Canadian Bacon: For Americans on the list

[justinsb]

I keep having to point out that so-and-so is actually Canadian etc., so just for fun, here is a short (though hardly complete) list of some of the Candians amoung you (or who used to be =) Everyone feel free to include ommissions.

Scott Abbott and Chris Haney (inventors of game "Trivial Pursuit")

Dan Aykroyd (movie actor; Elwood of "The Blues Brothers")

Bryan Adams (rock singer, musician, and songwriter)

Pamela Anderson (actress on "Baywatch")

Paul Anka (singer and songwriter; writer of song "My Way")

Louise Arbour (Chief Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal, The Hague)

Margaret Atwood (writer; author of "The Handmaid's Tale")

Donovan Bailey (sprinter; 100m Olympic Gold Medalist)

Bachman-Turner Overdrive (BTO) (rock group; writers of song "You Ain't Seen Nuthin' Yet")

The Band (rock group; performed extensively with Bob Dylan)

Frederick Banting and Charles Best (discoverers of diabetes drug insulin, 1921)

Barenaked Ladies (rock group)

Norman Bethune (medical doctor; hero in Chinese civil war)

Roberta Bondar (space shuttle astronaut)

Kurt Browning (figure skater)

Genevieve Bujold (movie actress)

Raymond Burr (star of "Perry Mason" television show)

James Cameron (director of movie "The Titanic")

John Candy (comedic actor; police officer Burton Mercer of "The Blues Brothers")

Jim Carrey (comedic actor)

Robert Charlebois (French-language singer and songwriter)

John de Chastelain (general; overseer of IRA disarmament)

Cirque de Soleil (acrobatic circus performers)

Leonard Cohen (poet, singer, and songwriter)

Holly Cole (jazz singer)

Douglas Coupland (writer; author of "Generation X")

H.S.M. Coxeter (world-renowned mathematician; developer of Coxeter groups)

David Cronenberg (movie director; Cannes Jury Prize winner, 1996)

Robertson Davies (author; writer of "Fifth Business")

Romeo Dallaire (general; commander of Rwanda international peacekeeping mission)

Celine Dion (ballad singer)

The Dionne Quintuplets (first ever surviving quintuplets)

James Doohan (actor; Scotty of "Star Trek")

Atom Egoyan (movie director; 1998 Academy Award nominee)

Percy Faith (composer and arranger, esp. for movie scores)

J.C. Fields (mathematician; initiator of the Fields Medal)

Sir Sandford Fleming (creator of Universal Standard Time, 1879 & 1884)

Michael J. Fox (television and movie actor)

Northrop Frye (literary critic)

John Kenneth Galbraith (economist; advisor to many U.S. presidents)

Marc Garneau (space shuttle astronaut)

William Gibson (science fiction author; inventor of "cyberpunk" genre)

James Gosling (author of Java computer language)

Glenn Gould (classical piano player)

Lorne Greene (actor; star of television show "Bonanza")

Nancy Greene (skier; 1968 Olympic gold medalist)

Wayne Gretzky (hockey superstar)

Group of Seven (early twentieth century painters)

The Guess Who (rock band; writers of song "American Woman")

Monty Hall (host of television show "Let's Make a Deal")

Phil Hartman (comedian on Saturday Night Live)

Keith Hastings (inventor of Metropolis-Hastings computer algorithm)

Douglas Henning (magician, and advocate of Transcendental Meditation)

Gordie Howe (hockey superstar)

IMAX Corporation (group of Canadians that invented the IMAX movie format, 1970)

Kenneth Iverson (author of APL computer language)

Peter Jennings (ABC television news host)

Norman Jewison (movie director; winner of 1999 Special Academy Award)

Ben Johnson (former world-class sprinter)

Brian Kernighan (co-author of C computer language)

Margot Kidder (actress; Lois Lane of "Superman" movies)

W.P. Kinsella (author of novel "Shoeless Joe", later made into movie "Field of Dreams")

Diana Krall (jazz singer)

Guy LaFleur (hockey superstar)

k.d. lang (rock/country singer and songwriter)

