Canada, It’s Complicated is not a simple production
As soon as seven young people started singing “The foundation of our nation is a big fat lie,” you knew Canada, It’s Complicated was going to be one really long sketch from This Hour has 22 Minutes.
Canada, It’s Complicated —at Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna on Halloween night — was directed and produced by Mary Walsh, one of the original cast members (1993-2004) of 22 Minutes. The show’s head writer Mike Allison and cast member Trent McClellan are also involved.
This all-star Canadian team decided to present a history lesson through a national tour in honour of Canada’s sesquicentennial (and thanks to Canada 150 funding). But this history lesson is mainly presented as a song-and-dance musical.
Cast member Jamie Pitt set the stage, so to speak, with an introductory speech meant to dispel the commonly-held opinion that Canada’s history is boring and not white-washed (pun intended).
“We’ve been pushing alternative facts for centuries,” she joked, an obvious reference to US President Donald Trump.
It’s no coincidence the first target and ongoing theme relates to First Nations, Metis and Inuit. The comedians, musicians and playwrights who created it included award-winning Metis playwright Marie Clements, plus Inuit musicians Tiffany Ayalik and Greyson Gritt of Quantum Tangle.
The multicultural cast includes Indigenous stand-up comedian Chad Anderson and Indigenous actor/writer Dakota Hebert.
The first scene identifies the differences between Canada’s first residents and the Europeans who “discovered this virgin land.” French and British explorers “pretended nobody was there” in “our first big fat lie.”
Like 22 Minutes, there’s a commercial for the medication, NeverHappened-At-Ol, for those who don’t like the First Nation treaty protests, residential school and reconciliation efforts. This fake drug is available in rapid dissolve gel caps or suppositories, and in regular and parliamentary strengths.
The game show, Trick or Treaty, gave a First Nation contestant a choice of three boxes, all of them saying “Government wants your land.” The First Nations are then given smaller areas that are “not nearly so nice.”
There are brief forays into politics — the Ontario and Quebec Fathers of Confederation bringing $13,000 worth of champagne
($200,000 in 2017 dollars) in a 191ton steamer to the Charlottetown Conference in 1864 to bribe Maritime politicians into establishing Canada. “We were born out of a booze cruise,” one cast member joked.
The lack of women in early Canadian history was because “we’re too busy” raising children and taking care of households. The arduous job of the Voyageurs — “fur trading men” — was lamented.
Another big fat lie was brave European men — “the dregs of Europe” — standing strong and alone against the brutal Canadian elements when it was Indigenous people who showed them how to survive, the cast argued, singing: “We should have listened to a local” in a lesson for the ill-fated Franklin expedition.
There was also the message: “If we’re going to be around for another 150 years, maybe honesty is the best policy.”
The public figure for several sketches and a rap song was Metis leader Louis Riel who fought the Canadian government’s takeover of Metis land.
Even Hinterland’s Who’s Who, the popular 60-second public service announcements profiling Canadian animals produced by Environment Canada, was skewered.
In “a violent love story,” polar bears facing the lost of Arctic ice due to climate change mate with grizzly bears to produce a new “Grolar Bear” in a parallel to the origin of Metis from the combination of French and First Nation peoples.
Chapter 9 – Black History was brief since no one knew about the Book of Negroes or Underground Railway or that Jackie Robinson — who became the first AfricanAmerican to play Major League Baseball — played in Montreal before his callup to the big leagues.
Bottom line: Canada, It’s Complicated was entertaining as well as informative, but it’s one of those performances where you have to focus on every word, every nuance, to understand this important Canadian history lesson.