Cartoon Night in Canada
by Chris Luciantonio
We're on a nostalgic journey to dig through decades of Canadian animation to find the good, the bad, and the just plain weird cartoons of the Great White North.Every week, Sylvie and Chris take a look at an animated something or other from their shared experience of growing up in Canada to see what holds up, what left an impact on us, and what is best left in the past.
Episodes
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Episode 140 - Rescue Heroes
Happy Belated Pride Month Everybody! Our apologies, we'll have more Pride-centric contact coming in the next few weeks. For the time being, here is a soft-copaganda show that probably responsible for many a bisexual awakening. A super team of bulky emergency responders who have no known...
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Episode 139 - NFB Showcase #12
Once again, we make use of the incredible archival resource of Canadian animation that is the National Film Board of Canada for another cursed double bill. A stop-motion raucous bug orgy and a storybook Inuit creation song. What do they have in common? Not much. Films covered for the podcast are...
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Episode 138 - Delta State "Case Study."
We once again find ourselves drifting aimlessly through the parallel dimension known as the Delta State. A paranoid state of delusion that decides the fate for all humankind if not for a group of amnesiac twenty-something Montreal hipsters. We felt it was only right to return to a one of a kind...
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Episode 137 - Ville Neuve (2018)
Straight off the heels of our federal election which has left a small contingency of conservative voters in Alberta hoping for a secession, we are covering a film which explores the ramifications of a province seeking sovereignty and the broader effects of the temperament of its population. In...
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Episode 136 - The Magic School Bus
In a trying time where PBS could be defunded and Nelvana go under, we felt it was necessary to tackle a big hitter that served as a cornerstone for the domination of educational television in the 90s. It's The Magic School Bus - an all time classic that many do not realize is technically Canadian...
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Episode 135 - Fred's Head
High school can be a bit of a pain. Especially when you're a horny, pale, sarcastic teenager besieged by criminal lust and pursued by rabid squirrels. Such are the many trials and tribulations of the titular protagonist in Fred's Head - an acerbic teen comedy that balances the zany with a...
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Episode 134 - The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo
And here we find ourselves at the bottom of the barrel once more. A shoddily slapped together series by way of Montreal's Cinegroupe produced to coincide with the release of a high-profile Disney feature film. The era of the mockbuster is most certainly passed, but we will always have those VHS...
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Episode 133 - Action Man
It's time to A.M.P. it up!!! Remember back in the 2000s when it felt like extreme sports was the be-all end-all of popular culture and plenty of things from the past were being retrofitted with a more edgy and radical look for the new generation? Well, one series/extended toy commercial by...
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Episode 132 - CanaDUB: Nana
Sorry for the delay! We are going to blame the tariffs because why not. We have returned to the realm of Canadian dubbed anime with a fabulous punk rock classic of growing up and heartbreak between young women who meet by happenstance. Ai Yazawa's NANA has endured in popularity since it's…
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Episode 131 - Rotten Ralph
On this week's episode, we encounter an utterly contemptible protagonist in a little-known stop-motion co-production with Britain and Italy which left us utterly charmed. A sharp, abrasive art style for a sharp, abrasive character that we wound up watching via a scuffed cam version on YouTube....
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Episode 130 - Mythic Warriors
We are back in some familiar territory - a shoddy, obscure Nelvana production (#SaveNelvana) and a radical adaptation of Greek Mythology made for children. It'sMythic Warriors: Guardians of the Legend -contractually obligated fodder produced through a brief lucrative partnership with television...
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Episode 129 - NFB Showcase #11: Robert Verrall (1928 - 2025)
On this latest's trip to the National Film Board's Archive, we pay tribute to a stalwart of the NFB's Animation Department since its inception whose contributions to Canadian cinema are too varied to list out. Veteran animator, producer, and director Robert Verrall sadly passed away on January...