Avril Lavigne (young rock singer and songwriter)

Stephen Leacock (humorist writer)

Mario Lemieux (hockey superstar)

Gordon Lightfoot (folk singer and songwriter)

Rich Little (voice impressionist)

Guy Lombardo (big-band leader; 1929-62 performer of "Auld Lang Syne" in New York on New Year's Eve)

Lewis MacKenzie (general; commander of Sarajevo international peacekeeping mission)

Robert MacNeil (U.S. television news commentator)

Howie Mandel (comedic actor)

Loreena McKennitt (celtic-style musician)

Sarah McLachlan (rock singer and songwriter; Lilith Fair organiser)

Marshall McLuhan (communication theorist)

David McTaggart (co-founder of Greenpeace)

Mike Meyers (comedic actor)

Lorne Michaels (creator and producer of "Saturday Night Live")

Joni Mitchell (folk singer and songwriter)

Lucy Maud Montgomery (author of "Anne of Green Gables")

Rick Moranis (comedic actor)

Alanis Morissette (rock singer)

Anne Murray (pop singer)

James Naismith (inventor of basketball , 1892)

Steve Nash (NBA basketball star)

Leslie Nielsen (comedic movie actor)

Michael Ondaatje (author of "The English Patient")

Bobby Orr (hockey superstar)

Julie Payette (space shuttle astronaut)

Lester Pearson (originator of U.N. Peacekeeping Forces; winner of 1957 Nobel Peace Prize)

Matthew Perry (actor; Chandler of T.V. show "Friends")

Oscar Peterson (jazz piano player)

Mary Pickford (early movie actor)

Christopher Plummer (movie actor)

John Polanyi (chemist; winner of 1986 Nobel Prize)

Jason Priestly (television actor on "90210")

Raffi (children's music performer)

Keanu Reeves (movie actor)

Mordecai Richler (author; writer of "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz")

Maurice "Rocket" Richard (hockey superstar)

Stan Rogers (folk singer and songwriter)

Greg Rusedski (professional tennis player, now plays for Britain)

Rush (progressive rock / heavy metal group)

Robert J. Sawyer (science fiction author; Nebula and Hugo Award winner)

Myron Scholes (economist; winner of 1997 Nobel prize)

Paul Shaffer (band leader on David Letterman's "Late Night" television show)

William Shatner (actor; Captain Kirk of "Star Trek")

Martin Short (comedic actor)

Joe Shuster (creator of "Superman" character, 1938)

Andrew Michael Spence (economist; winner of 2001 Nobel Prize)

Elvis Stojko (figure skater)

Donald Sutherland (movie actor)

Alex Trebek (host of television show "Jeopardy")

Pierre Trudeau (politician and statesman)

Shania Twain (country singer and songwriter)

Gilles Vigneault (French-language singer and songwriter)

Jacques Villeneuve (racecar driver; Grand Prix world champion)

Roch Voisine (French-language rock singer)

Al Waxman (actor; Lt. Bert Samuels of "Cagney and Lacey")

Mike Weir (golf champion)

Neil Young (singer, musician, and songwriter)

Robert Young (co-founder of Red Hat linux company)

[BrklynLiberal]

1. BTW. I LOVED that movie!

If it wasn't for Bushco, we could still be kissing cousins. Is there any country from which he has not alienated us? :(

That idiot does NOT represent us!!!

[justinsb]

3. Look on the bright side though

We're still close enough to know the difference between Bush and average Americans. Anti-Americanism is rampant here too, but here it is not directed at individuals (unless they personally do or say something to deserve it) it is directed at the government.

[Beaver Tail]

2. I wouldn't admit to Pamela Anderson

[whistle]

4. And all of those Canadians still living and working in the U.S...

...will be secretly rounded up deported on 9/12 2005 by Homeland Security:yoiks:

[justinsb]

6. That's ok...as long as they aren't deported to Syria

just send them home :)

[BrklynLiberal]

10. mmmmmmmm What can I do to be mistaken for a Canadian and be

sent there at govt expense? hahhahahaa

[Bassic]

17. Put on the tinfoil hats and duck for cover people!

:tinfoilhat:

[BlueEyedSon]

5. Now im all prepped for "Dead or Canadian"!!

[justinsb]

7. As long as you understand that it is possible to be both n/t

[Wetzelbill]

8. what about Buck Shot? or Don Cherry?

