From pri, Public Radio International. From PRI Public Radio. PRI Public Radio, Public Radio, Public Radio Radio International. From wbc, Chicago's American Life America.
And our program today really began at a dinner conversation about a month ago. Three members of this American Life staff, Elise, Nancy and Paul, were eating together. Well, we were all in Italias. I don't know how it came up.
I don't know which one of us brought it up. I don't know how it started. I don't know how it first came up. I don't even remember how we got on the topic, honestly.
But we started mentioning Canadians, and I guess I was doing most of it as the Canadian in the group. He started with William Shatner, and I thought that was wrong. What did he say? That he was Canadian.
People had recently. Freedom. That's what he said about him. That's all he said about him.
That he was Canadian? Yeah. And what's the problem with that? Well, the problem is that I grew up watching, you know, Star Trek, and he's just.
He is like my American ideal. I mean, he represented for me everything that's good about America. In a way, Elise was saying, you know, if William Shatner is Canadian, I might as well be Canadian. This isn't just that there are Canadians among us, it's that they're at the very epicenter of our culture.
It's the guy who created Saturday Night Live and Jim Carrey and Michael J. Fox. It's Mike Myers and the blonde from Baywatch, Pamela Anderson Lee. And the director of the Terminator films, James Cameron is Matthew Perry and Jason Priestley, Alanis Morissette and Celine Dion, and the basic Courtney Luxembourg.
I remember Elise being continually and repeatedly amazed. I was shocked. I was very shocked. I mean, she stopped eating, I think, and she.
And it wasn't just that, you know, she'd be shocked at one and would then sort of go on. I mean, she'd come back to ones that were shocking earlier. You know, Peter Jennings, I can't believe it. I remember at least being really freaked out with Peter Jennings.
Peter Jennings especially, but he's just a newsreader. But he delivers information about America to Americans. He's like the leader who binds us together. Yeah.
And he interprets our culture for us. So it's like having, you know, some, like Czechoslovakian is like your vice president or something. I mean, it's just, like, wrong. There's something about that.
It's wrong. She just thought it was wrong like that actually there should be an actual law against it for there to be A Canadian broadcasting the news. Well, anchoring on that one, I mean I think CNN should probably let it. CNN anchoring Canadian but not abc.
Well, I think that Americans generally think of Canadians as a pretty quiet non script say on kind of culture. And when Canadians come to the United States and have a kind of impact on culture, I think it's a surprising fact. But I also think that it's a little disturbing and spooky for Americans because they have no, you know, it's like, it's like suddenly discovering that everything you believed about someone was false. I guess it's the whole invasion of the body snatcher syndrome.
You know, they look like us but they're not us. It's weirdly like people hearing that somebody they didn't know was gay is gay and it turns them back on themselves that they could brush so close and not known. He's Canadian, so that's why he never married. Exactly.
The thing about the Canadians among us is it's not clear what it means. Well, I think that's part of what is so compelling about it is that it doesn't, it doesn't suggest anything. You know, it's not, it's not that, you know, oh, he's Russian, he must be communist, you know, oh he's French, he must be rude. They're just, it's just a sense of that they're a little off somehow in some way that you don't, you don't understand and you can't pin it down and that, that makes it all more unsettling.
You can't put it anywhere and just have it rest there. It's just sort of continually surprising and disturbing. What's an occurrence. We try to make some sense out of what it means having this Canadian menace among us.
If it is a menace. All this. Our stories by and about Canadians and hermits. Act One, white like me.
One Canadian's attempted passing in New York City. Act Two, the world's most perfect pneumatic vacuum image around Sarah Vallau arm wrestles with Ian Brown of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation over what it means to be American and what it means to be Canadian and if they are any different at all. Act three, an expose on the pro Canadian bias and Peter Jennings nightly newscast for ABC and more. Act four, who's Canadian?
Two siblings separated not at birth. One gauntlet in Winnipeg, one gauntlet in Manhattan. Their story stay with us. Act one white like me.
As a 17 year old, David Rakoff moved from Toronto, Ontario to New York City. He's been in there for Half his life works in publishing and as a writer and actor. His merry life. Listeners may remember his story about portraying Sigmund Freud in the Christmas windows at Barney's months ago.
David Rock says that from day that he arrived in New York City, he decided he was going to try to efface his Canadianness and pass for a local. My tactics were to adopt a certain kind of world weary, jaded, anxious neuroticism. And it was taken on as a cosmetic mantle at the beginning until such time as, you know, you simply can't pull the mask off your face. Oh, my God.
It's not. There you are years later, a jaded, affectless, neurotic, disenchanted, sad person. But, you know, that's. That's fine.
Would you consciously not bring up the fact that you were from Canada at any point? Anything happened in those years? No, no, I would never consciously notice it bring up because it would, amazingly enough, make me more exotic. Because let's face it, in New York City, I'm a Jewish guy with dark hair who works in publishing with a gift for the Gap.
