Canadianity

by Jeremy Taggart

  As part of my research, I started watching old Juno broadcasts. I was certainly aware of Lightfoot and knew the big songs, like “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown” and “Rainy Day People,” but once I climbed into the wormhole, I was all in. Imagine having access to the entire CBC archives to immerse yourself in on a project like that!

  For example, did you know he started out on a CBC show in the ’60s called Singalong Jubilee? Did you know he was commissioned by the CBC to write “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”? Did you know that sometimes, late at night, as I played his songs on my Martin guitar (because that’s what he used), I started to believe I was him?

  Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch, but “If You Could Read My Mind,” you would know that I definitely thought I could potentially play him in a movie of the week.

  At least until Taggart laughed so hard at the notion that I couldn’t help but laugh too. Oh well. My spotty but spirited Lightfoot impression has found a perfect home on the podcast, co-starring Jeremy Taggart as his manager Bernie.

  Terry Fox

  Taggart

  People like to use the word “great,” but sometimes it gets thrown around too much, watered down in its importance. But when it comes to Terry Fox, he redefined the word. Beat it through the mud and reworked it to a diamond finish, clear and deep. Great. I was freshly five when Terry dipped his artificial leg into the Atlantic Ocean on April 12, 1980, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, to begin his Marathon of Hope.

  He ran in the cold, drumming up support as he went, and soon people started to pay serious attention to this phenomenal young cancer patient trying to run across Canada on one leg. Averaging forty-two kilometres a day in awful weather, his foot became blistered and raw. Then there was his artificial leg, made from fibreglass and steel and never designed for running. It bruised and cut its way into the resting stump, slowly digging its way in, day after day.

  Imagine the strength and will of this young man. Pressing on in the early days even though nobody came out to support him as he ran through small towns and cities. Just grinding it out through that pain and frustration. Thank God he had acquired the ear of the nation by the time he was making his way through New Brunswick. He was a Canadian hero by the time he got to Ontario, and even though I was only five, I was aware of him by then. I remember him meeting his idol, Darryl Sittler, and receiving his 1980 NHL All-Star Game sweater. The iconic images of Terry running before a throng of people or in the rain alone, trailed by a police car that lit his dreary way in the early morning.

  The determination in his eyes also blows my mind. How many people on Earth have faced that goal, with that pain, not to mention the way the cards were stacked against him, yet he pushed on and on. Even when death was the only way he was going to stop running on that highway, he kept hold of that goal.

  His words in that final press conference before his death: “That’s the thing about cancer. I’m not the only one, it happens all the time to people. I’m not special. This just intensifies what I did. It gives it more meaning. It’ll inspire more people . . . I just wish people would realize that anything’s possible if you try. When I started this run, I said that if we all gave a dollar, we’d have twenty-two million for cancer research, and I don’t care, man, there’s no reason that isn’t possible. No reason.”

  I’m proud of a lot of Canadians, but my heart beams a little brighter when it comes to Terry Fox and what he accomplished as a human being. The Bahd of all Bahds.

  Game On!

  Having some new bahds over and looking for ways to break the ice? Try one of our TnT party games! They’re not too hard—most have a true-or-false element, which gives you a fifty-fifty shot at getting the answer right—and they teach us about Canadian history. The best part: minimal prep is required.

  Canadian or Ca-not-ian

  Take turns listing inventions, letting the others guess whether each was invented by a Canadian. Thanks to the Heritage Minute, we all know that James Naismith invented basketball, but how about some trickier ones—the zipper? peanut butter?

  Poem Sayin’

  Pick famous Canadian songs and challenge each other to read the lyrics aloud with passion but without laughing. To make it harder, give each other characters to play: For instance, read “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)” by Glass Tiger as a New York beat poet in the ’60s. Or read “Wave Babies” by Honeymoon Suite as your pervy uncle.

  There’s No Lie in Team!

  Which of these sports teams is real and which is made up?

  1.Scottsdale Fighting Artichokes

  2.Lewiston Lovehandles

  3.Long Beach State Dirtbags

  4.Shelley Russets

  5.Macon Whoopee

  6.Chattanooga Central Purple Pounders

  7.Traverse City Beach Bums

  8.Nantucket Night Sweats

  9.Frankfurt Foreskins

  10.Teutopolis Wooden Shoes

  11.Adelaide Assmasters

  Numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10 are real.

  On the Darts

  One of our more obscure but oddly addictive games. Wait—is it addictive or addicting?

  Either way, pick a group of people. The cast of Street Legal. The 1987 Montreal Expos. The rock band Triumph. Go through them one member at a time and speculate as to who’s “on the darts” (smokes cigarettes).

  Fun, right?

  “On the Darts” also works with categories, like Canadian female singers:

  •Alanis—not on the darts

  •Avril—darts

  •Anne Murray—not on the darts anymore

  •Céline—no darts

  •Shania—sneaky darts

  •Joni—Dart City

  Hit the Post

  Cue up some classic songs on YouTube that have a long TTV (time to vocal). Your job is to vamp over the instrumental part, the way a DJ would, bailing just before the singer starts singing. The longer the intro, the harder this is.

