The Greatest Canadian Exports

December 17, 2024 by Andrew Small No Comments

People make fun of Canada all the time- as they should. We’re a nation of ridiculous people, places, and things. People don’t realize but we’re cray up here. Our money is blue and red and we have coins that we call ‘loonies’ and ‘toonies’, we add the letter ‘u’ to everything, our favourite animal is the beaver. Like, come on.

But we’ve got a lot of great things up here in America’s hat. Our nation is built around drinking beer and then eating poutine.

This is poutine.

And look, because I’m one of those really nice and polite Canadians that apologizes once in every sentence, I’ve made a neat little list of the Greatest Canadian Exports ever. By the end of this article, you’re going to want to move to Canada, eh? I’m sorry. I had to include one ‘eh’ in here (Canadian law) and now that I’ve got it out of my system, we can begin.

Ryan Gosling:

OBVIOUSLY RYAN GOSLING WAS GOING TO BE ON HERE.

Ryan Gosling is probably the greatest thing Canada has ever done. And yes, we, as a country of 35 million people, take credit for Ryan Gosling. We have to. What else are we going to humbly brag about? Justin Bieber? No thanks. Canadians aren’t even excited about The Biebs anymore. And that’s saying something, because we still think Bryan Adams is going to be a huge star. We don’t give up on our homegrown kids unless they really deserve it/sport really unflattering lesbian haircuts.

Tune into any episode of ET Canada and the top of every show is what Ryan Gosling is up to. For example, a transcript of an actual ET Canada episode (this is not a transcript of an actual ET Canada episode):

Hello, it’s Wednesday, June 6th and we’re live from outside of Ryan Gosling’s childhood home. He lived here from the ages of 5 to 6 and three-quarters. We asked the current owners if we could poke around and they said no. So we’re standing across the street because the cops said this is as close as we could get without being arrested. Anyways, Ryan Gosling, am I right? Is this the house where he caught the acting bug? Stay tuned after the break and we’ll speak to 6 Toronto social media experts and see what their unqualified opinion is!

“Call Me, Maybe”:

I unabashedly love this song. Would I go so far as to say this is the greatest pop song of all-time? Yes, probably. THIS IS THE GREATEST POP SONG OF ALL-TIME. And when you hear Call Me, Maybe during the Carly Rae Jepsen revival mall tour in 2032, it’s going to sound just as good as it does now.

In Canada, we love our national anthem. It sounds great before a hockey game. But we still changed the anthem to Call Me, Maybe. Can you blame us? We’ve even considered putting Carly Rae’s face on our money (a privilege previously only granted to pictures of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams kissing.)

Call Me, Maybe is the new Lays chips. Betcha can’t listen to it just once. No, try it. You physically can’t. It’s a song that demands to be listened to 5 times in a row. Remember that scene in A Clockwork Orange where they force Alex DeLarge to watch the violent movies? That’s how we’ve been conditioning our young Canadian children to love Call Me, Maybe. Listen to it 900 times and try and tell me you don’t love it.

Celine Dion/Shania Twain:

Canada’s gift to weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, bachelorette parties, divorce parties, getting a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and eating it alone in your apartment parties. It’s not considered a good song in Canada, if one of these Canucks didn’t sing it (Call Me, Maybe being the obvious exception to that rule.) Sure, you probably went through the entire 90s seriously hating our country every time you turned on the radio and couldn’t escape My Heart Will Go On (and on and on and on and you will never hear the end of this song so might as well embrace it) or Man! I Feel Like A Woman. But just know, we were sitting back and loving it. We ruled the airwaves, and probably never will again.

But hey, never fucking mention to a Canadian that neither Celine Dion or Shania Twain live in Canada. You’ll get a hockey stick to the throat. That’s a promise.

Degrassi – The Next Generation:

People in America be like “You’re such a Carrie. I’m a total Samantha.” But people in Canada be like “Omg, I think I’m a Manny Santos” and “Honestly, you’re being such a Paige right now. You need to cool it.”

Here in Canada, we remember where we were when important Degrassi moments happened. Every Canadian remembers where they were when Jimmy became Wheelchair Jimmy. These kids (who rarely seemed to actually graduate from Degrassi High, seriously not all of our high schools are like this, just a few) define our nation.

Remember when Spinner got ball cancer? And Craig trashed a hotel room and then went to Ashley’s gay father’s wedding and trashed the wedding? And J.T got Hazel pregnant and then stole things from the pharmacy he worked in? And Emma went down on Jay in a van down by the river and got gonorrhea? Classic Degrassi.

Little-known Canada fact: they don’t teach high schoolers any of Shakespeare’s plays. They just play Degrassi episodes. Between Degrassi’s never-graduating high school class, and this bad curriculum, maybe our schools need to be looked at? W/e

Robin Scherbatsky:

Canadians probably would have given up on How I Met Your Mother like 3 seasons ago (seriously, when are they going to reveal the mother?) if it weren’t for the fact that Cobie Smulder’s character Robin Scherbatsky is a Canuck. Canadians have to watch anything that another Canadian stars in. We can’t explain it; It’s in our DNA.

Robin Scherbatsky was Carly Rae Jepsen before Carly Rae Jepsen was a thing.

The producers of HIMYM got one thing wrong, though. They made Robin a Vancouver Canucks fan. Everyone in Canada, that doesn’t live in Vancouver, hates the Vancouver Canucks (Go Leafs Go!)

Playoff Hockey Beards:

This is what all Canadian men aspire to look like. They all want to look like lumberjacks that only come down from the mountains once a year. Looking like Shea Weber will leave a Canadian girl weak in the knees.

Scott Hartnell is what happens when Ronald McDonald comes to life, becomes a professional hockey player, and grows red pubis on his face.

Tim Thomas is an American, but on the strength of this beard we decided he could be the Prime Minister. He turned us down.

Sidney Crosby is King Canada, but he almost got exiled from the country for this poor excuse of a “playoff beard”