You know, I meet myself Canadian going 12 to 14 times an hour. So, you know, occasionally I'll need that little bit of spice. But what's more spicy than being Canadian? I ask.
I'm told that Canadians tend to know who else is Canadian, you know, who's famous all the time? Everything. And that to me is chemical. You know, they're the easy ones.
You know, Glenn Ford, Kate and Elgin. Hume Cronin. Cowboy junkies. Monty Hall.
Monty Hall. Wait. Monty Hall. Joseph.
Let's Make a Deal. Yeah. Who could be more American than Joseph? Let's Make a Deal.
Even the name let's Make a Deal. And yet, remember, Monty only facilitated the deals. And I guess that named Monty. There you go.
Who else? Glenn Ford, John Kenneth Galbraith. But here's the thing about knowing who's Canadian. I mean, there is a woman named Shania Twain.
She is Canadian. I know that she's Canadian. I do not know who the hell Shania Twain is. I don't know what she does.
And yet for some reason, I know that she's famous in America and that she's Canadian. How did this come up? Do your parents talk to you about it? I literally don't know.
I feel there's a chip in my head or something because I simply happen to know that. Here's the other thing. Borea Salman or you're a Salmon hockey player? I'm not Canadian.
Daryl Sigler? Yes. Canadian. Ira.
I have Never been to a hockey game in my entire life. How do these things enter my brain? But at some point somebody told you, I don't even think so. You know, it comes in off the breeze or in a cold front.
And I know, I just know in my heart who's Canadian. It's so strange. And of course, you know the arm on your space shuttle. I'm sorry?
The arm on your space shuttle for making interstellar repairs. In Canada, the space shuttle is referred to as the American space shuttle with Canadian build arm. Never any other way as in the American space shuttle because the Canadian built arm blew up today. No, that didn't really happen.
No. Well, I was actually here at the time. But the Canadian built arm gets a lot of airplanes. Not down here, huh?
In fact, if you would ask most Canadians, what do you think space shuttles were, they said, oh, you know, to grab and move stuff around in space with an arm, you know, and so when a Canadian finds out that some figure is Canadian, what happens in the heart? Oh, well, your heart has a little bit of a certain special Canadian chamber, opens up and enfolds that name and you keep it. Or if you mention a Canadian, a famous Canadian in conversation to a Canadian without acknowledging it, there's a vague flicker over their eyes like the shadow of an angel's wing passing. And then conversation will go on and on, and then frisk.
And after that they'll say, oh, you know, he's Canadian, by the way. Of course, it's all you've been waiting to say, the entire conversation. This is a conversation with a Canadian or non Canadian. If a non Canadian says to you, and you are a Canadian, but you can do it with a Canadian too, but with a non Canadian.
If you and I were talking, I would bring up Monty Hall. Monty hall, which happens so often. Just the other day when we were talking about what was in your purse, remember? And I would be compelled, you would actually say, at some point, you know, he's Canadian.
I wouldn't. Not even at some point. Let's try it. Go on.
You suck. All right. So anyway, I was in the car and my way to work, and it's that song from Bachman Turner Overdrive. That's how I do it.
I don't even wait. I don't even wait. And then I'll tell you, taking care of business. They're about that.
They're Canadian. I don't even. I don't even bother waiting. Very effective.
And it always also begs the question, which is, oh, are you Canadian? Really? People Ask that. Well, of course they'd ask that.
I mean, it's a little unbalanced if, you know, if one wasn't, don't you think that would be some strange behavior? I have to say here that somebody who grew up as a Jew in suburban Baltimore, this game of who's a Canadian? Who's very familiar. Every adult I knew in Baltimore played a very similar game.
See, in my parents iteration there was the game of who's a Jew? Oh, yeah, I'm somewhat familiar with that, with that game. So can you imagine what the devil triumph is if someone's a Canadian Jew? Lorne Green.
You fairly cannot imagine anyone more heroic than Lauren Green. Do you remember this coming up? Do you remember this coming up in your household? Absolutely.
He's Canadian and Jewish too. Who's a Jew? Oh, it was. And imagine how crestfallen everybody was when they found out.
Andrew Martin of Second City tv. Yeah, it's not just not Jewish, she's Armenian, but she's from Maine. She just lived in Canada. And then everybody shrugs and says, well, Armenians, you know, they're very similar and Maine is very close and she lived here for so long.
When you meet a Canadian, do you have certain prejudices about them once you learn that they are Canadian? When I meet them here, yeah. Yes. I worry that they're going to be really literal and take everything that I say totally seriously, even the throwaway remarks.
And then I'm going to have to backtrack and explain myself. I worry that they're going to blow my cover as a Canadian. As a Canadian masquerading as an urban sophisticate. How would they do that in your fantasy of this?
That they would suddenly say, you're not a sophisticated New Yorker, you're just nothing but a tobogganing Canadian, you know, feel that I have to turn in my, you know, my liquor supply, my books and return home. And you know, that in fact, all the quips that I made all over the years turn out to actually been made up by someone else, even though I didn't know it. And so if you know that there's another Canadian in the room, you feel like you've been outed in some way and that you'll be seen as less than the sophisticated that you are. That, yes, you do.
