Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Canada Read online

  Calgary Controversies

  Despite the food, shows, and exciting races, not everyone loves the Calgary Stampede. The most vocal protesters are animal-rights activists who claim that the rodeo is cruel. Since 1986 the Humane Society of Canada has documented more than 40 animal deaths linked directly to Stampede events. In 2009 the organization filed a complaint to stop the government from sponsoring the Stampede’s television broadcast. It’s against Canada’s laws to glamorize cruelty to animals, and Humane Society CEO Michael O’Sullivan said, “Our fascination with the Old West makes these animals pay a terrible price.” Still, the event was broadcast on the CBC as planned in 2009.

  Cowgirls ride in a Stampede parade.

  In addition to the debate over animals, some critics dislike the Stampede’s effect on humans. Karen Stewart, founder of a mediation group called Fairway Divorce Solutions, said she sees as much as a 40 percent jump in the number of people filing for divorce in the weeks after the Calgary Stampede. Stewart says that the party atmosphere leads some folks to stray from their vows. She claims too many people follow a Calgary saying that goes, “It’s not cheatin’. It’s just Stampedin’.” Yee-haw!

  Who’s that Band?

  The stories behind the names of some of Canada’s most beloved musical groups.

  Steppenwolf’s John Kay performs in Lillehammer, Norway.

  Steppenwolf

  The “Born to Be Wild” group started out as a Toronto blues band called Sparrow. Their producer—noting the popularity of Hermann Hesse novels at the time—suggested Steppenwolf after Hesse’s creepily surreal book of the same name.

  Chilliwack

  The Collectors found some minor success as a 1960s psychedelic group, but luckily, the 1970s weren’t that far away. Changing their name to Chilliwack—a Native North American term from the Salish language meaning “going back up”—expressed their optimism about making it big. After several Canadian hits in the 1970s, the band finally had its first success in the United States in 1981 with “My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone).”

  Chris Murphy of Sloan performs at South by Southwest.

  Sloan

  This Halifax band got its name because of a friend’s problems at work. Jason Larsen’s French-speaking boss referred to him as “Slow One,” but it sounded like “Sloan” to his coworkers, and became his nickname. Larsen agreed to let his friends Chris Murphy and Andrew Scott use it for their band, as long as they put him on the front of their first album: that’s him on the cover of Peppermint.

  The Five Man Electrical Band released Good-byes and Butterflies in 1970 (Lionel Records).

  Five Man Electrical Band

  The Staccatos were a moderate success in the Ontario area in the early 1960s, but as the hippie era bloomed, that name proved to be out of touch. Bands like Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were popular, so why not adopt a similar-sounding name that literally told what they were? Their one hit, “Signs,” catapulted Five Man Electrical Band to success. The band still tours on the power of that hit, but today it has six members.

  The Poppy Family

  “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” was the musical question posed in 1969 by this Vancouver psychedelic pop group. Headed by Terry and Susan Jacks and backed up by two unrelated musicians, the oh-so-sixties name mirrored the popular Partridge Family and referenced the flowery source of heroin and opium. The family broke up when Susan left the marriage. Terry had a string of hits, including “Seasons in the Sun,” before fading from the music scene; Susan still works in the biz as a consultant, songwriter, and recording artist.

  Heart’s Roger Fisher rocks out in 1978.

  Roger Fisher and Ann Wilson of Heart perform at the 28th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Los Angeles in 2013.

  Heart

  American draft dodger Mike Fisher formed this band with a group of his Seattle friends (including his brother Roger, and sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson) who had trickled up to Vancouver. First signed to the city’s Mushroom Records, the band had its first hit singles, “Crazy on You” and “Magic Man,” in 1976. Its name—originally White Heart—was inspired by Tales from the White Hart, a collection of sci-fi short stories by Arthur C. Clarke.

  April Wine

  According to the group’s Web site, “April Wine” was chosen in 1970 “simply because they were two words that sounded good together.” Born in Halifax but raised in Montreal, the group members celebrated their 40th anniversary in 2010 with honors from the Juno Awards and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

  Mahogany Rush

  The band’s leader, Frank Marino, thought up this name during an acid trip that put him in the hospital. He was trying to explain the nature of his LSD exhilaration—the “rush”—and figured that “mahogany” described it best.

  Rush

  When this Toronto band formed hastily in 1968, drummer John Rutsey’s older brother suggested “Rush,” both because of the psychedelic connotations (see Mahogany Rush) but also to reflect the band’s frenetic scrambling for a name before its first performance at a church-sponsored coffeehouse.

  Arcade Fire

  This Montreal indie band’s Win Butler explained that as a child he heard a story that haunted him: it was an account of an arcade burning down with kids trapped inside.

  “It’s probably something that the kid [who told me the story] made up, but at the time I believed him.”

  Randy Bachman of Bachman Turner Overdrive plays a set.

  Bachman Turner Overdrive

  Bachman and Turner, of course, were people in the group, but where did “Overdrive” come from?

