Let It Snow. Darryl Humber

An unknown figure to anyone south of the border, Domi was an icon that was uniquely Canadian. Like Mr. Bean of Britain, or The Crocodile Hunter in Australia, Domi represented Canada. O’Brien was keen enough to discover that hockey was the defining characteristic of Canadian culture, and leaped at the opportunity of casting Domi in one of his sketches. Not surprisingly, the live Toronto audience lapped it up.

      Not only did Conan’s live audience laugh, but at times proved these stereotypes true, as audience members would randomly chant “Go Leafs Go” during segments when Conan interviewed proud Canadian Mike Myers. Myers gleefully contrasted the differences between America and Canada, and embraced the crowd.

      Despite dozens of stereotypical Canadian characterizations featuring cold weather dwellers, and igloo jokes, the only time Conan’s crew caught the ire of Canadians, and in particular Canadian politicians, was when his NBC crew went off the climate script, and did a segment involving a puppet dog poking fun at French culture in Quebec. The furor made its way to Parliament after the segment aired, further illustrating the point that Canadians will laugh, tolerate, and perpetuate jokes about their hockey-loving, cold-weather hoser image, but jokes about the more subtle tensions between Francophones and Anglophones are off limits.

      While Canada is a nation made up of both French- and English-speaking Canadians, and has a unique culture, with their ancestors first fighting against one another and then living together, it’s not something to be rubbed too sharply or put at the forefront of discussion. It certainly isn’t something to be mocked. It’s a very delicate relationship, and one upon which politicians are leery about treading. A foreign comedian using a puppet dog to insult the French, put politicians from all sides, French and English, on a hot seat, and created a reaction the O’Brien crew simply could not anticipate. They eventually apologized having learned what humour was tolerated in Canada. In the world of comedy, it’s best to stick with something Canadians as a whole accommodate — the Canada identity as a Winter Wonderland. That’s funny.

       The Queen of the Ice, 1903.

      Comedy is not the only place in which the winter climate and Canadian culture meld. It abounds in literature. With poems and stories detailing Canadian winters, the country’s cold vast landscape is a source of wonderment, and inspiration to writers who travel throughout its length (and width).

      It inspired Canadian novelist and poet George Bowering to write: “This is a country of silent wind piling drift snow in Rocky Mountains, trenches of quiet death, lonely desolation.”

      Bowering is far from being the only writer to note the cold openness of the vast Canadian landscape. Early British settlers wrote about their first experiences coming to Canada and noted with horror how Canada’s winters set the country apart from the more forgiving British weather. Writers would lament Canada’s frozen, frigid, and inhospitable terrain.

      Many failed to foresee that Canada could ever be a developed nation, much less one to which native Brits would flee. There might be lots of open land, but how could it be valuable if it was covered in snow for much of the year? Early accounts of British writers encountering Canada in the late 1700s included their lament that this was a land rendering inhabitants “void of thought” and impairing mental powers. This unforgiving, frigid landscape would drive people to drinking, gambling, and ultimately breaking down. The moral fibre of society would collapse under such conditions. Winter of such ferociousness would destroy humanity.

      Cold and winter have been used to inspire other forms of depressing poetry. It has been unrepentant about the general dreadfulness of Canadian winters. Throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s writers produced works reading like horror stories of a barren, cold wasteland.

      In 1946, Patrick Anderson wrote a poem about Canada, which he concluded by stating that the country was a nation that had untapped potential — despite the cold. In his concluding line in “Poem on Canada,” he makes reference to Canada’s unique climate, calling it “A Cold Kingdom.”

      America’s attic, an empty room

      a something possible, a chance, a dance

      that is not danced. A cold kingdom.

      Conversely, the cold and winter has also been used in poetry as a punchline. In 1971, poet Alden Nowlan, may have been ahead of his time, in combining poetic prose with a Canadian climate jab. He created a poem suggesting that the winter of Canada had unparalleled danger, simply because it is a Canadian winter.

      Innocently titled “Canadian January Night,” Nowlan’s poem reads:

      This is a country

      where a man can die

      simply from being

      Caught outside

      Likewise, Roch Carrier’s famous hockey sweater story incorporates all facets of Canada’s winter culture, from both a French and English perspective and the horror of having to wear the uniform of one’s dreaded rival in an unsympathetic public place. Winter shrivels in its impact besides such humiliation.

       First Peoples curling five, possibly at Washakada Indian School in Elkhorn, circa 1898.

      Perhaps the relationship between Canadians and the winter is best understood by Canadians transplanted from their homeland. It is now common for Canadian entertainers to head to the United States exporting their talents to a larger audience, but intriguingly, it appears that many of these entertainers can’t help sharing stories about their Canadian upbringing in interviews. Comedians such as Howie Mandell and Mike Myers are notorious for going off topic in interviews with stories about their Canadian childhoods. Myers’s connection with Canada resulted in a movie project based entirely on his love of Canada’s national game. Myers’s film, The Love Guru, centred around the main character helping to turn around the career of a hockey player on his favourite team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. The movie was a critical and commercial bust, but it affirmed the idea that while Myers hasn’t lived in Canada for years, his upbringing certainly remains influential in his writing and producing.

      It’s a sentiment that is echoed by Canadian writer Blanche Howard who remarked:

      To tell you the truth, in California I missed the wildness of the Canadian winter. There is something stirring about a blizzard, something elemental about pitting oneself against driving, stinging snow in below zero temperatures. I often think it accounts for the general peacefulness of the Canadian character, all the aggressive energy has been used up in battling and surviving nature.

      On the other hand, Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the expansion Los Angeles Kings, who entered the National Hockey League in the fall of 1967, was convinced that with 2 million ex pat Canadians in California he’d have no problem selling out his games. Full houses, however, proved hard to come by and a puzzled Cooke finally concluded that the 2 million Canucks had moved there because they hated hockey and by extension that memory of the wildness of the Canadian winter.

      Humans are bound by their relationship with nature. Canadian culture stems from decades of long, harsh winters, from unrelenting snowfalls, and short summers. It’s simply a reaction to the country’s geographic location. It’s something that has evolved naturally.

      While Canadians have adopted the story of theirs being a land of immigrants, the country still has a collective culture defining the nation as a whole, and that collective cultural identifier has been the harsh Canadian winter. It comes up in conversations wherever Canadians travel. It’s something synonymous with Canada, like the British and their tea, or the Spanish with salsa.

      Despite the threat that winters will become balmier, for now Canadians still have a collective culture binding them together — a common bond of fighting the frigid winter, of making use of the cold elements, and embracing them, and ultimately of becoming identified with them.