Briefly. Briefly. And then another kind of reserve kicks in and one thinks, well, everybody's gotta come from somewhere, don't they? And in fact, it's a little bit even more vindicating because you have that hole.
So not bad. For a boy from Canada, sort of feeling. David Rakoff IMMIGRANT he's lived in the United States for 15 years. When you first came to this country, there must have been differences between the two cultures that struck you.
Well, there was an adorable. I remember going down to the deli or something one night when I was a freshman in college and looking into the dairy case and seeing that what you called those individually wrapped slices of processed cheese food, American cheese. Yes. And we call it Canadian cheese.
And I of course thought, oh, isn't that cute? They're trying to take credit for Canadian cheese. And now, of course, my feeling is that we should be calling it American cheese and you guys should be calling it Canadian cheese. I mean, it seems like something that one should be throwing the blame right across the 49th aisle, whatever side you're on.
And I thought, oh, that's so. That's adorable. So in Canada, that kind of American cheese that is, that is called Canadian Singles. Yes, Canadian Singles.
Sounds like the name of some bad, important movie. Does it? Just, you know, the Canadian Cameron Crow would write Canadian Singles here late at night. They all work in a coffee house in Guelph, Ontario.
You know, someone were majoring in animal husbandry. There's a whistle up with other people pushing people, shouting at girls over trying to look pretty lady Rackoff discusses things Canadian and things American in his new book, Fraud. Act 2. The world's most perfect pneumatic vacuum.
Canadians, they get our TV shows, eat the same breakfast cereals, drive the same cars, they look like us, they speak the same language, some of them anyway. So are they us? Well, the perfect person to discuss that question with is Ian Brown. For years he was the host of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations program Sunday Morning.
Ian Brown is the perfect person to discuss the differences between Canadian and American culture, not only because he feels his Canadian is so deeply, but because he lived in the United States for years. He loves Americans enough that he married one. He spoke about contributing editor Sarah Vowell back when he was still hosting Sunday Morning. Like most Americans, I don't particularly care about Canada.
But every week I spend three solid hours thinking about goings on in Moose Jaw and Manitoba. The reason is, even though I don't care about Canada, I do care about radio passionately. And my favorite radio program, aside from this one, of course, is Sunday Morning. And the most moving segment of the show is usually host Ian Brown's personal essay at the end.
One week it's about hockey versus basketball, the next about his opposition to a separate Quebec. But what it's really about is the idea of nation. Listening to him ask questions of his country and his place in it. I get to ask those questions of mine.
It's not something we tend to dwell on in American broadcasting, but Brown says that in Canada it happens all the time. And because America's cultural presence is so huge and so near, Canadian self reflection must by definition involve thinking about living next door to such a noisy neighbor. I think, you know, we've developed the same attitudes that say, the Pakistanis have towards India or, you know, other, say, border the Poles have to Russia. American culture somehow seizes you, but at the same time, we're not part of American culture.
In fact, for years, Canadians have defined themselves, or many Canadians have defined themselves as not as being. We're Canadian, we're not American. It's not a very good definition, but it's certainly one that a lot of people, you know. So when you're here without the protection of the border.
Well, exactly. It's pretty swallowed. It's flipped around. You do.
You're always slightly afraid and slightly amazed and slightly aware that you're swirling in some huge vortex that might just suck you down at the same time. And I should say that I don't know whether this is a widely shared view, but one of the reasons why Canadians are so obsessed with America is that it is such an energetic culture. It's so important in the world. It is the great empire of the 20th century has been.
And you can't avoid that. Well, even before the 20th century. I was thinking about this when I was looking at this Canadian history book over the weekend and how almost embarrassingly gradual your path to independence seemed to me. And I was wondering how in the world you could teach schoolchildren about this really kind of complicated, subtle history in a way that would be halfway inspiring.
Well, you struck on quite an important point there. It often isn't inspiring because it is so gradual. We've been talking about the Constitution in this country to my, you know, direct knowledge. I mean, I've been following it since I was about.
Well, the flag debate. You know, I was. I was in my. I was about 11, I guess.
The American flag debate? No, the Canadian flag, when we finally got a flag of our own. And what year was that? Oh, that was 1965.
Fairly late. Oh, yeah, exactly 100 years after, you know, the confederation. Which was also fairly late. Which was also fairly late.
Yeah, sure. No, we're. We're gradualists, you know, we don't like to do anything extreme. And Margaret Atwood Says this is because it's so cold here and you have to be so careful, you know, you'd like to take your clothes off and go running outside.
It's so cold most of the time that you keep at least some of your clothes on even though you're pretending to be naked. Well, I mean, I was thinking about this the other day and I asked, I was, I don't know, engaged in a. I was engaged in a little us versus them debate with a Canadian friend and I was talking about, you know, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and words and phrases like we the people and life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and how these things have had sort of this enormous bearing on me certainly as a writer and being able to say what I think and that it's codified within these governmental structures. And at one point I just said, what's your sound bite?