  The band was going home to Winnipeg from an Ontario job and stopped for gas in Windsor. One of them saw a magazine for truckers called Overdrive. The band liked the word and thought it would describe their sound. (By the way, although the world would pronounce Bachman as if it were “bockman”, the family pronounced it “bakeman”…and so did the band when referring to itself.)

  Men Without Hats

  According to a Web site dedicated to the band’s song “The Safety Dance,” founder Ivan Doroschuk and his two brothers refused to wear hats during Montreal’s cold winters, calling themselves “the men without hats.”

  The Tragically Hip

  When the 1960s made-for-TV Monkees split up, member Michael Nesmith embarked on his own projects, trying to reclaim his sense of artistic integrity. In 1981 he made a movie called Elephant Parts that included music interspersed with comedy bits. One of those bits was called “The Tragically Hip,” and a group of musical guys from Kingston, Ontario, thought it was the perfect name for a band.

  The Guess Who

  This 1960s rock band from Winnipeg was named Chad Allan & the Reflections when they recorded their first single. Trying to add some mystique (and maybe fool customers into thinking it was a more famous band traveling incognito), the band’s record company printed “Guess Who?” on its promotional record labels. Even after the record company revealed the group’s real name, radio DJs continued to call them “Guess Who?” forcing the band to adopt that as their real name on subsequent hits like “American Woman.”

  Barenaked Ladies

  Ed Robertson and Steven Page were bored at a 1988 Bob Dylan concert, so they started to make up improbable band names. When they had to put together an impromptu set for a charity event, one of the organizers asked Robertson the name of his band. To Page’s embarrassment, all Robertson could remember was one of the names from the Dylan concert: Barenaked Ladies.

  Moxy Früvous

  This satirical and sometimes political band from Thornhill, Ontario, often gave frivolous answers about its name, which comes complete with heavy metal umlaut (possibly borrowed from Mötley Crüe?). A member eventually admitted that, contrary to the normal criterion for a band name, they purposely chose “a name that wasn’t easy to remember and doesn’t mean anything.”

  Stewart Cameron, Brad Roberts, and Dan Roberts (left to right) of Cr
ash Test Dummies record a song.

  Crash Test Dummies

  We prefer their original name—Bad Brad Roberts and the St. James Rhythm Pigs—but they came under the sway of a medical student friend who suggested Crash Test Dummies instead.

  Stephen Stills performs with Buffalo Springfield in 2013.

  Buffalo Springfield

  Neil Young met Stephen Stills when they were performing with other bands at a folk club in Thunder Bay, Ontario. After recruiting Canadian bass player Bruce Palmer, they named the group after a nameplate they saw while briefly detained by road work being done with an old steamroller from the now-defunct Buffalo Springfield Roller Company.

  The Damming Evidence

  North American beavers are Canada’s official emblem and the third-largest rodent in the world. They mate for life, their teeth never stop growing, and they can live for 20 years. But that’s just the beginning. Here are even more beaver facts.

  Beavers chew trees like this one to wear down their teeth.

  •Among rodents, North American beavers are smaller than only the South American capybara, which looks like a big guinea pig, and the European/Eurasian beaver. Typically, North American beavers weigh between 16 and 30 kilograms (35 and 66 pounds), but the largest-ever caught weighed 45 kilograms (99 pounds).

  •Beavers chew wood to wear down their ever-growing front teeth.

  •Beavers can cut down a tree with a 15-centimeter (6-inch) diameter in 20 minutes, gnawing around and around its base. Beavers have been known to fell trees as large as 1.15 meters (5 feet) in diameter.

  •Beaver dams are so well built that dynamite is often the best way to remove them.

  •The longest known beaver dam is more than 800 meters (0.5 mile) long. It’s in northern Alberta.

  •There are two to four “kits” in a typical beaver litter, and they can swim within 24 hours of being born. “Teenage” beavers—kits born the previous year—help babysit the new brood, although they’d probably rather be hanging out by the dam with their friends.

  •Scientists say that in prehistoric times, beavers were the size of modern black bears.

  North American beaver

  •Two hundred years ago, North America was home to about 60 to 80 beavers per mile of stream. Because of their pelts, though, the animals were hunted nearly to extinction by the end of the 19th century. Nowadays, they’re protected enough to have come back with a vengeance in most of North America, including parts of New York City.

  Big Beer Guns

  Beer is Canadian! The first commercial brewery opened in Quebec in 1668, but after that, more than a century passed before Canada’s most famous brewing names began to appear.

  Molson’s is the oldest brewery in Canada.

  •1786: John Molson opened a brewery in Montreal. He’d never been a brewer, but had the confidence of youth and a copy of the book Theoretic Hints on an Improved Practice in Brewing. Today, Molson is Canada’s oldest brewery and the second-oldest Canadian company of any kind (the Hudson’s Bay Company is first).

  •1820: Scotsman Alexander Keith set up shop in Halifax. He also became the city’s longtime mayor and highest-ranking Freemason. Every October 5 (his birthday), Haligonians celebrate by lovingly littering his grave with bottle caps and empty beer bottles.

