Talking to Canadians: A Memoir

On my recent trip to Boston, I brought a couple of audiobooks for the 10+ hour drive and one of them was Rick Mercer's Talking to Canadians. Fans will know Mercer from his long-time stint on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, The Rick Mercer Report and other popular Canadian TV shows where he brings satirical humour, and political knowledge to his famous rants and memorable characters.

This memoir begins with his life as a boy in Newfoundland from his rise through the east coast theatre circuit to his years on popular TV shows. Mercer is private about his private life but does mention that he is a proud gay man who is married to his long-time love and business partner Gerald Lunz but much of this memoir focuses on his rise to fame. I enjoyed hearing him talk about his support of Canadian Peacekeepers and some of his more iconic moments that lead him to become a Canadian household name as the clever, unabashedly Canadian, and funny with a side of snark comedian.

My favourite part of this book (by far) was the chapter on Talking to Americans. Beginning on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, this segment quickly became popular and had Rick going to the US and asking Americans on the street (including students and even a prof at Harvard!) intentionally erroneous questions about Canada. It's a bit mean spirited but their answers are hilarious as hell and illustrates how little some Americans know about us. Questions like "Would you sign a petition to decrease the number of elderly that Canada sends off on ice floes each year?", "Would you congratulate Canada on finally learning how to alphabetize?" or "How do you feel about the Saskatchewan Seal Hunt?" (a province that does not border an ocean). He even got President George W Bush to comment on a fictitious Canadian PM who Mercer referred to as Jean Poutine (instead of the PM at the time Jean Chrétien who Bush had met). Any American was fair game!

This memoir is funny, candid, heartwarming and oh-so-Canadian. I enjoyed seeing how this famous Newfoundlander comedian and satirist got his start, how he changed Canadian TV and became a household name. Mercer is as Canadian as poutine, butter tarts and Mr. Dress-Up sportin' a toque and a pack of TimBits, eh! I look forward to listening to more of his books. 

My Rating: 4 stars

Author: Rick Mercer

Genre: Memoir, Canadian

Type and Source: eAudiobook from public library

Narrator: Rick Mercer

Run Time: 10 hours

Publisher: Doubleday Canada

First Published: November 2, 2021

Opening Line: This is a memoir.

Book Description from GoodReads: Canada’s beloved comic genius tells his own story for the first time.

What is Rick Mercer going to do now? That was the question on everyone’s lips when the beloved comedian retired his hugely successful TV show after 15 seasons—and at the peak of its popularity. The answer came not long after, when he roared back in a new role as stand-up-comedian, playing to sold-out houses wherever he appeared.

And then Covid-19 struck. And his legions of fans began asking again: What is Rick Mercer going to do now? Well, for one thing, he’s been writing a comic masterpiece. For the first time, this most private of public figures has turned the spotlight on himself, in a memoir that’s as revealing as it is hilarious. In riveting anecdotal style, Rick charts his rise from highly unpromising schoolboy (in his reports “the word ‘disappointment’ appeared a fair bit”) to the heights of TV fame. Along the way came an amazing break when, not long out of his teens, his one-man show Show Me the Button, I’ll Push It. Or, Charles Lynch Must Die, became an overnight sensation—thanks in part to a bizarre ambush by its target, Charles Lynch himself. That’s one story you won’t soon forget, and this book is full of them.

There’s a tale of how little Rick helped himself to a tree from the neighbours’ garden that’s set to become a new Christmas classic. There’s Rick the aspiring actor, braving “the scariest thing I have ever done in my life” by performing with the Newfoundland Shakespeare Company; unforgettable scenes with politicians of every variety, from Jean Chretien to George W. Bush to Stockwell Day; and a wealth of behind-the-scenes revelations about the origins and making of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Made in Canada, and Talking to Americans. All leading of course to the greenlighting of that mega-hit, Rick Mercer Report . . .

It’s a life so packed with incident (did we mention Bosnia and Kabul?) and laughter we can only hope that a future answer to “What is Rick Mercer going to do now?” is: “Write volume two."