You know, and he didn't have one. Do you have a, Is there a sound bite of Canadianness? Well, I always like the true north, strong and free myself. That's always, that's always appeal to me.
It's probably imported from somewhere, but that's always the one I like. And the, I think it's Voltaire's description of a few acres of snow. I think he said that. I always liked that image.
A few acres of snow. Doesn't that just make you want to go out and change the world? No. You know what it does is it reminds you that this country, far more than yours, is a physical country.
When you, you folks have all these ideas or so called ideas, you know, manifest destiny, you know, the pursuit of happiness, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, these. But they're ideas, you know, and physically the country doesn't really exist. I mean, I was always amazed that more Americans aren't interested in politics. Your voting participation rate is absolutely abysmal.
I think it's because people can't conceive of the country in any way. It's like a massing together of individualism, but after a while there's so many individualisms that there's nothing collective there. In some ways, Canada has exactly the opposite problem. That we're, we've, we've needed to be collective and for so long it's been impossible to be an individualist and still be a Canadian.
But it has to do with how youthful the country is. I always know I've been in the wilderness quite a bit in both Canada and the United States. I always noticed an incredible difference in Canada. If I go, I don't know, 100 miles north of Winnipeg.
There are places, you know, where you go out into the bush, you go out into the wilderness. And you really do have this sense that you may very well be the first person to be standing there. You know, that this is really virgin territory and you're standing there and that's an incredible feeling because, you know, I'm from Montana and we have that territory, but you don't have the same way. I've been in Montana, I've been on the top of the Teton Mountains and all that.
And you get up there and the sensation you have in the America wilderness is, well, this is incredible because I'm standing where so many people have gone before. Lewis and Clark were here, blah, blah, blah, and all these people, and I'm standing in their footsteps and that is the great thing. Whereas in Canada, it's the exact opposite. No one was here.
I'm the first person. And it has. It has real consequences in America. You know, the great thing you have is your history and your tradition.
The hard thing in America these days, it seems to me, looking at it from afar, is that you can't. It's so hard to think, well, I can do something new, we can break out of the box, like campaign reform. Nobody thinks you can ever fix it, so why the heck try? Whereas in Canada, we have exactly the opposite problem.
We all think, well, I couldn't possibly do this because no one's ever been here and done this before. You know, it really is the. It's like the invert. Well, you're right, except the very idea of America is that even though tons of people have been there, done that, the idea of America is that you don't care.
You know, you just keep going. Yeah, but you've got to be so more and more outlandish. It seems to us the fact that Jerry Springer comes from your country. Oh, thanks for bringing that up.
Well, I'm sorry, but, you know, I mean, how does he fit in the manifestation? That's the end result of it, you know. Well, I mean, we have to take the agony with the ecstasy, you know. Well, that's what makes your country so interesting.
And I think that's why people, you know, stereotype Canada and say it's boring. They think there is no individual spirit here. Wrongly, of course, but they do think that. And we think that.
We think all you've got is yakking. Well, that's interesting. Where someone knew ex for a living, admittedly. Well, I have an American wife, remember?
That's right now, which I'M sure. Well, we won't hold that against you. No, but the Canadians hold it against her. She often complains.
She says, you know, there is a distinct anti American feeling here, and she's a lovely person. People like her. People are always saying, that's so American. When someone talks about somebody being crass or somebody being particularly ambitious or particularly in your face, then they remember she's American and they say, oh, sorry, John, and not you.
You're different. She thinks it's quite widespread. And I will say that as a Canadian, I never noticed anything like that down in America. It was a very, very, very tolerant place until you stand up and say, well, you're Canadians are different than.
They say, well, you're not. You're exactly the same as you. You like Disney too, don't you? They say, well, yeah, we do, but not all the time.
Can you recall, like, one of those particular moments where you felt like an alien or you felt like an American did or said something that seemed completely foreign to you? I was walking along the boardwalk of Manhattan beach in California. Just. Just Manhattan beach is, you know, right on the water and it's beautiful.
I was walking along and I was having an argument with my wife. Not a loud argument, but an argument. We were a debate, I guess you could call it. And we were debating the merits of speaking in front of our children, you know, in front of my daughter, having, Having discussions as if she wasn't there.
And I said, as we were walking along, some guy on rollerblades went by and looked at us. And then he turned around, he came back up to me and he said, man, I want to tell you, man, you know, it like, really lays some heavy lumber. I don't think he said lumber, but, you know, it lays some heavy, heavy groove, you know, on your kids, man, to be fighting in front of them. And I said, well, first of all, we were fighting, we were having a debate, and B, it's none of your business, you know, get out of my face.
That would never happen. You don't have jerks in Canada. It's not jerks. I mean, you probably had a point.