  A vintage beer label from the late 1930s for Carling Breweries’ Old Tavern Lager

  •1840: Thomas Carling was a farmer from Yorkshire who moved his family to Ontario in 1818. His home-brewed ales became popular among his neighbors, so eventually he gave up farming to sell beer on the streets of London, Ontario, from a barrel mounted to a wheelbarrow. In 1840 he moved his brewery into town, wisely locating it next to a military barracks.

  •1855: Originally from Ireland, John Kinder Labatt moved to Ontario in 1834. When his English investments faltered, he sold his farm and bought half-interest in a brewery owned by one Samuel Eccles. Labatt slapped his name on the brewery when Eccles retired.

  Susannah Oland founded Moosehead.

  •1867: Moosehead was the only major Canadian brewery founded by a woman. Susannah Oland first named her brewery S. Oland, Sons & Co. shortly after founding it in 1867 in Halifax. The Halifax Explosion of 1917 destroyed Oland’s business and killed one of her sons, so she moved to New Brunswick.

  In the 1940s, the company officially changed its name to Moosehead, after one of its most successful beers (Moosehead Pale Ale). Moosehead is still run by the Oland family, making it the largest Canadian-owned brewery.

  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Caribou?

  Reindeer are called caribou in North America, so if Rudolph came from Canada would that make him a caribou?

  The Same, Only Different?

  Any zoologist can tell you that reindeer and caribou are the same animal. They’re both stocky deer that live in cold areas and have giant antlers, and they both belong to the same species, Rangifer tarandus. The animals are generally called caribou only in North America, though; in most other places, they’re referred to as reindeer. But more important than all that is, what would Uncle John say? Probably something like: if television Christmas specials reflect any approximation of reality (and there’s no reason to believe otherwise), then yeah…Rudolph is definitely a Canadian caribou.

  A 1658 woodcut by Edward Topsel shows a caribou.

  Exhibits One, Two, and Three

  Take, for instance, the classic TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, released in 1964. It turns out that, except for narrator Burl Ives, most of the talking and singing was performed by Canadians. The film was written in the United States and produced in Japan, but the entire sound track was recorded in a studio in Toronto. And the main characters were voiced by three Canadians.

  •Billie Mae Richards provided Rudolph’s voice. She went from being a reindeer (or caribou) to playing Tenderheart Bear of the Care Bears, and a number of characters in the 1960s cartoon version of Spider-Man.

  •Paul Soles voiced Hermey the Misfit Elf who really wanted to be a dentist. Soles has done Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival and cohosted Take 30 for 17 seasons. He also won a Gemini Award for his role in the Canadian TV miniseries Terminal City.

  •Larry Mann, a former disk jockey at CHUM in Ontario, was the voice of Yukon Cornelius. Mann also appeared in scores of movies and TV shows, including Get Smart, The Singing Nun, The All-New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show, Bewitched, My Favorite Martian, Howdy Doody, and Hill Street Blues.

  Frosty the Snowman

  Is that Your Final Answer?

  The evidence was mounting in favor of Rudolph being a caribou, but the Canadian Wildlife Service in the Yukon insisted on having the last word. It seems that you’ve got your wild Rangifer and your domesticated Rangifer. In North America, it’s actually only the wild ones that are called “caribou.” And, let’s face it—Rudolph is about as wild as Frosty the Snowman’s top hat.

  So in the end, we had to relent: Rudolph is a reindeer after all, just like it says in the song. Besides, everybody knows that caribou can’t fly.

  In the Beginning, There Was…

  Don Adams

  When Corner Gas premiered in 2004, it revolutionized Canadian television—in 2006 it was the only Canadian-produced show (besides hockey) to break into the top 10. But before Canucks got to know Brent, Wanda, and the rest of the folks from Dog River, they had to suffer through years of bad sitcoms. Remember these?

  •Snow Job (1983–85): A group of characters tackled life and work at a posh ski lodge in the Laurentian Mountains. Wackiness ensued…or was supposed to. One reviewer wrote: “It’s a good thing CTV chose to put a laugh track on the thing, or you wouldn’t know where the jokes were.”

  •Check It Out (1985): American actor Don Adams of Get Smart fame headed this comedy set in a grocery store, which was produced by the same team that did Three’s Company. It should’ve been a hit. It wasn’t. Check It Out was quickly sunk by its stereotyped characters (Slutty Cashier, Dumb Stockboy, etc.) and lack of humor.

 
•Gullage’s (1996–98): This show’s premise had potential: Calvin Pope was a driver for Gullage’s Taxi service. He lived in St. John’s, Newfoundland, with his mom and daughter, next door to his ex-wife. But in the end, more people found Gullage’s “cute” than funny.

  The exterior scenes of the Ruby Cafe from Corner Gas were filmed in Rouleau, Saskatchewan.

  Real or Rumor?

  Misinformation runs rampant through the countryside and on the Internet. Uncle John considers it his duty to chase it down and club it with a stick.