  To add a degree of difficulty, you can also give each other a DJ name (Spider Clemons), a day part (weekend mornings) and call letters/mascot of a fictitious station (101.9 The Owl in Carcross, Yukon).

  It’s surprisingly difficult and unbelievably fun.

  Gagnes or Gagnon

  Variations on this one include “Shania Twain or Shania Twin.”

  Take turns playing clips of “famous people” speaking. The contestant has to guess if it’s the actual person or André-Philippe Gagnon doing his impression of them. Would work with Rich Little too.

  I wonder if there’s an André-Philippe Gagnon impersonator out there somewhere? That would be so meta!

  Is That Stephen Hawking Talking?

  One person pulls clips of Hawking interviews and also records sentences using the app that makes your voice sound computerized. You have to guess whether it’s Hawking talking. Fortunately for Jonathan, Jeremy usually wedges a swear word into his sentences, so it’s fairly easy to distinguish.

  The Holiday Hum-Off

  Give each other holiday season scenarios and carols to hum. It’s so dumb, but it cracks us up.

  For example: “You just found the perfect gift for your wife and you’re smugly and calmly walking through the mall completely at peace but surrounded by chaos. Your song is ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.’”

  A big part of making these games fun is knowing that not every name, every improv, every performance will be funny, so just surrender to the silliness.

  TnT Is Sketchy

  We sort of stumbled upon our improv sketches through playing Top Five jams for different scenarios. “Top Five Opening the Cottage Jams” yielded two women characters from Yellowknife who lived on an island and wore down vests. “Top Five F*ck It, I Quit Jams” bore scenarios where one of us would quit a job in a ball of fury, while the other was the manager. Some are one-offs, like the frigid sexless couple in their sixties, one of whom is proposing a threesome but the other is definitely not into it.

  Others stuck, either because they made us
laugh or because bahds demanded we bring them back. Here are just a few of the larger-than-life duos in the Taggart & Torrens universe.

  Salvador and Bre-Ashley

  The slimy Sexican perv and the vulnerable doe in the headlights make an unlikely couple, but their passion is undeniable. They met working at White Spot, where she was a server and he was a busboy. She was rattled by his handsy kitchen encounters, but he played the cultural card, explaining he “just don’t understand jor Canadian waysss.” His T-shirt puts the “tight” in “You Canadians are so uptight.”

  Gord and Bernie

  A bored Gordon Lightfoot visits his busy manager, Bernie Finkelstein, often arriving through the window to deliver a pan of Nanaimo bars. They’re Bernie’s weakness. Gord gets irrationally irritated when Bernie is working on business for his other big client, Bruce Cockburn. Our take on this relationship has nothing to do with truth—much like the Vannellis—but the Odd Couple dynamic is a proven comedy staple and it makes both of us laugh really hard.

  Jer Bear and Colleen in the Morning

  Our take on the gender politics of a workplace, set in the confines of a terribly dated FM morning-radio show. Jer Bear makes four times what Colleen does, and their thinly veiled venom for each other is audible to the listeners. Colleen is passive-aggressive, Jer is aggressive-aggressive.

  Andrea N Them

  Our TnT sitcom! From the moment the theme song kicks in (“Only Wanna Be with You” by Hootie and the Blowfish), Andrea N Them is every awful sitcom idea in one “show.” The laugh track is way too loud. Catchphrases are forced. Plots resolve way too simply. The “Are they or aren’t they” is more of a “Who cares if they ever do?”

  But the best part of Andrea N Them is the very real, relatable friendship between roommates Andrea and Laramie. Andrea is a fun-loving Cape Breton gal who moved up to Toronto (Mississauga) to work at “Purolatorrs.” She found Laramie, who was looking for a roommate on “Kijijisss,” and they’ve been inseparable ever since. Their relationship is mostly platonic, although after a few Coronas on the weekend, Andrea might get Laramie to “pretend he’s her boyfriend” so some guy will stop ogling her. She’s also constantly trying to bait the hook, saying things like “My arse doesn’t look very good in these yoga pants—or does it, Laramie?”

  Clearly, she would be open to the idea of them pursuing something beyond their roommate relationship, but he’s either too oblivious or self-absorbed to notice. For his part, Laramie gets a kick out of Andrea, and she probably gets him out of the house to “shake the stink offa him” more than he’s ever been. She isn’t on the darts but has been known to succumb to weekend bumsies outside Sneaky Dee’s, where she loves the “nat-chose.”

  The most fun is when there are crossover appearances, like when the Vannelli brothers show up to take Andrea to the Ex. Or Salvador and Laramie butt heads.

  Or we introduce a third character and one of us has to play them.

  As in Andrea N Them, Jeremy is in charge of the theme, the audience laugh track, the audience “ooohs,” and playing Laramie and Gary Lake, the greasy landlord. My stomach gets right friggy just imagining how much of a mind-melter that is. He’s one talented pecker!

