CHRÉTIEN: Mesdames et messieurs, bon soir .
Downloaded from YTS.BZ
This is Jean Chrétien,
the former Prime Minister of Canada.
Three back-to-back majorities. But I digress.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ
Please welcome the little guy from Middle Cove,
Rick Mercer.
[applause]
["Raise a Little Hell" by Trooper playing]
[audience clapping along]
¶ Raise a little hell, raise a little hell ¶
¶ Raise a little hell ¶
¶
[audience cheering]
-Wow!
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for that kind introduction.
That means so much.
I know what you're thinking, "My God, what happened to him?"
[laughter]
Watching the news did this to me!
[laughter]
My God, what a time to be alive.
I used to spend so much time watching the news.
Now I spend all my time hiding from the news.
What's the word?
What is the word-- there's a word--
what is the word for that feeling you get
when you're lying on the couch at home,
and you're watching the news, and you start to think
that the entire world has gone completely insane
except for you?
What is that word?
I remember now, yes! That word is "Canadian."
[applause]
Now, before we go any further, how about a round of applause
for our celebrity announcer tonight, Mr. Jean Chrétien?
[applause and cheering]
Wasn't that crazy?
And, not only did he agree to be our announcer
for this entire tour, he's also in charge of security!
[laughter]
It's so great to be back out on the road,
travelling with incredibly funny comedians.
And, of course, I was so fortunate for 16 years;
I had a TV show on this network
that allowed me to travel the country every single week,
talking to Canadians,
visiting one part of the country,
introducing it to another part of the country,
and I tell you, I loved every single minute of it.
And do you know why?
I'm a people person.
And I know a lot of you are sitting there going,
"I know, Rick, I'm a people person, too."
Not like me. No.
It's like there's something wrong with my head.
Seriously, I will talk to a stump.
I'm the kind of-- I'm so much of a people person,
I'm the kind of person, I get on a plane,
if the seat next to me is empty, I'm sitting there going,
"Oh...
"I hope someone gets on this plane
"and I hope they sit in that seat!"
[laughter]
And I hope they're chatty!
'Cause I've got questions!
[laughter]
That's 'cause I'm a Newfoundlander, see?
-[applause and cheering] -Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah...!
And we have the reputation being so friendly and nice.
My gosh, they made a big Broadway musical
about how nice we are!
[laughter]
I'll let you in on a secret. We're not nice.
We're nosy.
[laughter]
Oh, we'll invite ya in, we'll give ya a cup of tea,
but as soon as we find out who you are, where you're going,
what you're doing, who you're doing,
it's right back out the door the way you came in!
[laughter]
You don't wanna sit next to me on a plane.
It's not a chat. It's an interrogation.
[laughter]
And eventually, I will ask you,
"What does it mean to be Canadian?"
Because that is a question that has beguiled us since day one.
You take four or five Canadians, you put 'em in a room,
you ask 'em, "What does it mean to be a Canadian?"
Give 'em five minutes, they'll start talking about
how we are different than the Americans.
Which is a terrible way to define yourself!
You shouldn't define yourself by what you're not,
you should define yourself by what you are .
In the '80s, we had a royal commission
that travelled this country asking the question,
"What does it mean to be a Canadian?"
Asked the question all over Canada,
spent millions of dollars, produced 14 phonebooks' worth
of data-- never answered the question.
[laughter]
So when I got my little TV show, I said to myself,
"You know what, I'm gonna answer that question.
"That's my hidden agenda."
Which is ironic, because in those days,
I used to tell everyone it was Stephen Harper
that had the hidden agenda.
[laughter]
But no, it was me all along!
And more people are asking those questions now than ever before.
Patriotism is on bust.
It's fascinating to watch.
This last February, when Flag Day rolled around...
you know, Flag Day, that's the national holiday
that our celebrity announcer just invented one morning
out of the blue.
I never celebrated Flag Day before.
I was agnostic.
I never felt the need to hang a flag on the side of my house.
This Flag Day, I did.
-[audience member whoops] -Yes!
[applause and cheering]
And I tell you what, I wasn't the only one.
I had to go to four Canadian Tire stores
to find a Canadian flag.
[laughter]
And at the third store, they said,
"We can take your name in case one becomes available."
Like I was looking for Taylor Swift tickets!
[laughter]
This is the world we are living in now.
These are the times we're living in.
It's fascinating. Patriotism is on bust.