But no Canadian that I've ever encountered would ever deign to even come close to telling you how, you know, publicly. Well, it seems like the things that you've been bringing up, these differences are rather confined to the sphere of minutia. I mean, are the two cultures really separate? Can you separate them?
I think I understand your question. And there are so many similarities that many Canadians, you know, ask much the same Question. We live in a global world. It's a global economy.
We're all the same. Nationalism is for jerks. But specifically, we're very different. We have a parliamentary democracy here.
You know, there are at least two and possibly more parties involved in every single debate. Everything is voted on. We elect our representatives directly to the House of Commons. Our prime minister is chosen from amongst them.
You know, generally speaking, that's not the case in America. You have this complicated checks and balances system which seems to us to have no direct representation at all. And judging from the way the fractions in which you vote, a lot of Americans feel the same way, too. Whereas in Canada, vote of participation is pretty high.
But besides these political differences, I mean, how. Like, for instance, it seems like we have these. We've been having these conversations around here and planning this show where someone says, neil Young, Canadian. Everyone says he's Canadian, you know, or Mike Myers or Pamela Anderson Lee, you know, the blonde bimbo babe of all time.
Canadian. Yeah. I mean, it always ends the same way. And I mean, it seems like despite these small little differences or even huge political ones, it's really hard to tell an American and a Canadian apart.
Well, it depends how you measure them. I mean, Neil Armstrong is a great. Neil Armstrong. He was American, right?
He's American. It's incredible. No, Neil Young is. He's a brilliant songwriter and musician.
So he hits the universal in that way. Yeah, but he's very like. He. He wrote my favorite song, Keep on Rocking in the Free World, which is, to me, maybe one of the most American songs.
You know, it has this incredible beat. It rocks. It's about. It's a condemnation, specifically of the Bush administration, but it's also about hope and imagination, as well as Styrofoam and the ozone layer.
I mean, it's. To me, it's an American song. Well, you know, that's. I think, you defining the song.
It's not Neil defining the song. I mean, one of my favorite songs of his begins, there is a town in North Ontario. You know, I say that's the. That's the emblematic Neil Young song.
And to me, he's. He's hugely Canadian. Not only is he is he hugely Canadian because he writes the songs he does, because so many of them have a northern, isolated feel to them, because they are about strong emotion expressed quietly and expressed in a quiet vessel, but also because his dad was a sportswriter for the Globe and Mail. Everybody read, so I can't.
I can't separate it out. Okay, okay. What about Pamela Anderson leaping. Well, as I say, we're talking about the universal here, aren't we?
You know what they say, I mean, if you want to sell everything, you know, something to everybody, make sure it has a large bus line. So she feels that. They say that marketers sometimes said she, you know, what is she? She's like the most universally pneumatic vacuum in the world.
Well, so it's true. That doesn't feel particularly, particularly Canadian. And I understand why. But, you know, she's not a serious example.
She's a woman. You only want the serious people. I only want to talk about the ones you can actually measure, you know, on a real basis. I mean, I don't know what Pamela Lee was, you know, before was inflated, but I'd be willing to say the old uninflated Pamela Lee, before she became a.
Almost a quintessential Hollywood bombshell. I'll bet you could find Canadian stuff about her. I don't know. It would be an interesting story, that's for sure.
And is the plastic surgery, is it that part of her is now physically American that is definitely American? Oh, absolutely, yeah. That part of Pamela Lee is as American as American ghosts. And I know that you're running out of time, if not, you're out of time on your end, but I just want to ask before we end, what was your favorite thing about being a Canadian living in the US when you did Americans?
Americans. Because, you know, I work as a writer and in Canada, you're always. One of the biggest parts of the job is to draw people out, to make them comfortable, to get them talking, to get them to realize it's just a conversation, that they can be themselves. Americans are much less conscious of themselves.
They have much less self consciousness. They're much more themselves in the world. And damn it if you don't like it, you know, I'm American, I'm an individual. And so you get all this incredible unconscious behavior happening right in front of you.
It's like having your own little stage show. Wherever you go, there's always some entertainment because there's always people being themselves. You don't get that as much in Canada and I found it to do we amuse you? No, I don't mean.
I don't mean in a condescending way. I'm glad I'm not of it, you know, but I love having a seat ringside. Ian Brown with this American Life contributing editor Sarah Vaughn, author of the book Take the Canal with Me, Coming up with secret pro Canadian messages. And Peter Jennings nightly newscast and more in a minute.
When our program continues, This American Life. My art Glassy tweet in our program, of course, which is the theme bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, who's Canadian stories of the Canadians among us. We've arrived at Act 3 outing while the Canadian on the CIS American Life staff Pawtoff tells this story about watching the movie Wayne's World.
There's a scene ings where one of the stars murders the film. Mike Myers and his buddies in the movie allegedly portraying American teenagers play street hockey. They're doing what a lot of Canadians do in last year they did as a Canadian youth, which is they're playing on street. They have nets out on street playing with tennis ball and hockey sticks and bullies are all in equipment.
