Worldandnation: 'You have a TV station in Canada?'

'You have a TV station in Canada?'

Answers like that are the fuel for a Canadian TV show that says as much about their country as it does about ours.

©Washington Post

Answers like that are the fuel for a Canadian TV show that says as much about their country as it does about ours.

TORONTO -- For a Canadian, sometimes the hardest thing about talking to Americans is keeping a straight face.

But Rick Mercer keeps trying, trying not to grin or giggle as he travels the States asking those astute Americans very simple questions about their neighbor up north -- and bumping into mountains of ignorance.

"Excuse me, ma'am," Mercer says, holding out a microphone in San Francisco, "do you have a minute for Canadian television?"

"You have a TV station in Canada?" the woman asks politely, and seriously.

Fact: Canada has four major television networks and dozens of stations in a country of more than 31-million people.

Mercer asks an unsuspecting Ivy League student in Boston: "Do you think Canada should join North America? It's a big story up north. Care to comment?"

The student, who says he's studying politics, looks deeply into the camera and answers, seriously, that he isn't quite sure.

Fact: Too absurd an answer to dignify with the fact that Canada is a part -- a very large part -- of the North American continent.

Another American, another question: "Should Canada outlaw the slaughter of polar bears in Toronto?"

Answer: Definitely!

Fact: No polar bears live in this bustling, urban city on a lake.

Polar bears, which are killed by hunters from the south and aboriginal peoples, roam in the arctic, around 1,500 miles north of Toronto.

O Canada! How little we know thee. The United States' biggest trading partner, the only country with which we share a long, unguarded border. Yet somehow that large land mass to the north was always cut off the maps that hung in elementary school classrooms, illustrating how much Americans think about this nation.

Mercer's Talking to Americans proves the point. One of Canada's most popular satires, Talking to Americans is broadcast weekly as part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes. A recent compilation of Talking to Americans, which aired April Fools' Day, received the highest ratings in CBC history for a comedy special, drawing 2.7-million viewers in Canada.

"It had Survivor-like ratings," says Mercer, 31, who has worked as an actor, writer, commentator and comedian in Canada.

Mercer says the segment is popular because it's as much about the Canadian search for a national identity as it is about American ignorance of Canada.

"Canadians spend a huge portion of their social life trying to define what it means to be Canadian," he said. "Americans never spend any time trying to define what it means to be American. Canadians have an identity crisis. We look like Americans. We sound like Americans. We know everything about Americans. They know nothing about us. . . . We find that funny."

The Americans whom Mercer finds are all too happy to congratulate Canada on what he tells them are its latest "achievements."

"Congratulations, Canada, on legalizing insulin!" says a woman in New York City.

"Congratulations, Canada, for getting a McDonald's!" shouts a man in a baseball cap.

"Congratulations, Canada, on 800 miles of paved road!" says a man on the streets of New York.

On a crowded Manhattan street corner, Mercer asked, "Do you think America should be bombing Bouchard?"

"Absolutely!" a man emphatically responds. Never mind that Bouchard is not a place but a man, the former separatist leader of Quebec.

At Harvard University, Mercer asked students whether Canada should resume the seal slaughter in Saskatchewan. Student after student lined up liberally to voice protest of a slaughter, not one seemingly aware that Saskatchewan is a landlocked province with no seals.

But Mercer says Talking to Americans is less about American knowledge of Canada than it is about what Canadians think of themselves. Canadians wonder what makes them Canadian and whether their country has any relevance. Often, he says, a Canadian is defined by what he or she is not -- not American, not British, not rude like so many Americans.

Some Canadians say they suffer from a national inferiority complex, living in the shadow of the United States. As the late Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau once said: "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."

So it seems a measure of self-respect, perhaps self-worth, is for Canadians to believe that Canadians are somehow better traveled, better read, better written than their American counterparts.

But Rudyard Griffiths, a Canadian who heads the Dominion Institute, a Canadian think tank, opposes the great stereotype. "That myth is a part of a larger anti-Americanism," he says. "It is smug and self-serving and ultimately self-destructive. It prevents us from looking at our own knowledge of what we are as a country."

Griffiths says that an American television anchor pointing a microphone at an unsuspecting Canadian would find the same ignorance Mercer is finding: "Turn the camera on Canadians in Don Mills, Ontario, and ask questions about Senator Applebaum and whether Americans should invade China. They would probably support that."

A recent poll by the Dominion Institute and research firm Ipsos-Reid found that Americans knew their history far better than Canadians knew theirs. Sixty-three percent of Americans passed the quiz, compared with 39 percent of Canadians. Ninety percent of 1,000 Americans polled knew who the first president was, while 54 percent of 1,003 Canadians knew who their first prime minister was. (Answer: John Macdonald.)

"Mercer's stuff plays to the Pearsonian image of Canada; Mercer's segment plays to Canadians' belief that Canadians are worldly, aware of international affairs, intelligent and informed and upwardly conscious of global issues and global concerns, and that Americans are, in contrast, isolationists, parochial, navel-gazing fatsos," Griffiths says. "When in truth I think we are all far too similar: We don't know much beyond where we live."

Mercer says Talking isn't about who is smarter. "If you talk about history or specific political figures, you are always going to be able to stump people. You could ask me 100 questions right now that I won't know the answers to."

Mercer said he got the idea for the segment two years ago when he was in Washington working on a comedy show and ran out of funny ideas. The camera was rolling, "and I didn't have an idea in my head. "Oh my God,' I thought. "It all ends here. My career is toast.' "

He was standing in front of the Capitol. A politician walked by. Mercer stopped him: "Excuse me, sir, did you know Canada's new prime minister, Ralph Benmergui" -- a CBC personality -- "is visiting Washington for a summit with President Clinton? Should it be called the Clinton-Benmergui summit or the Benmergui-Clinton summit?"

Immediately the politician began rambling about how happy he was that Prime Minister Benmergui was in Washington. Never mind that the prime minister is Jean Chretien.

"This guy wouldn't shut up about Benmergui," Mercer said. "The man wrapped it up by saying, "I, like all Americans, have great respect for Prime Minister Benmergui; after all, he is a great believer in peace.' "

Much later, Mercer caught presidential candidate George W. Bush on camera. "A question from Canada," Mercer shouted at a Bush campaign stop. "Gov. Bush! A question from Canada." Then Mercer told Bush that Prime Minister Poutine was supporting Bush's candidacy.

Bush, on camera, said: "I appreciate his strong statement. He understands Canadians are strong and we'll work closely together."

The segment is scheduled to continue for the new season, so if a well-dressed man with dark curly hair stops you on the street and asks, "Do you have a minute for a Canadian television station?" here's a cheat sheet:

Canada has a prime minister, not a president. His name is Jean Chretien. But the head of state is not the prime minister. It is the governor general, who is the queen's representative. The governor general is Adrienne Clarkson.

There are about 31-million Canadians, who live in 10 provinces and three territories, the newest of which is Nunavut.

The country has two official languages: English and French.

The country celebrates its birthday July 1, the day in 1867 when the Dominion of Canada was created. (The fathers of the confederation wanted to call it the Kingdom of Canada, but they thought that would offend the United States.)

Canada is a vast land mass, larger than the United States, that stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from Greenland south to Detroit. But about 90 percent of the country's population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

And the national food is poutine: french fries covered in cheese and gravy.