Canadianity

by Jeremy Taggart

  “No, a bump. Like, cocaine.”

  “Uh, aren’t we in a jail?”

  “Yeah, but it’s totally cool.”

  I explained that I don’t do cocaine. If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s something to make me “even more me.” There’s a big history of addiction in my family and I can’t even eat Werther’s in moderation, so the last thing I need is to “try” cocaine. Took me long enough to kick a two-pack-a-day Mentos habit.

  “Oh, thanks anyway, but I’m good.” I tried to change the subject. “What are you up to today?”

  He told me his plan was to watch me give him cigarettes. I didn’t have any, so offered the only thing I had on me. Gum.

  “You want a piece of gum?”

  His eyes widened. He and his friend exchanged glances. Yes, he said. He’d love a piece of gum. His friend said he’d love one too.

  So I gave them each a piece of gum. I think it was Dentyne Cinnamint, or some other clumsy portmanteau. It was a nice moment. They thanked me repeatedly. It’s nothing, I assured them.

  Moments later, in the processing cell between the outside and the inside, we were gathering our stuff when a guard came flying into the room. “Did one of you guys give an inmate gum?”

  Everyone looked around at each other and shook their heads no. Who would’ve done such a thing?

  I could feel my face turning red, but I slowly put my hand up and confessed what I’d done. Sheepishly, I asked why this was such a bad thing (especially considering what his first suggestion was).

  They can use it to jam the locks. It’s contraband.

  I then had to confess that I’d given it to his friend as well. He asked me to describe them, and I started bumbling out that they were both wearing grey sweatpants and navy blue T-shirts. Like the entire prison population was. That’s their uniform.

  Oops.

  Of all the places I’ve been lucky enough to go in the North, there’s one that holds a special place in my heart: Pangnirtung. It might be because the approach on a plane is so memorable. The plane’s wing tips barely miss scraping the magnificent peaks on either side of the gravel runway. Stark, white, snow-capped mountains entirely surround this happy hamlet.

  The people are friendly, happy and productive. The print shop in Pang is known all over the world, so morale is high.

  The lineup for this trip boasted some heavy Canadianity: Strombo was there for MuchMusic, Kim D’Eon from Street Cents and one of the Moffatts. Remember them? “Bang Bang Boom.” “Girl of My Dreams.” They were a boy band of brothers—triplets and one older dude. It was the older dude who was with us.

  Because of the remote location and the climate, the supply barge can make it to Pangnirtung only once a year. It brings school supplies, canned goods, Christmas decorations—everything the people in town need to survive the year. And every year when the barge arrives, there’s a party that lasts three days. I love that image so much. Imagine the feeling of seeing the bow of that barge round the corner and come into sight, carrying everything you’d ever dreamed of. How exciting.

  Northern Gotta Do’s

  BURN down the ice highway from Inuvik out to Tuktoyaktuk and get yourself a Tuk U shirt. It’s a fictitious institution with a funny name.

  POUND a drink at the Wildcat Cafe in Yellowknife. It’s a staple.

  SCARF down some fish and chips at Bullocks in Old Town, Yellowknife. Sign the wall while you’re there!

  STRUT into the Gold Range Saloon in Yellowknife, but be prepared to swap stories—and potentially blows—with one of the testy regulars.

  TAKE A RIP out to Behchoko. Takes an hour in the summer and fifteen minutes in the winter on the ice highway. There’s a lovely community centre right on the water. You can feel the history of the place.

  SCORE some exquisite locally made mukluks, moccasins and mittens at the Gallery of the Midnight Sun in Old Town, Yellowknife. (Torrens: I bought Mrs. T. a beautiful blue sheared-beaver scarf there.)

  Religious or not, GO to a service at the Igloo Church in Inuvik. As part of the tour, make sure you check out the hockey stick shrine in the loft. Make sure to ask how it’s heated.

  SHRED the caribou medallion at the Granite Room at Discovery Lodge in Iqaluit. It’s on the pricey side, but the comfort in your belly will quickly ease the pain in your pocketbook.