And when a car comes down the street, the first person to see the car yells car. And everyone just stops the game and grabs the nets and gets us out of the street. And then when the car passes, they say game on. And I started playing again.
And when I saw that, it was like it was a secret message from Mike Myers to me and all the other Canadians who were watching this movie in the American audience because that was exactly, those were exactly two phrases that we would use and no American nests as racist. And Mike Myers, of course, growing up in a togo the true Wayne's world grew up playing red hockey just like I did. And yet he couldn't set his set of things. He couldn't set his moving Canada because that would have been a Canadian movie.
It was exactly the same movie. It was about Canadian culture. But in order to pass, he decided in Illinois. Canadians, of course, are everywhere in the American media from Warren Michaels, Tolanis Marset.
Well, the question we ask in this act of our program is this. When Canadians rise to the top of American pop culture of the American media machine, once they have America's attention, what do they decide to do with it? To answer this question with examining the first to show that on first glance it seems quintessentially American. Couldn't get more American.
Beverly Hills 90210 Danny Drennan writes the entertaining infinitive 90210 weekly wrap up on the World wide Web. He argues that 90210 is a kind of Canadian Trojan horse. The show is based on a Canadian TV series called Degrassi High. Some characters and storylines are lifted straight from the original series.
Not one, but two Canadians star on the show. Kathleen Robertson and Jason Priestley. And Priestley has slowly risen from actor to director and producer of the show once Priestly had control of storylines and content. Yes, the inevitable happens.
Canadian references start to show up in 9020 in various guises. One episode sees Steve, Brandon and Joe meeting some girls from Canada, and Jason's character Brandon Walsh unnecessarily comments on where they are from Perry Sound, home of hall of Fame hockey player Bob Yorr. Like, who even remembers who Bobby Orr is, much less where he was born. Brandon's later comment as he ogles the girls from afar is, oh, Canada.
When her girlfriends get jealous, Brandon is like, we just got totally hosed, eh? In one episode, for no reason whatsoever, Brandon refers to Manitoba. In the season finale, Steve makes the throwaway statement that his American actress's mother is doing theater in Toronto. In yet another, Kathleen Robertson's character Claire Arnold calls Steve a hoser.
Claire's often heard gratuitously attempting to speak mangled French, like the time when she wanted to say let the best man win in French Cole Meilligne, which instead came out color melod in what I can only imagine as a shout out to Quebec or something. Brandon One show plays in a charity hockey tournament with guest stars Cam Neely and Ron Duguet. Like, can someone please tell me who plays hockey in Los Angeles? The fact is that in real life, Priestley used to play center on a Division 2 hockey team where his teammate was Michael J.
Foss. It's all connected. Then there was the show that starts out with an extreme close up shot of a maple leaf insignia on the back of Brandon's shirt for like two minutes before Brandon walks away. Like the show basically starts out displaying the Canadian flag.
I mean, aren't there SEC laws against this kind of thing? Another show featured Ukrainian dance group which is a stealth reference to Canada, where such dance groups are well known. Alex Trebek, former host of the Canadian show Stars on Ice and current host of Jeopardy. Which makes unwarranted reference to Canada more often than can be explained statistically.
Himself stars in a Jeopardy dream sequence on 90210. Most recently during a school talent show, Don and Steve recreated a scene reminiscent of the Nelson Eddie Jennette McDonald operated based movies of the 30s and 40s, in this case featuring a Canadian Mountie and his gal singing Royal Canadian Love Affairs. A great cultural reference for Canadians. I mean, at least if the American audience includes what you're talking about by mentioning Dudley do right or something.
Adding insult to injury because of hockey playoffs and unlike every other American made entertainment product 920 was often seen on Monday night in Canada, two days before the Wednesday broadcast in the United States. Canadian friends and fellow viewers of the show have informed me that hordes of Canadians cheer as these Canadian references to the revolution are broadcast over the American airwaves. How did we ever reach this point? Well, how indeed?
Danny Drennan of the 90210 weekly wrap up and fourth coming book of New York Diaries. Our engineering editor Jack Hyd has another searing expose on these strangers in our midst. He's keeping tabs on Canadian Peter Jennings, host of ABC War News Tonight. It goes without saying that Peter Jennings is a mole, a spy, a shill, a confederate for Canada.
All you have to do is watch his program, as I did one week in Costa Rica Today President Clinton went to the rainforest and he got wet. He's not liberal or conservative. Jennings just seems to have it in for the American government. Sometimes his reference is implied, even bizarre.
The Pentagon does say today is very concerned about an incident involving the Russians last month off the coast of Washington State. It appears that a Russian merchant ship directed a laser beam at a Canadian military helicopter carrying a US Naval intelligence officer. He and a Canadian crew member both had their eyes burned, though not badly. The Russian ship was apparently monitoring American submarines in the region.
The helicopter was monitoring the Russians. What are we being told by this story? It's not easy to parse, but it's either about an innocent Canadian blinded by our defense obsession or the superior maturity of Canada for not being directly involved in the two superpowers now admittedly absurd arms race. So there's no question about where Peter's loyalties lie.