[DBoon]

9. you should add Skinny Puppy to the list

for fans of industrial music

http://www.skinnypuppy.com/

[jim3775]

11. Of the people I have heard of there were only three

I didn't know were Canadian; Raffi, Rich Little and Raymond Burr.

[applegrove]

12. Saying - "we have famous too" is a national passtime. A big

country ... little country thing.

[Maple]

13. Please stop calling

the US a 'little country'

I know Canada is bigger than they are, but we don't have to keep pointing it out. It's rude.

[justinsb]

14. That's true, but

it's also a "Actually we're not part of the US" thing. There are many times when I have to point out that a person, thing etc is actually Canadian. So, it's just a point of information really. It's not nearly as bad here at DU as it was when I was in the states and had to point out on a number of occasions that Canada is not a state, is not part of Michigan and best of all is not in Europe.

[applegrove]

15. I could imagine it is so. I haven't seen that on the DU though.

[Bassic]

18. That's not so bad

A French buddy of mine once had to convince an american (red neck hack of course) that they do have electricity over there France.

[iverglas]

20. and that's why this isn't really "we have famous people too"

Pointing out to USAmericans that a lot of the people they assume are USAmerican aren't -- and not just the Canadians, but others (e.g. Hugh Laurie of TV's House, whom I just mentioned in another post, who's Brit, not to mention scads of people who have made enormous contributions to human progress) -- and that things they assume are USAmerican aren't (basketball, zippers, insulin, radium) could have a salutory effect.

Nothing like a little knowledge that there's a world outside one's back yard, and borders, to make one maybe give a damn about what's out there. And the more USAmericans who give a damn about what's out here, maybe the less likely they are to vote for people who want only to bomb or exploit it.

Of course, the person to whom the knowledge is being offered has to be receptive to the concepts in the first place. If it isn't the ethnocentricity / xenophobia / jingoistic nationalism that springs from lack of knowledge, it's the lack of knowledge springing from the ethnocentricity / xenophobia / jingoistic nationalism, one is simply going to be met with a response that replies that one suffers from the same disorders ... or rather, as a member of an inferior culture, has idiotic aspirations to them.

Since one can't tell whether the lack of knowledge chicken came before the jingoism egg, one can always give it a shot, risking ridicule and at least the pretence of not getting the point if one does. After all, I don't think that Canadians really care what ethnocentric xenophobic jingoistic nationalists think of us these days, if we ever did.

[justinsb]

26. Excellent post

It's all part of the same national disease that causes cold fronts in the winter to come "down from Canada" and cold fronts in the Summer to come from "the upper midwest"

[iverglas]

37. case in point

I don't want to resurrect a Friday thread in LBN on a completely tangential point, and I don't want to mark anyone out ... but in response to the news of the US accidentally bombing a building in Australia and the comment that the Australian entertainers The Wiggles "are a grave threat to national security", someone in the US replied:

"We MUST protect our domestic Tele-Tubby product."

The Teletubbies are, of course, as British as the day is long. But I guess that if it's hugely successful and known about in the US, it's gotta be Hollywood.

It's possible that the writer was being facetious ...

[elare]

36. Along those lines ...

I once convinced a couple of Americans that we in Canada lived in igloos, had crossed the border on snowmachines & rented cars in the closest border town. This was in JULY, in Northern Minnesota.

[Bassic]

16. Dan Akroyd used to be my mother's neighbor

In Hull,Qc, a few decades ago :)

[iverglas]

19. every big US prime-time drama has to have a Cdn lead

Otherwise, it flops.

Law & Order: Jill Hennessy (lawyer Claire); Law & Order has gone seriously downhill without its resident Canadian, but Crossing Jordan got the benefit.