  HAMMER a golf ball in Holman. Believe it or not, some of the best golfers I’ve ever seen are there. Kids can hit the ball 250-plus yards in the air off portable pieces of turf. Finding the ball among the rocks on the beach proves to be a bit of a challenge, but twenty-four-hour sunlight helps with that.

  In short, just GO. Cambridge Bay, Rankin Inlet, Kugluktuk. Every community has its own charm. But make sure you leave an extra day or two at the end. Most of these are fly-in communities, and the weather can wreak havoc with arrival and departure times.

  AmeriCanadianity: Us in the US

  My Hazy Daze in LA

  Taggart

  You don’t know how great Canada is until you live in another country. I found this out after trying California on for size. I moved down there in 2002 for a couple of years. I was always intrigued by the weather and the flourishing music scene. I had a bunch of friends who had made the leap and seemed to love it. I moved in with a couple NHL players in Manhattan Beach—Sean Avery and Brad Norton.

  I met Sean in Detroit when he was playing with the Red Wings. Aves is pretty famed for his brat chatter and legendary party planning, which I thought would keep it entertaining if I lived with him. It certainly was that. I would call those couple of years my lost weekend, a pure blur.

  We would have parties most nights, and go find them on other nights. If the Kings were on the road, I would continue the party on my own with my musician bahds, mostly Stacy Jones and Jason Sutter, two great friends whom I’d met years earlier on the road. We got into all kinds of madness together, haunting bars and laughing ’til we cried, mostly. I remember a particular evening in the Valley with Jason. I was going to crash at his place, and he warned me that his roommate had to get up early the next morning for work, so I had to be quiet and respectful when we got back. I told Jason that wouldn’t be a problem—I would just crash on the couch without making a peep.

  We went to Casa Vega, a great Mexican place known for its margaritas. We got pretty banged up. So banged up that we decided to go to a Mexican strip club. It was full of locals who weren’t too pleased with two rock dudes rolling in and laughing it up cross-eyed. The mood started to get a little tense when I made it rain with crumpled dollar bills, hollering and laughing like a hyena. We were getting some nasty looks and Jason was smart enough to get me out of there before I got both of us beaten to a pulp. We split and got a cab back to Jason’s place.

  On the way, he reminded me that I had to keep it down and not wake up his roomie. I set up on the couch and Jason went to his room. All set and time to shut it down, right? Wrong. Jason told me the next morning what happened next, because I don’t remember. Apparently, just as J was about to pass out, he heard a scream from his roommate, followed by a yelling match between him and me. I guess I had decided the couch wasn’t comfy enough and barged into the other bedroom, hopped in, and when the guy freaked out, I told him to relax, I was just going to sleep. He had no idea who I was, and he lost it. I kept telling him to keep it down or nobody was gonna get any sleep. He couldn’t believe what I was doing. I told him there was plenty of room, and to relax.

  I can’t believe I did that. When Jason told me the next morning, I just about died from embarrassment. The guy had gone to work and was probably dead from lack of sleep. Talk about ridiculous. I never met the guy again after that. I would have liked to apologize, but he was better off with me not bothering and just keeping my distance. Sorry, bahd!

  The Keg

  Taggart

  The second year in, I moved into a beach house with Aves. It was a beautiful place a couple blocks from the previous pad in Manhattan Beach. At this point, I was getting a bi
t out of hand with drinking. I was blasting Neil Young records from his mid-’70s binge period as the soundtrack. Our neighbours hated us. The Last Waltz and The Richard Pryor Show were on the TV constantly all through the night. I don’t know how many times I woke up to the sound of people from the neighbourhood pounding on the door to tell me to shut it off. It was a messy time for me, fairly dark and damaging.

  One weekend we planned a huge shaker, tons of snacks and a keg. Aves was dating Rachel Hunter at the time and it was pretty early in their relationship, so he was running around the world at the drop of a hat with her. Just as we were going to get the party started, he bailed to Paris or something, so the bash was postponed. I decided to see if I could take down that keg by myself, just for kicks. Just so you know, a keg contains almost seven cases of beer—6.8 to be exact. Or 58.7 litres. Or 165 cans.