I hope we...
I hope we seize the moment.
I hope we seize the moment to make some positive changes
that's good for the country.
I tell you one little thing that I would love to see happen,
and this is just a pet project of mine,
I would love to see Canadian history
taught in the schools again.
-[applause and cheering] -Yeah!
Because...
because we don't really do it anymore, not like we used to.
We have an education system that's designed to ensure
everything young people know about Canada
they learn from watching those Heritage Minutes.
[laughter]
The Heritage Minutes should have a Heritage Minute!
But if we teach the history in the schools,
it's gotta be done right.
'Cause the kids, see, they have this notion
that history is boring.
We have to disabuse them of that fact.
We gotta get 'em when they're young,
when they're small, when they're like...
this tall, whatever that is.
Grade 2, grade 3.
You gotta sit 'em down, look 'em right in the eye and say,
"Okay, kid, you think Canadian history's boring?
"Canadian history's not boring!
"Canadian history is about blood and guts
"and explosions and adventures.
"It's about rogues and pirates and drunken sodomites."
And that's just Parliament Hill in the 1970s!
[applause]
Canadian history is about fighting long and hard
on the right side of two world wars.
It's about leading the world in opposing Apartheid.
It's about inventing insulin, the zipper,
and the Robinson screwdriver.
It's about the fact that, in 1969, in Alberta,
a bartender invented the only known cure for the hangover,
the Bloody Caesar.
[applause and cheering]
Yes!
And I say, now that we finally got Terry Fox on the $5 bill,
let's get the bartender on the toonie.
[laughter and applause]
Yes.
I'm so glad we finally got Terry Fox on our currency!
Because...
[applause]
Yeah.
Because he is the greatest Canadian!
He's also the last Canadian we all agree on.
[laughter]
Recently in my hometown, St. John's, Newfoundland,
the city council down there passed a motion:
they are no longer going to name anything after anyone,
living or dead.
[laughter]
And when they were asked why, they said,
"Well, because people are human."
[laughter]
So, in a bold display of political courage,
they're sidestepping humanity.
I get where they're coming from.
Naming things is tricky.
Every time you turn around in this country,
someone is demanding that someone's name
come off a building or a park or a street.
And usually that person is Sir John A. Macdonald.
And his name is on a lotta shit.
Oh, they did an audit; his name is on like 100,000 things.
Meanwhile, there's one little street in Orillia
named after Gordon Lightfoot.
[laughter]
But you know what, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if those people win.
It doesn't matter if those names are taken off a building
or a park or any of that.
It doesn't matter, because history is history.
Facts are facts,
and nothing, nothing will ever change the fact
that Sir John A. Macdonald was Canada's first
and drunkest prime minister.
[laughter]
[applause]
He was not what you call a stand-up drunk.
He was a fall-down drunk.
That's how they knew question period was over.
[laughter]
He'd be answering a question and just go over the railing.
So, never mind taking his name off a building.
Actually, pulling down one of the statues
and seeing it fall face-first in the grass,
that's somewhat historically accurate.
[laughter]
He was once asked,
"What's the most he ever spent on a bottle of whisky?"
He said, "45 minutes."
[laughter and applause]
And now, I wasn't lying when I said this is a dream of mine
to travel across the country with really funny comedians,
and we're gonna meet one of them now.
He's a very funny young man,
originally from Hamilton, Ontario.
You can watch his special on YouTube called
"Live at the Blue Grotto."
Please welcome the one and only Mayce Galoni.
[applause and cheering]
¶
-Hello!
Aw, man!
Thank you!
My name's Mayce, hello.
Uh, like Rick said, I am from Hamilton, Ontario.
Uh, all right, yeah, that's about the reaction
that that should get.
That was pretty decisive, wow.
[laughter]
I actually grew up in a rural area
outside of Hamilton called Binbrook,
and we had a lot of pets growing up.
And this is true, for a few years
we actually had a pet Canadian goose,
which-- that's actually a great pet to have,
especially if you're someone who's ever thought to yourself,
"You know, I'd love to get a pitbull,
"I'm just worried it won't be aggressive enough."
[laughter]
If I could just get something that's more dangerous,
but could attack from any angle.
Like a rattlesnake with wings,
that's what I'm looking for... in a pet.
Then Canadian goose might be the pet for you.
[laughter]
They're such confident animals.
They're so confident, they walk around like they own the place.
