has created a culture that almost exclusively holds winter events as the defining moments in the country’s sports history. Some of the best-defined cultural events of the past fifty years have involved the game of hockey. Arguably none was more significant than Paul Henderson’s goal to win the Summit Series with Russia (okay, they called themselves the Soviet Union, but to Canadians they were Russians) in 1972. Canadians also recall the collective joy of the nation following Mario Lemieux’s goal for Team Canada in 1987 in the penultimate match with those same Russians.
Hockey defines Canadians so much now that politicians use the winter sport as a benchmark to create new legislation.
One has only to consider a proposed Federal holiday brought forward in February 2009 by Linda Duncan, an Edmonton MP. In her proposal, Duncan argued that the third Friday of February be declared, as one might have already guessed, “Hockey Day.”
Duncan’s proposal, not surprisingly, was quick fodder for the national media. Any story involving hockey and politics gets the attention of Canadians. Its presence on websites inspired a flurry of comments and sparked vigorous debates from Canadians throughout the nation. Some comments by Canadians online spoke directly to the state of Canada’s culture. Some wondered how Canadians have got to the point where the nation, once joked about as being a hockey-playing, beer-drinking, parka-wearing fraternity, now had politicians proposing holidays directly catering to some of these oversimplifications. Had we become a country requiring a holiday to tell us what we already knew to be our story? Duncan defended her proposal, saying, “Hockey has served as a unifying force throughout our history and it is a significant facet of our national identity.”
Duncan tapped into a distinctly Canadian myth that we are somehow uniquely strong and capable of living with, and even prospering in, long winters, as opposed to the easier ability of people in warmer climates to address their challenges. The holiday would help ease the Canadian difficulty in surviving long, harsh winters.
“People need days off in the winter to fight the blues, and what better holiday could there be than one that would celebrate our national game?” Duncan explained.
This is not a new concept. Winter has been a major influence on the comments and actions of prominent Canadian statesmen and politicians. In 1866, Nova Scotia statesman Joseph Howe cheekily viewed Canada as not being able to fully loosen its shackles.
“[We] may be pardoned if we prefer London under the Dominion of John Bull to Ottawa under the domination of Jack Frost,” he remarked.
Prominent politicians, like popular Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, also noted Canada’s relationship with its unique weather patterns. “Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain,” he said.
A curling team sponsored by Sangster, circa 1915.
Trudeau’s political counterpart, conservative politician Joe Clark, joined the fray of characterizing Canada as a winter wonderland in his description of Canada as “The Winter half of North America.”
Politicians seemingly have no problem creating sound bites signifying a long-standing overexaggeration of Canada’s climate, even if their comments don’t necessarily apply to the majority of Canadians who live in somewhat more temperate regions of the country.
Generalizing Canada’s identity as a winter nation has its roots in the ways Canadians define their country. While cold winters certainly affect northern Canada, and cities such as Edmonton or Calgary, frosty, unbearable winters are not as applicable to residents of Windsor, Toronto, and Vancouver, which contain the majority of Canadians.
Torontonians share a climate similar to Buffalo, New York (but with less snow), and Detroit (but with less laid-off auto workers) for the majority of the year. Being Canadian, however, allows them to travel abroad and proudly declare that they are like winter soldiers who are able to endure the roughest of Canadian winters, while reassuring southerners, tongue firmly planted in cheek, that they don’t live in igloos, as their new house was built with bricks and mortar.
It’s a misconception of sorts that Canadians love to exploit in the manner of people who have lived so long with an ironic self-image they now believe it to be fact. Rick Mercer, a popular Canadian CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) comic, famously went to the United States to prey on unsuspecting Americans 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