  This keg was my main source of nutrition for this experiment. It was sitting in the water fountain in the backyard. I would go back, hold the trigger to my lips and jet the ice-cold suds down my throat until I froze inside and couldn’t take anymore. It was so cold! I would try solo keg stands, just for a morale boost, every few minutes ’til I was shittered, and then have a few more rips until I passed out.

  This went on and on. I thought it would only take a few days, but I really started getting into a haze. I’d stumble down to the beach, looking for a good time, but nobody wanted anything to do with me. Everyone assumed I was homeless and troubled. Four or five days into my experiment, I needed to eat something other than a can of beans from the cupboard. So I went up to the main drag of Manhattan Beach to find some real eats. I wandered into a sandwich place and stared at the chalkboard menu. The shop was owned by an older European gentleman who was looking me up and down while I gazed at the options. He asked me what I wanted, but I was so far gone that it was hard for me to speak.

  I’m sure the guy thought I was homeless and mentally challenged, rather than drunk. He read me the items on the board and told me to point at what I wanted. I was so hungry, and there was a blackened chicken sandwich that was screaming at me from the board. He sat me down and brought it over to me. As I started eating, I couldn’t help noticing the guy crying. He was so happy that I was eating.

  I still remember how fuckin’ good that chicken sandwich was. I was eating it like Oliver Twist in the workhouse. All I had on were shorts and flops. Greasy. I finished, and he was still teary-eyed as I left with a weak wave. He was such a bahd.

  I went back to the house and the keg. I kept on pulling that trigger and hoping I would hear that puff of air, telling me the keg was dead. Approximately five and a half days after I started, I finally heard the pffffffftt of victory. I, Jeremy Taggart, had finally crushed that keg on my own. Talk about small victories.

  From that point on in Manhattan Beach, I kept clear of that sandwich shop. I didn’t want that bahd to see me straight. He had been so nice to me, I couldn’t bear the thought of him thinking I was just banged up. What a sandwich!

  As much as I was enjoying the weather and friends in LA, I was starting to feel really empty inside. I missed my home. I missed the changing of seasons. I missed the cheesy TV. I needed Canada back. The drinking was getting old pretty quick, with the sad-sack hangovers and the gurgle guts and “Have you got any Tums?” lifestyle. It was time to go home and get my shit together.

  Thankfully, I did.

  I moved back home in the late summer of 2004. That winter was a knee-knocker for me. I’d successfully avoided four winters by recording in Hawaii and Vancouver. I was running like T.J. Hooker from cabs to restaurants avoiding the cold. It took me a while to acclimatize, but I grew back my love for winter and I’ve never looked back. I lost my desire to find another place to live. My comfort for Canada blossomed, I got into a real groove, and within two years I met the love of my life, Lisa, and we started a wonderful family to the tune of two little boys, John and Jack, and our little girl, Aneliese.

  Life has changed a lot in the last ten years or so. The clocks whirr at lightning speed, but having a great family with kids who like to party and get banged up on pizza and Chicago mix helps break up the whip of time.

  Sink or Schwim

  Torrens

  How did I end up in the US?

  Truth is, after five seasons of Jonovision I asked the CBC if we could move the show to a time slot after the news. My feeling was that the audience that had started watching me on Street Cents was now, like I was, approaching thirty. Why not keep doing the same show, but a little older, a little later?

  There was a feeling internally that I hadn’t proven I could carry a show by myself. And that “Canada” wouldn’t be able to perceive me as an adult performer because I was so associated with being a kids show guy.

  So when I turned thirty I moved to Los Angeles. Partly out of self-imposed exile, because I’d been at the CBC for fifteen years and even I was sick of me. Partly to help turn the page between kids TV host and grown-up. And partly “just to see.”

  Again with the curiosity.

  I had so many preconceived notions about LA, but was wrong on just about every one. Admittedly, I might have formed my opinion based on the montage in Pretty Woman where Richard Gere is driving around Beverly Hills.