I think they think they do because they see themselves
on the money, that's the problem.
They see themselves beside the Queen, and they're like,
"Well, I guess I'm a part of the royal family.
"I'm a prince, basically."
When you see them flying south,
they're heading to Epstein's island.
[laughter]
[people hollering]
Oh...
Is that where we cross the line, St. John?
Are we...?
[laughter]
You're like, "Don't talk smack about our national bird!"
[laughter]
I know that joke wasn't for everybody,
but next time you see it flying, we all will think of it,
and we'll remember being here, together, right now.
But, you know, we didn't try to get a goose.
We didn't plan on getting one, we just, we rescued it
when it was a baby from a construction site,
and then pretty quickly, it just imprinted on us.
Do you guys know what that is, imprinting?
That's where it shits all over your couch, you know?
[laughter]
Oh, good, you guys know imprinting, that's good.
And she was a great goose.
She was, you know-- she was an indoor-outdoor goose.
She would follow us around, and I remember we had her
when I was just starting high school,
first day of grade 9, I was in the driveway,
waiting for the bus, and she waited right beside me.
Don't say, "Aw." I don't know if you know anything
about teenagers, uh...
[laughter]
They're not exactly the most supportive
of when you have a unique point of difference.
She was honking at the bus as it drove up; I was like,
"Get outta here!" What do you do in that scenario?
Like, the first day, you can kinda play that off,
get on the bus, be like, "That was weird, right, everybody?
"Someone left their goose out. That's crazy." But...
Day two, she's still there,
well, now I'm just Goose Boy for the rest of high school.
[laughter]
People kept leaving breadcrumbs around my locker.
[laughter]
She's not with us anymore, unfortunately.
She's in the Canada Goose jacket in the sky.
[laughter]
Oh, that one too, okay, yeah, I should have known
after the Epstein one, but...
[laughter]
It's been so fun being on tour this month
across the country with these comics,
especially because before that,
I was doing some shows in America.
And that's always interesting, doing shows down there,
meeting Americans, finding out what they know about Canadians.
Like, I did a show and a woman came up to me after,
and she goes, "Oh, I love Canada.
"I was actually just there visiting."
I was like, "Oh, cool, what part?"
She goes, "Just downtown."
[laughter]
Downtown, she thinks we have one downtown.
And I got full of pride as a Canadian;
I was like, "No, we have four downtowns."
[laughter]
Downtown, she thinks we're a city, she does.
Even Trump thinks we could be a state.
That's crazy, you know?
I didn't correct her, by the way.
You know, I didn't want to wade into that.
I just let her believe it.
I was just like, "Oh yeah, downtown, that's good.
"That's the best part. Good you went there.
"You don't wanna go uptown. A lot of polar bears uptown."
[laughter]
Whenever I'm down there doing shows, Americans always ask me,
once they find out I'm Canadian,
they ask me if I played hockey growing up.
And I did, I did; I played hockey for six years,
and I don't wanna brag, but according to my trophies,
I was a very good participant.
[laughter]
I said it right there on 'em, you know?
I got a lot of those trophies, I did.
I got six of them; I went six for six, to be honest.
I don't know why they hand those out.
They're not fooling anybody, the participation trophies.
In fact, it's more insulting,
'cause they're basically saying,
"Hey, you're bad at sports, and we think you're dumb.
"So, here you go."
[laughter]
But I played Timbits hockey until I was 12 years old, and--
-[laughter] -Yeah, no...
It's supposed to be under seven, but I got held back, uh...
[laughter]
I knew that I wasn't good.
I knew that I was bad at hockey,
because when you get your pictures taken in hockey
as a kid, they always print them up on little hockey cards
as like a little cute souvenir,
and my family would always try to trade them
for better players, so...
[laughter]
I heard 'em in the parking lot, like, "Come on,
"I'll give you five Galonis for one Tyler, please."
[laughter]
But I got out of hockey before hockey fighting starts.
Which is objectively a crazy part of the game, right?
We just accept it in Canada, but it is weird that that's--
'cause that's not a part of the game; it's not in the rules.
If you're teaching someone hockey, you're never like,
"All right, so what you gotta do is try to put that puck
"in that net, and then if you feel like it,
"you just punch that guy in the face."
That's crazy, and that's the only--
for a lot of people, this is their job.
They play hockey professionally, that's their job.
That's the only job you can have where you just punch someone
in the middle of your shift.
