I AM Canadian! Happy Canada Day!

17

July 1, 2014 – Back in 2000, during the Academy Awards, Molson Canadian aired this commercial. I feel like it was the first time anything on television really shoved a bubble of Canadian patriotism at the world, and I loved it.

When two of my UBC labmates and I went to Hawaii for a month long research trip on a tiny island off the back side of Oahu (The Island was the one featured on Gilligan’s Island – yes, we lived on Gilligan’s Island for a month!), we were there from mid-June and into July 2000 (Gads, was it really that long ago now?).

With Independence Day preparations all around us, we decided to celebrate Canada Day and we did it with a certain amount of shove-it-in-your-faceness.

We printed out the rant and changed “I am Joe” to “We are Paige, Anne, and Nil” and papered every single door in the research station with it. We printed and taped Canadian flags everywhere. We changed every computer’s wallpaper to Canadian flags and changed every homepage to Canada Rocks!

And we waited…..

And they asked questions, but the best was the guy who just didn’t get sarcasm…

Him – “What’s Canada Day?”

Me – “It’s our birthday!”

Him – “What war are you celebrating?”

Me – “No war, we formed peacefully through Confederation, though we did have our share of wars”

Him – “We have a holiday coming up too! It’s the Fourth of July. Do you have the Fourth of July?”

Me – “We DO!! And we have the third and the fifth too!”

Him – “Wow, you get a THREE day holiday?!?!”

Me – (Face-palm)

And so, as with every year, I just love to see this commercial and hear “The Rant” again.

Enjoy, I finally found a version that is of really good quality.

I AM Canadian!

The Molson Canadian Rant

In general, I think we Canadians sort of suck at patriotism, at least until pushed. So here are a couple of other good videos from around the net.

Canada Shared by Canadians – Keep Exploring

Something to Sing About

In Canada