Cheetos are used as an alternative to fossil fuels, Canadian geese are the equivalent of the living dead and a maple syrup pipeline props up the economy.
No, this isn’t Justin Trudeau’s visionary long-term outlook for the country — it’s the world of online sketch comedy series How to Canadian.
No, this isn’t Justin Trudeau’s visionary long-term outlook for the country — it’s the world of online sketch comedy series How to Canadian.
A couple of years ago, producer/director Care Elise and a group of her closest friends and colleagues from the local theatre community were wandering around the wilderness.
“We’ve always been rooted in comedy, I did improv comedy in high school and stuff,” says Elise in a coffee shop on Vancouver’s West Side. “We said ‘why not do something that’s kind of like a survival comedy?’ From there, the idea morphed into what Elise calls a “love letter to Canada.”
How to Canadian airs a new episode every week, with each entry running anywhere from one to four minutes. The series is shown on YouTube where Elise and her band of 12 west coasters — everyone was born and raised in either Vancouver or Richmond, with one exception from Surrey — post their admittedly bizarre humour.
“When we were up in Prince George filming, there was a whole bunch of people up there and we had a cat hooked up to a little yellow Tonka truck because he didn’t care or notice,” recounts Elise. “He started pulling it and didn’t even notice, and someone from the back yelled ‘takes a cat to pull a Tonka!’ and we were just like killing ourselves laughing.”
As with many people pursuing their dreams in the creative arts, Elise wears several hats. She’s a copy editor for the film trade magazine Reel West and runs a program that teaches creative writing to young girls at the Richmond Women’s Resource Centre. She also recently added “magician” to her list of skills.
But that doesn’t stop her from constantly trying to move How to Canadian onto the radar. The most popular sketch from the series comes in at just over 2,500 views. It’s the aptly named “Bear Attacks an Outhouse,” where, well, a bear attacks an outhouse.
Elise thinks the amount of views is a good sign, as How to Canadian has only been in operation for a little more than three months. The more troubling indication is the low subscriber rate.
“What I’ve heard from other more established YouTube users is that if you’re doing gaming content, it’s easy — if you’re doing other content, it’s more difficult,” says Elise about her group’s struggle to gain committed viewers. “Like ‘Night of the Living Goose’ has over a thousand views, how many subscribers did we gain from that? I think one.”
Of course it only makes sense that How to Canadian has a West Coast feel to it, with all the members hailing from B.C. and many, if not all, of the scenes taking place outdoors.
“I think the humour is very West Coast as well, because we try to keep it very eco-friendly,” Elise says. “I say try, because filmmaking is one of those things where unless you have a humongous budget, it’s really difficult to do things that way. But because we’re in the woods filming and parks and different places like that, it’s like clean up after yourself, it’s all the basic courtesies you show the environment.”
Wait, are we sure Justin Trudeau isn’t involved?
@ncaddell
