Mitch Heimpel: Canadians can reclaim our old identity — polite lunatics

Every time we put this representation of Canadian identity on television, it tends to be commercially successful.

The cast of Shoresy.

By: Mitch Heimpel

In recent days, The Line has spoken of the need for Canada to go “full psycho.” To “Make ‘Canada’s back’ a threat.” And, specifically, to recapture a Canadian identity that was, not long ago, widely shared — Canadians as scary and even dangerous. My own mind had been on similar topics of late, and I’d been thinking, specifically, about how those representations used to show up not just in our pop culture, but in American pop culture.

And in at least one place, you can find it still: Shoresy, a hilarious comedy show about Canadian hockey hosers that has found success on both sides of the border.

Shoresy is interesting not because it’s new, but almost because it’s retro. Once upon a time, the kind of Canadian identity shown in Shoresy was just … Canadian identity. Here’s a great example of what I mean that I suspect many readers will have seen: 1968's The Devil's Brigade, a film about the First Special Service Force, a joint Canadian-American unit that would become the forerunner to the American Green Berets. The film is a remarkable reflection of the attitudes that the two cultures had about each other. In one particular scene, after the Americans (predominantly tough guy actors Claude Akins and James Coburn) have spent days making sport of the Canadians, a new Canadian sergeant — played by Jeremy Slate — is introduced in a mess hall scene. Mild-mannered, lithe, and even bespectacled, the Sergeant sits down next to Akins and begins to insult him. He starts by literally elbowing the American bully for room at the table in the Mess and proceeds to call him a fat tub of lard.

Once Akins has had enough, he attacks the Canadian sergeant, who reveals himself to be the unit's new hand-to-hand combat instructor, and proceeds to pummel Akins while barely smudging his glasses. After having bruised the American's body, as well as his ego, he returns to dinner and punctuates it by asking Akins for the salt. Akins hands it over.

This was not a remarkable representation. The Americans used to view us as polite lunatics. This showed up not just in American media, but also our stories about ourselves. Characters like Slate's sergeant Patrick O'Neill showed up in the songs of Stompin' Tom, Ian Tyson, and even Gordon Lightfoot. They're memorialized in the works of Robert Service and Al Purdy. Purdy, in particular, describes this archetype well, both in At the Quinte Hotel and in The Country North of Belleville:

backbreaking days
in the sun and rain
when realization seeps slow in the mind
without grandeur or self-deception in
noble struggle
of being a fool –

A country of quiescence and still distance
a lean land
not like the fat south.

In those few lines, Purdy captures Canadiana so easily. A people shaped by distance and the harshness of the land. Capable of the toughness needed to endure. With just a little foolishness mixed in for good measure.

Polite lunatics.

It is into this context that I place the latest season of Shoresy, which airs in Canada on the Crave app. The show has no trouble with Canadiana. The opening of season four finds the main characters, fresh off a national senior hockey title, enjoying summer in Sudbury at the team owner's cottage, likely on the French River. There are superfluous shots of the Canadian shield, enough trees and rocks to make Tom Thomson proud. The main character, Shoresy, is unabashedly a hoser. It's established in the first two seasons with great effect, but also in the first 10 minutes of season four when, after being forced out of hockey due to concussion, he finds himself a commentator on an online hockey show at a loss for words in the presence of hockey tough guys like Doug Gilmour and Marty McSorley.

Only when put on a set with former super-pest Sean Avery is Shoresy able to loosen up and be himself. It's also no coincidence that within minutes of the start of their confrontation, Avery tells Shoresy that he's gotten his American citizenship and actually lives in Los Angeles now, setting himself up as a well-manicured foil to the series' central character.

Avery is portrayed as an American. How Canadians see Americans: as manufactured, almost industrial, human beings. Tailored and tucked into expensive clothes, beacons of garish wealth and status. Whatever remained of their rough edges has long been polished off.

It's not just Canadians who think of Americans this way. Think of how Americans portray football players in media. Think of Dennis Quaid's Cap Rooney in Any Given Sunday, or any one of the high-school protagonists of NBC's Friday Night Lights. They're tall, clean-shaven, lantern-jawed mountains of muscle.

That is not how Canadians portray hockey players (in spite of the NHL's best efforts). Hockey players are routinely portrayed as a little off kilter, as though you would have to be to tie razor blades on your feet. They're almost always three days past the last time they should have shaved. They're almost always missing a tooth, something that also plays into the episode as Shoresy complains to his girlfriend about the denture they make him wear on camera to complete his smile.

Americans talk about football players in a language of virility. Canadians talk about hockey players in a language of endurance — something Al Purdy would have well understood. The best example of this is former Boston Bruins star, and Quebecer, Patrice Bergeron, who revealed after a Stanley Cup Final loss to the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 that he played in the playoffs with a punctured lung, a separated shoulder, a broken rib and a broken nose.

This Canadian archetype knows no language or race. Shoresy, as a show, moves back and forth between English and French dialogue with remarkable ease. It's been praised for not just the amount of First Nations representation, but also the overwhelmingly positive representation. The show's hosers — whether it's star Jared Keeso, former NHLer Terry Ryan, or Quebec hockey player-turned-rapper Jonathan-Ismael Diaby "JoDolo" — all fit this mould. It takes no effort to put them in a line of Canadian television hosers that includes Bob and Doug MacKenzie, Red Green, Mike from Canmore, and Brent Leroy.

Every time we put this representation of Canadian identity on television, it tends to be commercially successful — and not just in Canada. There is something Canadians see of ourselves in this portrayal, and that much of the world still sees in us. We are not the neurotic, blue-helmet-loving, health-care-obsessed cosmopolitans that we have been trying to convince ourselves we are since the late 1970s. We like that Canadians are a little coarse. We like that Canadians are tough, that we endure. That we have, as Purdy said, "stuck both thumbs in the stony earth, and pulled it apart to make room."

That is who we are. Being that requires an industriousness and a toughness, and just a little foolishness. It requires a fierce people, who don't take themselves too seriously.

Shoresy delivers that. Probably at a time when Canadians most need to see it on their television. Maybe Americans need to see more of it, too.

Mitch Heimpel has served Conservative cabinet ministers and party leaders at the provincial and federal levels, and is currently the director of campaigns and government relations at Enterprise Canada.

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