely desolation.”
Bowering is far from being the only writer to note the cold openness of the vast Canadian landscape. Early British settlers wrote about their first experiences coming to Canada and noted with horror how Canada’s winters set the country apart from the more forgiving British weather. Writers would lament Canada’s frozen, frigid, and inhospitable terrain.
Many failed to foresee that Canada could ever be a developed nation, much less one to which native Brits would flee. There might be lots of open land, but how could it be valuable if it was covered in snow for much of the year? Early accounts of British writers encountering Canada in the late 1700s included their lament that this was a land rendering inhabitants “void of thought” and impairing mental powers. This unforgiving, frigid landscape would drive people to drinking, gambling, and ultimately breaking down. The moral fibre of society would collapse under such conditions. Winter of such ferociousness would destroy humanity.
Cold and winter have been used to inspire other forms of depressing poetry. It has been unrepentant about the general dreadfulness of Canadian winters. Throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s writers produced works reading like horror stories of a barren, cold wasteland.
In 1946, Patrick Anderson wrote a poem about Canada, which he concluded by stating that the country was a nation that had untapped potential — despite the cold. In his concluding line in “Poem on Canada,” he makes reference to Canada’s unique