You never show up at Sobeys,
and there's some jacked-up big Russian cashier,
no idea how to use the equipment, no finesse,
he's just manhandling your tomatoes.
And you're like, "Hey, how'd that guy get hired?"
And they're like, "Oh, Vlad?
"Every once in a while, we just send him across the street
"to beat the shit out of the guys at No Frills."
[laughter]
Thanks a lot, everybody!
That's all for me. Have a good night!
[applause and cheering]
In 1969, Pierre Elliott Trudeau gave a very famous speech
in Washington, DC, in which he said
Canada, living next to the United States,
was like a mouse sleeping with an elephant.
And he was bang-on with that analogy.
But what's interesting is Canadians
weren't offended by the analogy.
Nobody got upset by it.
We agreed with it, and we didn't mind being the mouse.
And why didn't we mind being the mouse?
Because we liked the elephant, and the elephant liked us.
It was a happy elephant, it was a smiling elephant,
with big floppy ears like Dumbo!
It even had the word "dumb" in the name.
It was perfect!
And we loved Dumbo, and Dumbo did a lot for us.
Dumbo protected us.
Nobody fucks with the mouse when Dumbo's in the house.
[laughter]
It was like me in grade 3 gettin' on the school bus,
cocky as Larry.
My brother was there, so no one ever looked at me,
no one touched me, 'cause I had protection!
But the kids that didn't have that,
their lunch was everyone's lunch.
That's the power of Dumbo.
And then something terrible happened to Dumbo,
and now it's like,
"Okay, who gave crystal meth to the elephant?"
[laughter]
[applause]
Oh...
[applause and cheering]
Relationships between countries go up and down.
But, for me, the thing that changed everything,
the straw that broke the camel's back,
the third rail...
was when he started saying we have to become
the 51st state.
[audience booing]
I know. I know.
And, at first, you know, they came out and they said,
"Oh, he's joking."
And then we thought, "Yes, of course, he's joking."
'Cause we couldn't imagine a world in which
the president of the United States would be saying
that Canada had to become the 51st state.
But then he came out and said, "I'm not joking.
"You have to become the 51st state."
The only good that has come from him saying
that we have to become the 51st state...
is now Americans know how many states they have.
[laughter and applause]
Yeah.
[applause continues]
He's the education president!
[laughter]
But clearly, this erratic behaviour south of the border,
I mean, it has had a profound impact on Canadians.
I mean, so much so, we did something recently
that I didn't think we would do.
In fact, we did something recently that I...
wasn't even sure we'd do again in my lifetime.
We...
elected the Liberals.
[laughter]
How did we do that again?
We re-elected the Liberals?
I mean, it wasn't that long ago, Canada, there was only
one thing uniting this country.
We were gonna throw out the Liberals.
No, we weren't gonna throw out the Liberals.
We were gonna hurt the Liberals.
We were gonna punish the Liberals.
It was gonna be a bloodbath.
And then an election got called, the shit hit the fan,
Dumbo went berserk, and we elected the banker.
[applause and cheering]
Wow!
[applause continues]
Mark Carney, the banker!
[audience members cheering]
Do you know what's interesting about the occupation of banker?
Nothing!
[laughter]
Nothing!
[laughter]
But do you know who I feel the worst for?
And to be clear, when I say the worst...
I mean in the entire world.
Pierre Poilievre.
[laughter]
I mean, whew!
I...
I don't know how he gets out of bed in the morning.
I mean, my God, this guy...
This guy...
This guy had a 30-point lead
over the Liberals for two years.
A lead like that, for that long, that is unheard of
in the history of polling in the industrialized world.
My God, no one ever has a lead like that for that long!
There's an expression or a saying in politics,
where when someone has a lead that's so far out
that it is inconceivable that they can lose,
and the expression is,
"The only way that guy can lose the election
"is if he's found in bed with a dead woman
"or a live boy."
[laughter]
Well, now there's a new expression.
The only way he can lose the election
is if he pulls a Pierre Poilievre
and tells everyone Canada's broken.
[someone whistles]
Canada's broken, oh my God.
The whole thing was just so embarrassing.
He wanted to win so bad.
It wasn't that he wanted to win so bad.
He knew he was gonna win.
He knew he was gonna win, so during the entire campaign,
he took all his players off the ice.
None of the Conservatives were allowed to talk to the press
except for him, and he wasn't paying attention to anything
that was going on, and then every now and then
he'd say something about Trudeau,
and Trudeau was long gone,
he was like skiing in the Alps and growing his hair long...
