{"id":344531,"date":"2025-12-13T03:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T03:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344531\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T03:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T03:21:08","slug":"on-ice-losses-are-one-thing-but-canada-is-in-danger-of-losing-its-greatest-cultural-asset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344531\/","title":{"rendered":"On-ice losses are one thing, but Canada is in danger of losing its greatest cultural asset"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Actor Jon Hamm and some American NHL players poke fun at Canada in a new NBC commercial to showcase its coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics.Ethan Miller\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

For about a year, Canada has been getting slapped around by the United States on about a million fronts. <\/p>\n

Fine. You fight a guy 10 times your size, the object isn\u2019t to win. It\u2019s to stay on your feet and keep swinging until he wanders off to pick on someone else. <\/p>\n

At first, we took it stoically. We\u2019re still doing that. Maybe we think that acting dignified will save us. <\/p>\n

This would assume that America cares about our feelings. They don\u2019t care about the feelings of their own citizens. Why would they give a damn about ours?<\/p>\n

Instead, we ought to be deploying the only effective weapon in our cultural arsenal \u2013 comedy. <\/p>\n

The simplest way to end our parasitic relationship with America is to mock it so ruthlessly that it might eventually seem ridiculous that any Canadian care what it thinks, does or says. As a condition of survival, this is the national project of the 21st century. <\/p>\n

Be upset about tariffs, and all that does make us feel sad and trapped. Be funny about them, and that\u2019s the beginnings of a movement. <\/p>\n

In the absence of any wise, amusing public figures (when did we stop producing those?) with big ideas, we have to look elsewhere. Who else we got? It\u2019s not exactly a French talk show out there. All we\u2019ve got is hockey players. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all seen the old-timey reels. Your Gordie Howes and Rocket Richards weren\u2019t exactly Dean Martin, but they had personality. Today? Forget it. <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just a sports issue. It\u2019s a Canada problem. We cannot be funny about ourselves any more, which is the requisite first step to being funny about someone else. We\u2019re putting all our energy into moping. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Canada head coach Jon Cooper behind the bench with Nathan MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid at the 4 Nations Face-Off in Montreal.Christinne Muschi\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s 10th biggest economy, and nobody fresh out of school can buy a three-bedroom house downtown in one of the most desirable cities on Earth. Poor us. <\/p>\n

At February\u2019s 4 Nations, reporters tried every trick they have to get the Canadian team bantering with the U.S. one. In fairness, it\u2019s not many tricks. They got nothing. Completely missed opportunity.<\/p>\n

What they got was Brad Marchand chiding Canadians for booing the The Star-Spangled Banner because that\u2019s \u201coff limits.\u201d This is a guy who licks people at work. Now that is funny, but it\u2019s not constructive for our purposes here. <\/p>\n

Canada won the tournament, acted like it was no big deal, and that it would be bad manners to rub it in. Another strikeout looking.<\/p>\n

Now America\u2019s beaten us to it. It seems like the only ones who can make hockey players even mildly interesting are advertising people. They must be dream clients \u2013 zero personality, weak sense of self, conditioned to follow orders. <\/p>\n

Cathal Kelly: Will the 4 Nations Face-Off help or hurt the NHL?<\/a><\/p>\n

NBC\u2019s done an ad promoting its coverage of the Milan Olympics. It features actor Jon Hamm \u2013 who, per the terms of USMCA, must appear in 20 per cent of all Canadian TV advertisements \u2013 as a guest speaker in the U.S. locker room. <\/p>\n

He rallies the players \u2013 including the Tkachuk brothers and Auston Matthews \u2013 with a call to bring home \u201cthe greatest prize of all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCanadian tears,\u201d says Jack Eichel. <\/p>\n

Hamm gets confused because Canadians are \u201cso polite.\u201d The players laugh like Bond villains. Matthews gets his own emotional monologue: \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not Duck Soup, but it looks good and by the low-bottom standards of sports humour, it\u2019s hilarious. It actually gives you a feeling. Not that you might care, but that they might care, which is new news to me. <\/p>\n

How did America become the funnier, looser, less-stuck-up-its-own-rear-entrance one in this unhappy marriage, while we turned into the brittle, affectless, perpetually annoyed one? And in hockey? What happened to us?<\/p>\n

The free-firing, not-much-gets-to-us Canada that once was would have had an absolute field day with Wayne Gretzky\u2019s recent meltdown at the World Cup draw. <\/p>\n

Shredding Gretzky is easy, and there was plenty of that. But shredding Canada, Canadian pieties and Canadian institutions is where the real fun happens. Where were the interviews with Gretzky\u2019s grade-school teacher, or the jibes from current Canadian NHLers, or the prime minister piping up with something that might convince us he is something more than a tight smile in a nice suit? He has writers on staff, doesn\u2019t he? <\/p>\n

Cathal Kelly: Gretzky gave us a spectacle of meme-able proportions at the World Cup draw<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead, we did what we do now \u2013 seethe. <\/p>\n

Enough with the hurt feelings. A free-trading, visa-less, connected world has made us soft. During 35 years of peace, we\u2019ve lost our sense of who we are and begun to fight ourselves. <\/p>\n

At our best, we are good, but we\u2019re also vicious. We have a highly developed ability to locate hypocrisy. We don\u2019t care what others think of us. We mock our friends and ourselves, because we want to save the people we care about from the deprivations of self-congratulation. <\/p>\n

We like to work, but not too much. We think everyone should deserves a fair shot, but nobody deserves a fairer shot than anyone else. Whatever happens, we don\u2019t whine. We suck it up, get the stitches and get back out there for the next shift. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the basis for a world-spanning empire, but it makes for a decent place to grow up. <\/p>\n

We are never going to be the best at everything, or many things. I wonder if any of us actually aspire to that, or whether it\u2019s a destructive mind worm implanted by American media. <\/p>\n

The countries that devote the most effort to clawing their way to the top aren\u2019t on my list of alternative places to live.<\/p>\n

The key to all of this is comedy. If you\u2019re not in it to win, then you must be in it for a laugh.<\/p>\n

Before we beat them at anything else \u2013 and I\u2019m including Milan, hockey, tariffs and the land grab to come \u2013 we have to reclaim our world-leading sense of humour. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re the stuck up ones. We\u2019re the funny ones. As long as we\u2019re not shooting at each other, that could be an arrangement both sides can live with. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Actor Jon Hamm and some American NHL players poke fun at Canada in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,21363,85,22600],"class_list":{"0":"post-344531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-noastack","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-topstory"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}