  That’s All He Wrote

  When it was getting late into the evening, a friend’s dad always said, “Well, Florence, we should get to bed and let these good people get home.” That’s kind of how we feel about overstaying our welcome on paper. Even though you can pick up or put down this book whenever you like, even though you could have chosen not to read it or stopped at any point, we still want to make sure you had a good time. Canadians, eh? We should care less about what others think and care more about what we think of ourselves.

  In any case, we’re torqued you made it this far.

  If you’re not Canadian, hopefully you now feel equipped to handle any poutine party you’re ever invited to. That was a test. There’s no such thing. Did you pass?

  If you are Canadian, hopefully these few hundred pages have reminded you how lucky we are to live here in the way that doing the podcast has reminded us. Hopefully you see being Canadian as a privilege and a responsibility.

  So the next time you’re travelling to another country with a maple leaf sewn on your backpack, or come across someone on the streets of Montreal without a coat, or witness a frazzled parent struggling to get a stroller into West Edmonton Mall . . .

  Hop in. Help out. Smile. Lend a hand. Share a laugh.

  That, bahds, is Canadianity.

  Special Thanks

  Taggart

  This book wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for all the people mentioned in it. I’d like to thank my incredible and beautiful wife, Lisa, and my three kids, John, Jack and Aneliese, for putting up and pushing me to write and finally finish this book. Thank you to my amazing parents, Ronnie and Beryl. Thanks to Jenni, James and Jetsun for being so interesting, I couldn’t ask for better siblings or parents, I love you guys!

  Thanks to Jonathan Torrens for helping me shape TnT into the most enjoyable work environment I’ve ever experienced, and for cracking the whip to finish this book, and for being such a bahd to me and everyone else! Thanks to Tim Oxford, for being such a great soul, getting our pods out through thick and thin, and for making me so proud with your success! Thanks to Mike MacFarlane for being a ground-floor bahd and for all his work with TaggartnTorrens.ca.

  Thank you to all the bahds who listen to us and find common ground with us—it really is everything. Thanks for choosing us to be the soundtrack to long drives, lawn care, baling hay, skating on the pond, sitting by a crackling fire by a lake or working a night shift at the gas station. Thank you, all!

  Torrens

  Who could ever have guessed when Taggs and I decided to start recording what were essentially weekly phone conversations for our new podcast that a fancy HarperCollins book would be the outcome? Certainly not Jeremy. I knew it all along. That’s how people tell us apart. I’m the “optimistic” one. He’s the one with the “carefree attitude and crazy rock ’n’ roll misadventures.” Doesn’t he sound so much more interesting than me? It’s okay. He really is. We’re like The Bahd Couple.

  There are two things that get me all fired up about the relative success of TnT. The first is that our instinct was right. That this gorgeous country is crawling with all kinds of bahds like us, who just want to reminisce about their childhoods, have a drink or two and not let things get too heavy. Who see the bright side and try to laugh at the hardships, ’cuz we recognize it’s the tough times that make us appreciate the great ones. That #Canadianity is more than just a silly made-up word. It’s a meaningful movement.

  Second, TnT is maybe the most authentic thing I’ve ever done in my career. It’s me being me, warts and all, for better or for high-pitched cackle-y worse. The best part is this: we started doing it for fun. It certainly wasn’t for the money. So it’s not lost on me that the outcome is so satisfying. It’s a great reminder that when you choose to do things for the right reasons, the universe takes care of the rest. So, bahds, if there’s something (or someone!) you know in your heart you’re supposed to be doing, go for it. You’ll be amazed at what comes your way. Yes, I know that sounds clich-eh, but trust me, I’m a bahd-liever.

  For example, I moved home from chasing “it” in LA because I realized that no job could replace living where I’m from. Canada. I remember the very day when the things that used to feel suffocating and limiting about my home suddenly became comforting and familiar.

  Shortly after I moved back to Nova Scotia, I met the love of my life, Carole, and we went halfers on two small roommates. See? The universe rewarded me for making a choice for the right reasons. So I’d like to dedicate my 50 percent of this book to the woman who occupies 100 percent of my thoughts. Carole is my whole universe. She is even smarter than she is pretty, and funnier than she is smart. That’s saying a lot, ’cuz she’s a total rocket. I really did “marry up.” Thanks to the “ghirlst,” Sugar-Daisy and Indigo, for mak
ing my heart grow extra chambers. And to the Torrenses and MacLeods in my life. I’m a lucky guy to have so much support.

  Three more quick dedications. First, to Doug Richmond for commissioning this book, Jim Gifford for seeing it through and everyone else at HarperCollins for holding our hands through this process. Thanks for seeing in us what we had yet to see in ourselves. Your confidence in TnT made this possible.

  Next to you bahds for sharing this journey with us and invigorating us with your own Canadianity tales. Your emails, tweets and stops on the street fill our hearts with so much joy. Thanks for listening at work, in the car and around the fire in your beer chairs.

  And finally, to Jeremy Taggart. Thanks for the laughs, the stories and that rat-a-tat-tat machine-gun, joy-filled laugh that echoes in my head whenever there’s a moment of silence. Can’t think of anyone else I’d rather hear on the other end of the line.

  Copyright

  Canadianity

  Copyright © 2017 by Taggart & Torrens Inc.

  All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.