[laughter]
And then, in the middle of the election,
he gave himself a makeover so he'd look cool,
took off the glasses and threw 'em away.
Ended up looking like some guy who nailed himself in the face
with bug spray.
[laughter]
[applause and cheering]
Now he's got that, like, discount laser version
vision vibe about him.
Oh, it was rough. And then...
and then on Election Night,
okay, so the Conservatives didn't form the government,
and I felt terrible for them,
my Tory friends or anyone who voted for them,
because they were so close. I mean, they came so close.
That was a tough blow.
And then Pierre, he didn't become prime minister,
and he thought he was gonna become prime minister, but...
[sighs] Not only that...
[laughter]
He lost his seat.
[laughter]
[applause and cheering]
No...
No, no...
No, no. Listen...
That's a blow. That's a real blow
because that means he lost his job,
because he was leader of the opposition,
and in order to be leader of the opposition,
he had to have a seat, and he didn't have a seat,
so he was no longer leader of the opposition. And then...
he wouldn't leave the house!
[laughter]
'Cause the leader of the opposition gets a house
that we pay for, and he wouldn't leave the house!
He became a squatter.
[laughter]
Except a squatter with like a nanny and a chef
that we pay for.
I don't know. He keeps saying Canada's broken.
Seems to be working for him.
[laughter]
But now he's back.
He's back.
He's on the Hill right now.
Further to the whole "Canada's broken" thing,
we had to have a whole by-election
just so he could get his job back.
Only cost us $2 million.
Now he's good to go, and he's back.
And I'll say this about him...
When he got knocked down, he got up,
and he dusted himself off,
and he ran for re-election
in the safest Conservative seat in all of Canada.
[laughter]
And that, my friends, is what I call courage.
[laughter]
Or at least...
that's what I'm gonna say to him
if I ever sit next to him on a plane.
[laughter]
[applause and cheering]
So, our next performer is an international headliner.
She's a Canadian Screen Award winning writer and producer,
and perhaps you've heard of her very popular podcast,
"Bothered."
Please welcome the one and only Julie Kim!
[applause and cheering]
¶
-Ooh!
Hello!
Thank you so much. Hi, everybody.
My name is Julie Kim.
I just want to share one fact about me,
and that is that I am an eldest daughter.
Yes.
Beware. Beware.
Eldest daughters are terrifying people, everybody,
because we never had a childhood.
[laughter]
It's a very tough gig, you know?
You turn five, and your parents are like,
"You're a man now."
[laughter]
My parents had me very shortly after they immigrated to Canada.
I grew up in Toronto, and they immigrated from South Korea,
and may I tell you, I am very surprised even today
that there are so many people that have never heard
of South Korea, a country in East Asia.
I know, it's okay.
Not everybody is well-travelled or reads, you know? So...
[laughter]
And that's okay, I don't judge.
To those people, I just say, basically what I'm saying is,
I am Chinese, okay?
[laughter]
Arigato .
[laughter]
And we weren't that different from a lot of families
that started off in Canada.
We definitely had humble beginnings.
We didn't have a lot growing up.
My parents, they worked very, very hard.
They were small business owners,
and they had a convenience store.
Oh, some of you are aware of stereotypes, okay?
[laughter]
I'll give you a minute, okay?
[laughter]
No, it's very hard work. It's very hard work.
They were working with their hands on the ground.
They did everything.
Sometimes they worked 18-hour days.
And it was dangerous, too.
They would often get robbed.
Sometimes they would get robbed at knife-point
with threats of serious harm.
And other times I would just snatch the money
and run, you know?
[laughter]
But we're moving past that.
Who wants to live in the past, you know?
So now we're okay.
Everything's okay. Everybody is okay.
We're doing fine financially.
But it's very hard to leave that survival mode
in the beginning, you know what I mean?
That's why a lot of people in my family
have poor people habits, you know?
Yeah, especially my parents, all right?
They are very, very cheap.
Yeah. They haggle everywhere they go.
They will haggle anywhere. They haggle at Costco.
-[laughter] -I know.
They don't even have a membership, like... pssht!
[laughter]
And they have so much stuff.
They cannot get rid of anything.
I would dare to say they are hoarders.
Capital H hoarders. They have so much stuff.
And they do have a new system, though.
I'll share it with you.
