Comedian Mark Critch was writing a Newfoundland-set\u00a0historical fiction novel when Trump’s threat\u00a0to annex Canada first surfaced.<\/p>\n
At first, he thought it was more of a joke, “in that same way an older sibling might\u00a0tease their younger sibling,” he told CBC Books in an interview. But as the threats became more serious, Critch began to get frustrated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That’s when he asked his publisher, Penguin Random House Canada, if he could put his novel on hold and\u00a0write an essay collection about Canadian identity and the rising\u00a0sense of Canadian patriotism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It’s called Sorry, Not Sorry, and features 13 essays from different perspectives\u00a0\u2014 including\u00a0a seductive love letter in the voice of Donald Trump trying to woo Canada.<\/p>\n
“Every one [of the essays] has a point and every one has a lot of heart behind it,” said Critch.\u00a0\u00a0“I wanted them all to be different.”<\/p>\n
Critch\u00a0also wanted to address Canada’s sometimes reluctant patriotism\u00a0and convince fellow Canadians that the country is worth fighting for.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of good in this country and there’s a lot of things we have to work on. Our ability to work on those things is one of the good things about it,” he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I think we’ve been a naive and trusting country in a way that we put all our eggs in this one American basket. And now we’re finding ourselves in a real crossroads of can we stand on our own? How do we stand up to this much, much bigger nation next to us? And\u00a0I think we can do it, we should do it and we’re worthy of doing it.”<\/p>\n
Sorry, Not Sorry, which will be released on Nov. 25, 2025, is Critch’s\u00a0sharp and humourous message of hope in this time of uncertainty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s just checking in with everybody and saying I’m here, too,” he said. “We’ll get through this like we got through everything else.”<\/p>\n
Critch,\u00a0a comedian, actor and writer from St. John’s,\u00a0is best known for his work on CBC\u00a0sketch comedy show\u00a0This Hour Has 22 Minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He’s also written two memoirs,\u00a0Son of a Critch<\/a>, which\u00a0was\u00a0shortlisted for\u00a02019 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour<\/a>\u00a0and made into a CBC TV series, and\u00a0An Embarrassment of Critch’s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comedian Mark Critch was writing a Newfoundland-set\u00a0historical fiction novel when Trump’s threat\u00a0to annex Canada first surfaced. At first,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":["post-138130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}