  I thought several things:

  •that everyone was loaded and had implants;

  •that all dogs had diamond collars;

  •that the place was crawling with wide-eyed ingenues and sleazy agents;

  •and, maybe most erroneous of all, that there was an open-door policy for Canadian talent, based on the success of Mike Myers and Jim Carrey.

  So naive, right? Somehow, deep down, I really expected to be ushered into a studio lot right away. “Thank God you’re finally here, Jonathan Torrens. We’ve been expecting you!”

  This was not the case. But none of my other expectations was accurate either.

  If you’ve never been, LA is a big city of small towns, and your experience there depends on which part of the city you live in. Fortunately, a friend of mine had a brother there—a guy I’ll call Russ Cochrane, because that was his name—who was more than happy to show me the ropes. He and his partner, Meline, lived in Venice Beach, so that’s where I settled. Russ is a screenwriter and great dude who has since gone on to work on Rookie Blue and Orphan Black. Maybe he just works on shows with colours in the title. Meline took surfing as a course at Santa Monica College. How rad is that?

  There’s a Main Street in Venice, where people smile and say hello when they pass. There’s green space and grocery stores and people with non-showbiz jobs who live and work there. There’s a farmers’ market where families gather in the sun every Sunday. Sounds so obvious now (and a little hick-ish), but at first everything was so new. I was most surprised by what LA wasn’t.

  If you’d asked me at the time, I would’ve told you that I went down there to see if I could make it. Worst-case scenario would be that I’d have this whole new level of credibility back in Canada for having lived in LA. Sad, but true.

  The truth is, I was older than most and less ambitious than many when I went. I didn’t feel the pull to be a “star,” so the idea of a part consisting of five lines on Moesha didn’t get me out of bed in the morning. After all, I’d already been working on TV series steadily since I was fifteen.

  One of the career challenges I’ve always faced lay in what to call myself. I’m not a standup comic, nor am I a dramatic actor, though I’ve tried being both. There are so many people who are better at hosting than me, though I’ve done it. I’ve done sketch characters, but I’m not an improviser. I’m kind of a . . . comedic performer.

  You can be a hybrid in Canada. The market is small enough that you almost have to be able to do a few different things. I’ve been a dog wrangler, an assistant director, a driver, a writer, a producer, an extra . . .

  In LA, they want to know: Are you Seacrest or Schwimmer? You can’t be “an actor, who’s done a bit of sketch and hosted-ish.”

&nbs
p; What I didn’t anticipate was just how much I’d like it there. The stereotypes do exist—desperate do-anything-to-succeed types—but I was surprised to discover that it’s also populated with people who are curious, motivated, ambitious, creative and free-spirited enough to roll the dice on a crazy dream.

  University wasn’t in the cards for me, and it felt like LA was my higher education. It was more expensive and less guaranteed, but I didn’t just find my people there. I found myself.

  Honestly, two lessons that I learned there changed my life.

  Self-Deprecating Self-Confidence

  When you’re from Canada—the East Coast specifically—there’s a good chance you’re self-deprecating. It’s who we are. There’s nothing worse than a show-off in this part of the world. As my friend Sherry White, who’s a Newfoundlander, says, “In junior high, if someone complimented you on your shirt, you’d better say you found it in a dumpster or you’d be accused of showing off.”

  It’s so true.

  So when I went to Los Angeles with my pretty solid demo reel from years of characters and hosting bits on Jonovision, the executives I met with would say, “We watched your reel. It’s good!”

  And I’d say. “What? Really? No. Well, I guess if you’ve been working for fifteen years and you can’t cobble together a decent three minutes, then you’re in the wrong game, amirite?”

  You can imagine how confounding this was to Hollywood types. Hollywood is home to the fake-it-’til-you-make-it set. Their faces would contort as they tried to imagine why I’d sabotage my own meeting.

  Finally, one of them was kind enough to say, “A compliment is like a gift. When you give your aunt a sweater for Christmas, what do you want her to say?”

  “Thank you?” I offered meekly.

  “Exactly. You don’t want her to say she’s pudgy, or allergic, or doesn’t look good in robin’s-egg blue, you want her to say thank you.”