Okay, if they haven't used an item in 25 years...
uh, they keep it.
-[laughter] -Just...
right in the living room, and...
It's very embarrassing to go out with them also.
Now, my parents are still in Toronto.
I now live in Vancouver, British Columbia,
and I go back to visit them, yeah,
and we will go out to eat at restaurants.
And not a lot; they are still frugal,
but when we do go out,
there's one place that we love to go to.
Now, this is the place that, when I was growing up,
this was our special occasion place.
This was the place where my parents said,
"Okay, it's someone's birthday. Get dressed up.
"We're gonna have a fancy dinner."
And we still love that place. And maybe you do, too.
Tell me if you agree. We just love...
Swiss Chalet. Anyone?
-[applause and cheering] -Right?
It's the best.
It is the best. I don't know what it is.
I mean, I love the sauce. I love a rotisserie chicken.
I love to eat in a nursing home. You know, so...
[laughter]
...many things.
But the embarrassing part comes when we're done dinner
because my parents will not leave a restaurant
without bringing something home, okay?
And last time, last time, my dad brought home
the smallest amount of food.
It was like 1/8 of an eaten baked potato, everybody.
It was nothing.
It looked disgusting. It was like smooshed.
There was like sour cream, cheese and butter in there,
and he carried it home in a big paper box.
And it was like, Dad, what are you doing?
That's not even like a lot of food.
It's barely worth as much as the container it's in.
Also, the lady at the other table eating it
was not finished. Like...
[laughter]
Thank you so much, everybody! Goodnight!
[applause and cheering]
RICK: So, um...
earlier I was talking about, you know,
the famous Canadians that were on the show that I had.
I don't want to brag...
but we had every living prime minister.
[applause]
That's the definition of a polite Canadian response
right there.
[laughter]
Perhaps more impressive, every member of Rush.
[applause and cheering]
Members of the Tragically Hip.
[applause and cheering]
One member of the Tragically Hip that was never on the show
was Gord Downie.
And I used to ask Gord Downie to come on the show a lot
because he lived in my neighbourhood,
so I'd see him at Sobeys.
[laughter]
And I'd ask him to come on the show and he'd say,
"Yes, if you're stuck."
And I never pushed him.
But I'll never forget the first conversation
I ever had with Gord Downie because I was such a huge fan.
I was a kid. I was like 21, 22 years old.
It was the early days of "This Hour Has 22 Minutes,"
and I was at work one night and the phone rings and I answer it.
Someone asks for me. I say, "Yes, this is Rick."
And the voice says, "This is Gord Downie calling."
I mean, I almost shit my pants. I mean...
[laughter]
That doesn't happen. Your favourite rock star calls?
I was a huge fan.
I'd never spoken to the man, but I'd seen The Hip twice.
I was a huge fan.
And I said, "What can I do for ya?"
And he said, "Can you do me a favour?"
I said, "Yes, of course. What do you need?"
And he said, "Well, I'm here with The Hip.
"We're in Bermuda.
"We're recording some songs for our new album,
"and I have this song I've written
"and it has some Newfoundland place names in it,
"and I'm in the studio and it dawns on me,
"maybe I'm not saying the name of this town
"the way a Newfoundlander would say it.
"'Cause I know you guys have unique ways
"of pronouncing things sometimes."
And I said, "Well, what's the name of the town?"
And he said, "Isle aux Morts."
I said, "That's exactly right. Isle aux Morts."
He said, "You sure?" I said, "100%. Isle aux Morts."
He said, "Thanks, man. That means a lot."
I said, "No problem."
And he said, "You live in Halifax, right?"
I'm like, "Yeah, that's where we do the show."
He said, "Okay, we'll be touring this album
"in like seven months or something.
"Give me your email address and I'll make sure
"you get a couple of tickets." So I gave him my email address.
And I'm sitting there,
can't believe I've had this call, and then,
"ding," two minutes later, I get an email from Gord Downie,
and I'm like, "Oh my God,
"I've got Gord Downie's email address!"
[laughter]
"He's gonna regret that!"
[laughter]
And all the email said was "Thanks very much."
And I answered him back and I said,
"You know what? No problem.
"If you ever need to know how to pronounce
"a town in Newfoundland, I'm your man.
"But if you want to talk to the real expert,
"you could always talk to my father,
"Ken Mercer in Middle Cove."
Hah-hah-hah.
And then I never thought about it.