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Episode 128 - Max & Ruby #SaveNelvana
This week, we start off with a sobering call to action regarding the uncertain future of our beloved Nelvana before awkwardly segueing into talking about one of their longest running series. Financial mismanagement and executive payoffs over at Corus Entertainment may very well lead to the...
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Episode 127 - Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series
This week on the podcast, boys, we get two birds stoned at once as we tackle a fucking vanity cartoon of a classic Canadian series featuring a pack of greasy shitbirds smoking dope and doing crime. It's Trailer Park Boys and it's utterly unnecessary, pointless, Netflix animated series that may…
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Episode 126 - Barbie™ and the Magic of Pegasus
To conclude the lucrative enterprise that was our Barbie™ theme month, we deliver a fashionably late episode on Barbie™ and the Magic of Pegasus (2005). Featuring a totally straight main villain, a magical cloud kingdom that controls the weather, figure skating and gambling addiction, and a…
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Episode 125 - Barbie™ in the Nutcracker
Happy Barbcember to all, and to all a good night! For our official Holiday special, we return where it all begin with Mainframe Entertainment's first crack at the Barbie license with the seminal, janky, and all around charming Barbie™ in the Nutcracker (2001). A rough around the edges time…
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Episode 124 - Barbie™ as Rapunzel (2002)
Barbcember™ rolls on with a modern spin on the Brothers Grimm classic that sees our heroine Barbie trapped in a tower. Except...she doesn't have long hair...and there are talking dragons and mammals...and magic paintbrushes...and a territorial war between kingdoms...and Anjelica Huston. What we…
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Episode 123 - Barbie™ Fairytopia
HAPPY BARBCEMBER!!! In our continued efforts to avoid talking about Christmas and the Holidays, we are programming an entire month of Mainframe produced Barbie direct-to-video films. For the first installment, we are establishing the official Bibble Baseline™ and tackling the "classic" Fairytopia…
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Episode 122 - Moville Mysteries "How Now, Meowing Cow?"
In the conclusion to our 2024 Spooktober Celebration, we resurrect a classic tradition and revisit Ouija Falls for more prattling about with creepy weirdos and cryptid whatsits with Moville Mysteries. This time around, we go down on the farm for some good ol' fashioned DNA splicing with Farmer…
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Episode 121 -6teen
Spooktober rolls into Scarevember as we make up for our absence by bringing you a big hitter series frequently teased on previous episodes. A controversial series which endeavored to represent the teenage experience in a warts and all comedic approach that instantly ascended to instant cult…
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Episode 120 - Rotting Hills
On this fashionably late episode of our Spooktober Celebration, we're packing up and moving out to a zombie apocalypse...localized entirely in a small rural Northern Ontario municipality. Rotting Hills is a cast away from the time Nelvana Animation tried to participate in the animated anthology...
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Episode 119 - Witch's Night Out (1978)
On this installment of the 2024 Spooktober Celebration, we look back to a forgotten cult classic with an extended, fascinating post-life based on the dedicated work of one super fan. A network special from a bygone era about the true reason of the season - partying and mob justice - we breakdown...
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Episode 118 - Martin Mystery "Haunting of the Blackwater"
Making good on our Spooktober promise to bring back some old favourites, we are taking another look at one of the greatest Canadian produced shows and one of the best examples of introducing the horror genre to kids - Martin Mystery. What other show for kids would attempt a parody of Stanley...
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Episode 117 - Dark Oracle
Break out those early-2000s haircuts and Hot Topic accessories, it is once again time for our Spooktober Celebration! And to kick it all off, we are taking a look at the scariest thing our country's television industry has ever produced - a mopey, pseudo-gothic live-action teen drama about an…
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Episode 116 - Kid vs. Kat
On this week's episode, we convince you to get paranoid about your pet cat and how they might be orchestrating your imminent demise with Kid vs. Kat. A deliberate throwback to the classic adversarial Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons, we find ourselves talking about what we would call a "modern...