In fact, Peter wants to come out of the Canadian closet. His Freudian slips cry out when we come back out. Or when we come back. Reckon you mean when you come back oot, don't you, stranger?
Do you hear how Peter strains to split the difference between the Canadian oot and the American out. Listen again. When we come back out. Or when we come back, you'll notice Peter's always about to come back from somewhere.
When we come back. The stunning drop in the welfare rules. When we come back. The space age technology that is already down the farm.
When we come back. You are mummy. Or he's heading out. We're going to dinner tonight with.
He's inviting us somewhere. Finally. We're going to take you to Alabama. See, Peter's on a journey someplace.
If you watch a show long enough, it's obvious. I mean the very structure of the show has a sense that we're going somewhere, a place, a mythical place. Every program has a feeling of zigzagging en route to some ultimate destination. And you know where he wants to take us?
Canada. That's right, Canada. But actually, after you've watched World News Tonight long enough, you realize that this is not a journey to the real Canada, but to the platonic ideal of Canadianness. Stay with me here.
See, Peter's news is noticeably different from Dan rather than Tom Brokaw's. Tom and Dan see a hostile world erupting with bad news everywhere, full of murder and mayhem, macho and dismal, Hell in a hand basket. Fire and brimstone stuff. You know, Very puritanical, very American in outlook.
Dan's all clenched jaws, garroted coat and tie, a human time bomb waiting to explode. Peter's just kicking back. He could be wearing a smoking jacket and during a commercial, sipping a mild single malt scotch. Once Peter gets past ridiculing the American government, it's odd, but suddenly the news he's reading is uncannily bright, cheerful and good news.
Healing news, soothing news, ecumenical news, Canadian news. A new type of laser device that should permit the dentist to fill a tooth more efficiently. And for you, if you have to go, maybe more comfortably as well, more comfortable. Dentistry.
My, that is good news. But wait, you may soon be able to check for E. Coli bacteria right in the supermarket. No more food poisoning.
Terrific. The new obesity pill that actually breaks down fat in the body. To understand the real meaning of this Canadian news, one has to read past the literal facts embedded in each statement and get to the level in which television actually speaks to us. Emotion.
To really feel it, you have to merge the ads and the news into one seamless half hour of Peterphoria. You have to step a bit further back from the screen, lie down on a damn comforter and let it wash over you. Like reading Finnegan's Wake. And if you do this, suddenly the hidden meaning becomes instantaneously clear and weirdly repetitive.
The message is surrender. Your time is over. My fellow Americans, a great nation is being asked to lie down and give it up. Peter's meaning is even superpowers must age and yield and settle down.
One ad that airs a couple of times. Every show is for Sun America. Sun, as in setting Sun America. Ask about our personal retirement portfolios.
SunAmerica, the retirement specialist. Retire. No commercial break passes without the word reverberating through the screen. But of course, Peter and his fellow travelers try to keep this message lively and vibrant.
You did your job. You did it well. It's okay. See, over time though, the message goes even further than that.
Why just retire? Even the musical score begins to hint at the next logical option. Da dum dum dums. I don't think I'm stretching here.
You heard it yourself. The message is let go. Cross all the way over to the other side. The entire half hour is a kind of advertisement for dark eternity.
Sometimes you have to tell yourself, stop. Look around. This is the good stuff. The feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives.
This is cotton. This is cotton, honey. This is a shroud. Just when is it that you stop living and look around?
Hang here, see how obvious it is. Once you take off your rose colored glasses and see what's in front of your face. Once you tune in at this level, the real level, each commercial gets increasingly more frightening. Wouldn't you like to go someplace that felt really safe and secure?
Well, now you can. Someplace safe and secure. Someplace like America, but without all those tense and rather troubles. Someplace like Canada.
And isn't that how Americans have always thought of Canada? It's like America, only without any jazz. Tranquil and safe and secure and endless like death. If only Peter can take us to that place where we no longer have any anxiety.
If only Peter can remove the sting. If only Peter can end the fear. If only when we come back out, or when we come back. Taking the anxiety out of the fear.
Uh huh. Take us out, Peter. Tell us what this story is all about today. The story that reminds us once again that things are not always what they appear to be.
Jack hit Act 4. Who's Canadian? Another story of siblings parted ways. Our senior editor called Tough and sister grew up in Toronto, the most American of Canadian Cities.
Then about 10 years ago, they both left and hidden in opposite directions. He moved to New York City, where he's lived ever since. She began a series of moves to smaller, more typically Canadian cities and towns. If Paul's view she is the good Canadian, he's a bad one.
All this hour we've heard talk about who's Canadian, what means to be a Canadian. We asked Paul to call his sister and find out whether she considers him to be a Canadian. It's not just that my sister actually lives in Canada and right in the heart of the country where it's winter for eight months out of the year. That makes me think of her as sort of the quintessential Canadian.