And Rene Balcer, who runs the L&O show these days, of course. Various Cdn actors have been on episodes: Sarah Botsford, Megan Followes (another one to add, better known in the US as Ann of Green Gables than as the murderer whom Jack McCoy tricked the bow-tied dullard Cdn ambassador into returning to the US to be executed).

Homicide: Clark Johnson (Meldrick Lewis); he was previously in Cdn prime-time drama E.N.G.; his sister Taborah acts, and Molly sings.

Ally McBeal: Gil Bellows (Billy Thomas, her leading-man ex who died of a brain tumour)

Alias: Victor Garber

24: Kiefer Sutherland, of course, but also Elisha Cuthbert (who plays his daughter), Leslie Hope (Teri Bauer), Alberta Watson (Erin Driscoll) and Mia Kirshner (the one who blew up the jet); Alberta Driscoll was also Madeline in Nikita.

Interesting Kiefer tidbits:
http://www.topsynergy.com/famous/Kiefer_Sutherland.asp

During the fall of 2001, Sutherland unintentionally interrupted the filming of the premiere episode of the online series The Lonely Island. In the episode "White Power", The Dudes beat an old lady and steal her purse to facilitate their addiction to teeth whiteners. Sutherland, driving by at the time, jumped out of his car and intervened, only to discover that he was interrupting a student film. A portion of Sutherland's appearance is displayed after the credits.

Scrubs: Sarah Chalke (Elliott); also in Roseanne (the replacement daughter)

St. Elsewhere: Bruce Greenwood (the bad guy), also the star of Nowhere Man and a nework exec character in Larry Sanders. St. Elsewhere also had Howie Mandel, of course.

Larry Sanders: Scott Thompson

Family Ties and that other one: you listed Michael J. Fox, but I'll throw him in too, as evidence of the theory; same applies to various other people you listed as well, like Bonanza/Lorne Greene, and Al Waxman/Cagney & Lacey

X Files: William Bruce Davis (the cigarette smoking man)

The New Avengers: Linda Thorson (Tara)

Hill Street Blues: Det. Mimi Kuzyk
(edit: duh; Mimi Kuzyk playing Det. Patsy Mayo)

Murphy Brown: Colleen Dewhurst (Avery, Murphy's mother)

Cheers: didn't have a Canadian actor, but it made up for it by having an archetypally Canadian character ;) -- and John Ratzenberger (Cliff Claven) played the stupid Cdn officer in the Brit-Belgian WWII series Secret Army ...

Grey's Anatomy: Sandra Oh

CSI and its offspring don't appear to have Cdn leads ... and, well, just look at the results. Ew.

NYPD Blue: Gordon Clapp (Det. Greg Medavoy) -- not a Canadian, but also started his career here (won a Gemini on Street Legal), and one of his first film roles was in John Sayles' Return of the Secaucus Seven, which, while not Canadian, is kinda like a Cdn version of The Big Chill. ;)

ER: Gloria Reubens (Jeannie Boulet, physician's assistant, no longer there)
http://www.answers.com/topic/gloria-reuben
"She states that she is Jamaican Canadian, and not African-American. ... In 1996 she was chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world."

Grace Under Fire (hey, it ran for 5 years): Dave Thomas (Russell Norton, pharmacist)

And of course, to scrape the bottom of the barrel ... and demonstrate that having a Cdn lead isn't exactly a guarantee of quality:

90210: Jason Priestly

Friends: Matthew Perry

Party of Five: Neve Campbell

The O.C.: Kelly Rowan


Lots of other series make liberal use of Cdns for guest-star and character roles.

Andrea Martin: not a lead in prime-time series in the US, but Quark's mother in DS9. Star Treks were full of us. (As was SNL -- add Norm McDonald to the list.) Graham Greene was there and in others like Northern Exposure, as a recurring though not lead character.