Three days later, I'm talking to my father...
[laughter]
And he says, "Oh, your friend Gord called."
[laughter]
I didn't even know what he was talking about.
I said, "What?" He said, "Yeah, your friend Gord called.
"He wanted to know about, uh, Isle aux Morts."
And I was like, "Are you kiddin' me?"
He said, "Yeah, I told him that I took you and your brother
"down there fishing when you were small,
"and he was curious if you got any fish.
"I said, Yeah, it was a great trip,
"we got a bunch of brook trout,
"but it's good salmon down there,
"but you were too small to go after that.
"Then he asked about the salmon rivers in Newfoundland,
"and I told him I worked for the Department of Fisheries
"as a young man on the salmon rivers.
"And then he was very curious about Labrador.
"He asked-- I think he wants to go to Labrador."
And I said, "Dad... do you know who that was?"
He's like, "No." I said, "That's Gord Downie.
"That's the lead singer of the Tragically Hip."
"That's like my favourite rock band.
"They're like the biggest rock band in Canada.
"And not only that, he's considered
"the greatest songwriter of our generation.
"He's like our poet laureate."
And Dad said,
"Oh..."
[laughter]
"He never mentioned that."
[laughter]
"He just said he was Gord from Kingston."
[laughter]
And I said, "They're in Bermuda recording a song
"and he wanted to make sure he was pronouncing
"Isle aux Morts right.
And Dad said, "Oh my God, he was calling from Bermuda?"
[laughter]
"I feel terrible now.
"That's long distance."
[laughter]
Anyways, six months later,
I walk into my parents' house,
and in the living room, they got a coffee table there,
and it's got a piece of glass on it,
and it's always got postcards shoved underneath the glass
or a picture of the grandkids or something like that.
Anyway, I walk in and there's this beautiful print
under the glass.
It's this beautiful nighttime scene of a lake
and there's a moon and like there's a loon and these trees,
and it's just stunning.
And it's all these dark blues, and I look down in the corner--
it's an original print, it's numbered and signed.
And I'm looking at it, and it looks familiar,
and then I realize...
I'm looking at the cover of the new Tragically Hip album
that just came out like the week previous.
So, I yell out to Dad, who's in the kitchen baking bread,
and I'm like, "Dad, you have the original artwork
"of the cover of the new Tragically Hip album
"under the glass on the coffee table."
And Dad was like,
"Oh, yeah, your friend Gord from Kingston sent me that."
[laughter and applause]
So, I never did get to ask Gord what it means to be a Canadian,
but he was a fine example of a great one.
[applause and cheering]
RICK: This next artist, she's one of my favourite
comedians working today. She won the Juno Award,
the first woman to win the Juno Award
for Best Comedy Album.
Please welcome Sophie Buddle.
[applause and cheering]
¶
-Thank you.
Wow.
This is so much fun.
It is so great to be back on the East Coast.
I love it. Yesterday, we took that long-ass road to PEI.
That's a real Maritimer way to cross the sea.
[laughter]
"Oh, we'll just take the car."
[laughter]
This has really been such an incredible tour.
We've been all across Canada. We were in Montreal.
That's where I was born.
That's where both my parents are from.
And every time I'm in Montreal, I like to go see the cathedrals.
I'm not really religious, but I like the candles.
What you do is you go over and you blow them out
and you make a wish.
[laughter]
The little water you put pennies in.
It's just really special.
And my parents, you know, met in Montreal,
and they always told me that they met on moving day.
[chuckles]
Couple people know what I'm talking about already.
So, my dad was a mover, and so I figured moving day
was a day that my mom was moving,
but it turns out, as the gigglers can attest,
Moving Day is a national mandated holiday in Quebec
where you have to move.
Have you ever heard of anything so French?
[laughter]
"Oh, what's the holiday today?"
" Allons-y , bitch..."
[laughter]
"Keep it moving."
Yeah, Montreal's crazy.
And we also were in Vancouver.
When I finished high school, I moved to Vancouver.
I lived in Vancouver for 10 years,
and everybody loves Vancouver.
"Oh, Vancouver's so pretty, so beautiful."
I'm here today to tell you the downsides
of Vancouver, okay?
As soon as I moved there, I got attacked...
by birds.
[laughter]
They swoop down and they grab your head
and your hair with their talons.