And it's not even her ideas about the place or her sense of patriotism. It's more the way that she lives in Canada, connected to her small community and her neighbors and the natural world around her. Working at her church and in her kitchen and in her garden. That, to me, is a Canadian life.
And from my studio apartment in New York, her life in Winnipeg seems very far away. And I think to her, I seem far away, too. It's interesting because I talk about you often when I talk to people and, you know, I talk about you as being my brother who has gone off and lived in the United States, and I talk about you with a great deal of pride. And people certainly respond by being very impressed and.
But there's that sense in which, you know. So I was thinking if you came here, I mean, you know, you'll be a celebrity in the sense that you're my brother who lives in the United States, and, you know, you live this highly sophisticated life and you live in New York City and everyone's deeply impressed by this. But you wouldn't be of us. I mean, I think the perception would be very different if you had done the same thing over the last 10 years in London, England.
I think you would be perceived as being more Canadian still than having gone to the United States for 10 years. I suspect it might even be true if you had gone to another European country, that you would still be perceived as being more Canadian than you would be perceived now. But there's a way, because of the place that the United States has, in the Canadian imagination, of going to America has a very special flavour to it. Yep.
It means something. Yep. And what is that? What does it mean?
Well, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but I think in some ways it's. It's going over to the other side. What about when other people move to the United States and musicians do, like. Or actors you like, or writers like Wayne Gretzky?
Let's just say the tragic, tragic Wayne Gretzky story. Not to mention the whole big jets team. Where are they now? Phoenix, of all places.
Phoenix, Arizona. What was that like? Were you there when the jets moved to Phoenix? Yes, I was.
It was just not pretty. It's just not pretty. I mean, it's a real. It's a really deep sense of loss, I think, and betrayal for Canadians.
And who do they feel betrayed by? Oh, whoever goes. And I mean, it's obviously not so rational all the time. Right.
I mean, but I think that that's the. But I think there is just. I mean, so there's two things. There's a sense of betrayal, but there's also just a sense of sadness and a realization that, you know, that's the reality of the world and the economy that we live in and, well, I don't know, also maybe weariness almost when another one goes.
Did you ever have any opinions about the fact that I was living in the United States? Did you ever feel like I was. I had, you know, given my birthright, or. You are both.
I mean, not even necessarily in those terms, but did you ever feel like, sorry, that I wasn't living in Canada? I think only on a personal level. I mean, I think only, like. I don't think any.
In any of those sort of philosophical ways. I think I would feel different, though, if you. If I. If you told me that you were.
That you were deciding to become American citizen. But I think until now, I've always felt like, you know, you're just living there and working there, and eventually you'll come back. Really? Yeah.
Or if not, it's not even that clear, but it's still that you belong here somehow. Like, you know, even though you don't come back very much, that you'll, you know, somehow you're still Canadian. A lot of the Americans I've spoken to have talked about how there's just no difference at all between Americans and Canadians, that Canadians are exactly the same as Americans. In fact, there's some people who say that in a really positive way.
They say, oh, don't worry. Right. Exactly. There's no.
There's no difference between. You don't have to feel different. Just like. Like whites would say, oh, you're really just like that.
Exactly. Yeah. So. So then what's the answer?
What do I say to people when they. When they say, well, you know, what does it mean to be Canadian? Yeah. And what's.
What's the Canadianness? Yeah, I think that's really. And I think that's really a struggle for Canadian. And in some way, I think it's that struggle that ironically defines what the answer is.
I think in some ways, the answer is that a Canadian is someone who struggles to figure out what it is to be Canadian and not American and all of those things. It's really hard to make a pavilion about. I mean, there's that eternal problem of, you know, how do you make a Canadian night? How do you make a Canadian pavilion?
And, you know, you kind of have maple syrup and sort of. That's the end of it. And we don't have a nice national dress and national food, and, you know, we kind of have wild fever and not too much else when the winter rains come pouring down on that new home of mine Will you think of me and wonder if I'm fine? Will your restless heart come back to mine?
On a journey through the past? Will I still be in your eyes and on your mind? Produced by Nancy Uptake, Potoff and me with Elise Spiegel and Julie Snyder Dreaming Editors Jacket Marty Brocklinkier Sarav Production from Laura Dagan and Sylvia Leamas. And did I mention?
Yes, indeed he is Today's program was first broadcast back in 1997, hence the oddly anachronistic references to Beverly Hills, 90210. Special thanks to Mark Ruffin for help with today's show. If you'd like to buy a cassette of this or neighborhood programs, follow us here at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380 or visit our website, where you can also listen to our programs for free. Absolutely free, www.thisamericanlife.org.
this American Life, distributed by Public Radio International Funding CROW shows provided by the Capital Group, companies investing for individuals and institutions throughout the world and sponsor of the American Funds Group of Mutual Funds and of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the listeners of WBEZ Chicago. WBEZ Management oversight by Toy Malatea Yes, Canadian hope, say it's not so. I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life.
Now I'm going back to Canada on a journey through the past, and I won't be back to February. PRI Public Radio International.