... Oh look:
http://ccr.ptbcanadian.com/star-trek/
Cdn Star Trek connections. With a bunch of others frequently seen on the US airwaves, even if not as leads. (Saul Rubinek, for example. David Steinberg.) But huh, I hadn't realized that Martin was actually born and reared in Portland, Maine, although she started her career in Toronto.

Maury Chaykin: another one who's from the US, but who does so much work in Canada, in such Canadian stuff, most people think he's Canadian ... but aha, now I get it; his mother's Canadian.

If we broadened the theory to say simply that a US series can't succeed without a non-USAmerican lead of some sort, then we can include House, my new favourite purely because of Hugh Laurie, who's almost as cute as Bruce Greenwood and Gul Dukat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4683193.stm
(Anybody else having the great pleasure of watching Blackadders for the first time on BBC/BBCKids? For some reason, I never did before.)

Now, if we were to start listing all the cities (and other geographic features) played by Canadians on US TV ... !

[iverglas]

21. oops ... how could I forget?

Sex in the City: Kim Cattrall!

[Pithlet]

31. I think you're on to something

:) Even my latest favorite tv show, Stargate Atlantis, although probably doesn't qualify as a hit in the same league as the ones you mention, has a Canadian lead.

Megan Follows has been on Law and Order more than once. I saw an episode where she plays a mother who murdered her disabled child. I'll admit to a "Hey, isn't that the actress from Anne of Green Gables?" moment when I saw her.

[iverglas]

33. you're right about that one

That was the role Ann of GG played -- I always muddle the two in my mind. The Cdn woman who got extradited back to execution was a Cdn version of trailer trash (before we got our own, in the Trailer Park Boys ;) ) -- daughter of a purveyor of touristy junk in Niagara Falls.

I'm sure no actual Canadian would have been involved in that piece of trash episode. My father, then nearly 70 and a pretty ordinary guy, saw the episode while he was in Florida, and brought it up in conversation to express his indignant distaste.

I left out West Wing, which doesn't seem to have had a Cdn lead. Just not appropriate in the White House, I guess. (Even though all the people conducting the war on terror in 24 are Cdn.) Sarah Botsford did play Leo McGarry's wife on the first or second episode. Maybe having a Canadian would have saved them from a couple of the rather annoying Cdn references/plot bits the show did have.

Hmm, Stargate Atlantis. I've heretofore ignored it, but I think all the episodes are available on the on-demand service of my digital cable company. Maybe I should check it out. It being the dog TV days of August and all ...

[Pithlet]

35. It's fun.

Atlantis is a little more campy than the original SG, but that's why I like it.

[Canuckistanian]

22. And don't forget Max Headroom!

Matt Frewer, from Peterborough, Ont. (just down the street from where I live).

[terrya]

23. Eric McCormack is Canadian, right?

Our entertainment industry seems to have LOTS of Canadians. :-)

[justinsb]

24. Yep "Will" is from Alberta just think what the world would be like

if Grace were on her on her own. The woman who plays Kate on Lost is from Alberta as well.

[justinsb]

25. Also I left out Fred "Mr." Rodgers and

Arthur (the animated childrens show) as well as Red Green

[Pithlet]

30. Lots of kids tv from Canada

Cailliou and Franklin are also Canadian productions, I believe. I often notice when my kids are watching that many shows have Canadian production companies in their end credits.

Mr. Rogers did start out his TV career in Canada, but I think he's from Pennsylvania.

[spindoctor]

27. They have Keanu Reeves!

Now what will we do?

[Captain Hilts]

28. Canadians are so sneaky! They act like they live in N. America! (nt)

[justinsb]

29. Also Samantha Bee of the Daily Show

Can't believe I forgot her, my wife went to school with her

[best left blank]

32. William Gibson

is an American expat.

[justinsb]

34. Oh..and if you like Baseball

Fergie Jenkins, Eric Gagne, Larry Walker, Jason Bay, Eric Bedard, Rheal Cormier, Jesse Crain, Ryan Dempster, Rich Harden, Shawn Hill, Corey Coskey, Justin Morneau, Simon Pond, Terry Puhl, Paul Quantril, Matt Stairs and Larry Walker amoung others