And when you're a little girl,
you sort of think you're gonna wake up in the morning
and birds are gonna dress you...
like a Disney princess, but they just kept trying to scalp me
in front of shoppers.
And it happened to me over and over again
when I moved there, and so I was telling my friends
that this was happening, and my friends all said
the same thing to me; they were like,
"You know, crows are so smart."
[laughter]
Just like kind of insulting me. Like...
that doesn't happen with other animal attacks.
You don't get like mauled by a dog and then people go,
"You know, dogs hate the ugly."
[laughter]
But no, I did come up with a solution
to stop the crow attacks.
If you visit Vancouver, you can do this too.
I just started dressing like a scarecrow.
[laughter]
And I think maybe a lot of other people thought of it too,
because it's kind of the Vancouver uniform.
[laughter]
You know what I mean?
It's a lot of like toques and flannel and ripped jeans
and a stick up their ass.
[laughter]
[applause]
There's a lot of other problems in Vancouver too.
You know, there's a lot of homelessness in Vancouver,
and I think everybody's very judgemental of homeless people
because we see them doing crazy stuff on the street.
This time we were in Vancouver, I was walking down the street,
a homeless man was walking towards me,
and he was holding a ceramic mug full of coffee,
question mark, you know?
Full of brown.
And he threw it into the street, hard, which I liked.
'Cause I also hate to hold stuff.
Have you ever held something?
It's the worst thing that could ever happen to a person.
Girls understand. Holding stuff is very demeaning.
That's why I have nails like this.
If anybody here is like considering
becoming a long-nail girl,
I just really cannot recommend it enough.
It just really tells the world, "I can't help you."
[laughter]
I don't know.
And so he's walking towards me, he throws his cup;
I'm like, "Yes, that's my girl!"
But he spins, and he throws his entire body into me,
and then I'm like, "Whoop, sorry."
Because I'm Canadian, right? What do you say?
And then he goes, "Don't sorry me, Boobs!"
[laughter]
And then all day after that, I was like, "That was so nice."
[laughter]
I've been trying to figure out why that was
such a positive interaction to me.
I think what it is, is like, I have so many body insecurities
and stuff, it was just really nice to hear that "boobs"
is still the headline.
[laughter]
But okay, I'll start to wrap up now.
You guys have been awesome. This is so much fun.
And, you know, I will tell you, I did move to America.
I wanted to see it before it ends.
[laughter]
[chuckles]
But I've been trying to help them.
I've been trying to make America a better place
for everybody, you know?
One thing that I've been recommending to them
that I think is something that we really take for granted
is having more than just two political parties.
I think that it's something that's so important, and,
you know, they don't realize that you get some bullshit ones
that are just for fun.
[laughter]
I've been trying to explain to Americans the Bloc Québécois.
[laughter]
They don't even believe me.
I'm like, "Okay, we have a party in Canada
that's a real party, you know..."
[laughter]
Comme ci, comme ça . But it's a real party.
It only gets votes in the little French area.
It's run by French people.
All their policies are like French bullshit.
Moving Day...
[laughter]
And they get to be in the debates with regular people.
We'll be having a big, serious, important debate
about Canada. It'll go to our Conservative, and he's like,
"We need to cut everything.
"We need to cut single mothers' arms off..."
[laughter]
"...for the economy."
Goes to our Liberal, and he's like,
"We need to support single mothers with no arms."
[laughter]
And then it goes to our Bloc Québécois guy
and he's like, "Cigarettes should be cheaper for children."
[laughter]
"They are smaller, they don't smoke as much."
[laughter]
And the moderator has to be like,
"That's a really good point."
They tried to separate from Canada.
They tried to become their own country.
How's that gonna hold up on a global economy
when your only resource is acrobats?
[laughter]
[applause]
What does being Canadian mean to me?
Talking shit about the Bloc Québécois!
Thank you guys so much!
[applause and cheering]
¶
RICK: Sophie Buddle!
[applause]
In all the years, all the years of asking people,
"What does it mean to be a Canadian?"
I was always looking for that short, pithy answer
that would put the question to bed,
and I never, ever got it.
But I will tell you the closest that I've come,
and that is this:
that I have no idea what it means to be a Canadian,
but I do know I've never, ever wanted to be anything else but.
[applause and cheering]
Thank you for coming out
to the Stand Up for Canada Comedy Tour.
Thank you for all the support over the years,
and in the words of our celebrity announcer,
Vive le Canada !
[applause and cheering]
¶