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Episode 115 - Barbie™ of Swan Lake
In the second installment of our new series - The Untitled Barbie Movie Side Series ? or maybe The MFBCU (Mainframe Barbie Cinematic Universe) ? - we are returning to the janky CG Barbieland produced right here in Canada with a classy, 100% faithful Tchaikovsky adaptation. Canadian girls love...
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Episode 114 - CanaDUB: The Story of Saiunkoku (Ocean Dub)
We're back! After a long summer hiatus, Chris and Sylvie are back to push their pro-dubbing agenda once more with the latest episode of CanaDUB. While Studio Madhouse's The Story of Saiunkoku is a perfectly competent shōjo romance surrounding court intrigue and economic disparity, the real...
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Episode 113 - The Brothers Grunt
On this week's episode, we tackle an ugly little footnote in the career of Ed Edd n' Eddy creator Danny Antonuuci that has been memory-holed from the line-up of MTV Animation. A grotesque gross-out comedy featuring five perpetually pained creatures who tortuously fill your eyes and ears with bad...
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Episode 112 - Jane and the Dragon
We are back with a favourite topic of ours we will always go far out of our way to dissect and ramble on - the awkward growing pains of CGI animation. We've entered the mid-2000s and what we are calling CGI's "scene kid years" with Jane and The Dragon. A beloved children's book adapted by two...
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Episode 111 - Cybersix "The Eye"
On this week's episode, we are returning to an absolute classic - another steamy monster-of-the-week chapter from Cybersix, a show that burned briefly, but burned brightly to set high standards for television animation and storytelling unseen at the time beyond the likes of Batman: the Animated...
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Episode 110 - NFB Pride Showcase 2024
For our annual celebration of all things queer at the National Film Board of Canada, we have a hell of a double feature for Pride month. You wouldn't think we could pair a hand-drawn, deadpan porno-parody tale of repressed Fox sexuality with a touching, empathetic, clay-on-glass portrait of queer...
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Episodes 109 - Mysticons
On this week's Pride special, we are taking you back to a dark time for LGBT representation in children's entertainment where the idea of a same-sex kiss was shot down by corporate meddling in the pre-production phase. Ok...maybe not that far back. Back in 2017, a little Nelvana magical girl show...
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Episode 108 - What It's Like Being Alone
On this week's episode, we are stepping into the cutesy goth aesthetic once more with a stop-motion series that we could politely classify as being "inspired" by the works of Tim Burton. A misfit group of unfortunates at a ramshackle orphanage trying desperately to be adopted despite their...
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Episode 107 - Class of the Titans II
On this week's episode, to celebrate the early access release of a Greek mythology inspired roguelite sequel that one host is hooked on, we are taking another look at a wonderful artifact from the 2000s pop culture Greek mythology craze - Class of the Titans. While debating whether or not we've...
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Episode 106 - Totally Spies!
On this week's episode, Chris and Sylvie program a fashionably (heh) late Mother's Day episode, and wind up accidentally programming a Pride celebration episode! In the next installment of our big hitter series, just in time for the new reboot season, we are taking look at the flagship series…
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Episode 105 - Camp Candy
Howdy campers! On this week's episode, Chris and Sylvie are talking about the strangely lucrative trend of "celebrity vanity cartoons" with one of the most beloved Canadian comedians of all time. John Candy conquered Hollywood in the 1980s, but the '90s brought a new venture - Saturday Morning...
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Episode 104 - Wall (2017)
Prompted by the ongoing genocidal campaigns effecting the people of Palestine, Chris and Sylvie decided to tackle an animated documentary from 2017 that endeavored to portray the Israel-West Bank Barrier in a nuanced perspective based on an outsider's perspective. It failed. Miserably. While...
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Episode 103 - CanaDUB: Inuyasha (Ocean Dub)
We are back on our anime bullshit with another all-time classic series that was introduced to us Canadians by a dub produced in Vancouver. It's Rumiko Takahashi's seminal Shonen series Inuyasha, a beloved series that Sylvie and Chris were first introduced to through the YTV anime programing block...
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Episode 102 - Camp Lakebottom
Howdy Campers! Ever want to spend your summer vacation with some cryptid counsellors and a boundless hyperactive energy?? Then do we have a surprise Canadian entry in the Disney XD lineup for you! It's Camp Lakebottom - a sugar-rush of a throw-everything-at-the-wall camp comedy that gave one of…
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Episode 101 - Daft Planet
Like...whatever, it's Daft Planet. On this week's podcast, we are looking back at a time when the vibe of the young generation was blasé, sarcastic, and all-around disaffected, which made it very hard to make cartoons that spoke to them. In the early 2000s, Teletoon tried to court this…
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Episode 100 - Being Ian
For the 100th episode of Cartoon Night in Canada, Chris and Sylvie tackle a big hitter in the Canadian cartoon canon. A formative series for both hosts whose latent film buff personas could be traced partially back to it, it seemed like the only choice for a milestone episode to finally cover...
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Episode 99 - Grossology
On this week's episode, we get downright filthy (yet educational) as we chat about the "thin gross line" that is the Bureau of Grossology and how they are the last line of defense against acts of gross themed terrorism committed by a rogues gallery of barely disguised fetishes. We are back...
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Episode 98 - RoboCop: The Animated Series
On this week's episode, Chris and Sylvie finally put to bed the hot-button media debate of our age - Is RoboCop PoLiTiCaL?? While the Paul Verhoeven 1987 masterpiece is unassailable on this front, what about the oft forgotten attempt to soften the hard edges of the NSFW sci-fi satire for Saturday...
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Episode 97 - George Shrinks
On this week's episode, Chris and Sylvie do what they do best and ponder the grotesque biological and terrifying existential implications of a show for literal preschoolers with William Joyce's George Shrinks. How does a three-inch child with the ingenious mind of an inventor make his way through…
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Episode 96 - NFB Showcase #9: Martine Chartrand
In honour of Black History Month, we are using our side series highlighting the innovative and significant animation produced through the National Film Board to spotlight the work of one trailblazing black artist. The paint-on-glass animation of Haitian-Canadian animator Martine Chartrand has…
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Episode 95 - Ripley's Believe It or Not!: The Animated Series
Believe It or Not, those coffee table books of weird and strange facts from around the world were once a part of a thriving media empire that at one point included cheaply produced French-Canadian Satutday morning cartoons. Sylvie and Chris catch up with the Ripley brand in the late 90s and...
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Episode 94 - Xcalibur
On this week's episode, Chris and Sylvie boot up an old copy of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and contemplate the history of CGI animation while talking about a wrongfully forgotten show from that history's awkward, transitional years. It's Xcalibur - a sword-and-sorcery tale that was made with so...
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Episode 93 - Chop Socky Chooks
On this week's episode, Sylvie and Chris look back at the mid-2000s flirtation with martial arts cinema and wonder aloud what exactly a legendary claymation company from jolly ol' England was doing collaborating with Decode Entertainment. It's Aardman Animation's Chop Socky Chooks (no, that's not…
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Episode 92 - Salty's Lighthouse
On this week's episode, Chris and Sylvie struggle to find anything of value to say about a show for preschoolers that is the epitome of lazy edutainment. A cobbled-together variety program which lets the creators of Thomas the Tank Engine and stock footage from 60 years ago pad the runtime, there...
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Episode 91 - Undergrads
This week on the program, the CNIC Detour takes us back to college to work through those awkward, zany growing pains of living on our own, finding our identity, and never going to class or bothering with our actual education. From the desperate offices of MTV Animation comes a surprisingly...
About this show
We're on a nostalgic journey to dig through decades of Canadian animation to find the good, the bad, and the just plain weird cartoons of the Great White North.Every week, Sylvie and Chris take a look at an animated something or other from their shared experience of growing up in Canada to see what holds up, what left an impact on us, and what is best left in the past.
Hosted by
Chris Luciantonio