Why Justin Bieber Lost

You will probably want to say something about how wrong it is for me to criticize a teenager, but really, people, once you are able to purchase Caribbean islands, you stop being a teenager. Game on.

Have I ever mentioned that I’m pretty sure I once threw Justin Bieber a Toonie outside a theatre in Stratford, Ontario while he played Neil Sedaka songs on an acoustic guitar? No? Well, your loss. Also his, as Justin was not named Best New Artist at last night’s Grammy Awards, a decision that created a vacuum as millions of grownups grinned just as millions of young girls imploded in a storm of misspelled Facebook messages and text messages. “OMFG!”

But while the Bieberians struggle with the reality that the music establishment knows Justin for what he is — a talented kid with about six more months’ worth of future — I have put some thought into just what caused his Grammy flameout.

• … He’s Canadian, but not very polite, and that confuses Americans.
• … Cutting all that hair off his face has turned out to be a mistake. Young people started thinking he was Zac Efron, and people my age started thinking he was just another kid who needs to pull up his pants.
• … That girl who won “Justin’s Grammy” is like all talented and everything, so it’s okay. “She like totally deserved it,” said the Bieb through his tears.
• … It’s an evil Jonas Brothers conspiracy. During the seven months they ruled the world, they bought most of the music industry under a variety of trusts and shell corporations, like three Bruce Waynes with sure-it’s-not-a-mullet haircuts. “Next,” says Joe or possibly Kevin Jonas, “We’ll tell Bieber he has to star in a remake of E.T.”
• … “As E.T.”
• … Arcade Fire won big, and that hit the Canadian suck-ass garbage music quota for this year’s Grammy Awards.
• … Shaun Cassidy, Ricky Nelson, Leif Garrett, Menudo, NKOTB, N’Synch or whatever they were called, 98 Degrees, The Bay City Rollers, Fabian, Donny Osmond, Hanson … The Bieb may be big today, but it’ll be a few years before he can compare himself to teen idol Paul Anka. But then again, Paul Anka was no Neil Sedaka.

Coming soon: “I’m doing this CD of heavy metal covers because I want to explore my boundaries.”

Also coming soon: Me taking my daughter to the Justin Bieber 3D movie. I sort of promised, and now she thinks I’m cool.

The Republic of Doyle

This is a new Canadian TV series about to start. It’s a detective show set in Newfoundland. It looks really, really Canadian, which is surprising, considering it’s about Newfoundlanders.

I might give it a whirl. I rarely watch network TV these days, but I’ll give anything Canadian a chance. And it looks like fun, even if the trailer makes it look like it was created out of a Rockford Files Choose Your Own Adventure.

Hinterland Who’s Who: The Beaver

If you’re Canadian, you know these. They played in the background while you ran to the bathroom during commercial breaks on The Beachcombers.

I’ll show you some more some other time, but I have to go. Relic is about to steal Nick’s logs!

We Get By With A Little Help From Yo-Yo Ma

Our leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, turned up at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa Saturday night. It was a surprise to the audience at the gala event; Harper is not known to be a fan of the arts, and his presence at this sort of event is unexpected. You know what else is unexpected? This:

Politics aside, and musical taste aside, I just think it’s cool that he did this. Harper is known for maintaining strict control over his public image and message, and he does not like to look like anything other than a stately leader. When this happens, he is quick to make sure we Canadians get a different message.

The famous photo of him in a black leather cowboy vest and hat was the last time anyone saw him dressed like a member of the Village People. The shot of him sternly shaking his son’s hand on the first day of school made people question his approach to parenting, and led to a long list of photos of him being really dadly. And that shot someone snapped a couple of years back of Steve’s big belly led to not only a Harper weight-loss effort, but an encouragement to his caucus to cut the fat from their waistlines.

So I was surprised and happy to see him up there on stage, singing badly, unashamed and smiling, just a guy having some fun. It was a good reminder that he isn’t a robot after all. Just because he’s been accused of being against funding and supporting the arts doesn’t mean he has to get up on stage and prove he’s a rockin’ guy. Not at all.

Kind of cool that he had Yo-Yo Ma on stage with him, though.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Canada

Today is Canada Day, my country’s 142nd birthday. This may make it sound like Canada is fairly young by global countryish standards — there are teapots in England older than Canada — but it’s really just the anniversary of my country’s declaration of itself as a dominion, no longer a colony. So it’s a celebration of political self-awareness, rather than that of a culture that has developed over hundreds of years (for the latecoming Europeans and others) and thousands of years (for those who were already here.)

Here are 10 things about Canada you foreigners need to know:

1. Canada was first settled by Asians who crossed what may have been a land bridge in the Bering Sea, travelling down through what is now Alaska over thousands of years to become the aboriginal people of North and South America. The land bridge was later dismantled and sold by Stalin to Germany, which melted it down and made Volkswagen Beetles out of it.
2. Later, Vikings came. They chose Canada because they had previously tried to settle Greenland, only to discover that it’s the only place on the planet that makes northern Canada look like a good place to live.
3. After that it was the French and the English, mostly, who came for fur and fish and slowly realized “Hey, we don’t have to live all crammed together anymore! We can move here and have our own mosquito ranches!” They fought over Canada for a few hundred years before a decisive battle at the Plains of Abraham (September 1759) in Quebec, which saw British General Wolfe defeat French General Montcalm and claim Canada for England. We continue to celebrate General Wolfe Day, which involves sharing a traditional dish of meat and two veg while drinking warm ale and watching Mr. Bean.
4. Canada comes from the word “Kanata,” which means “Silicon Valley.” Before we were Canada, we were British North America. We then became Upper Canada and Lower Canada. This was due to Canada’s unique geography; we are the only country in the world to have a second storey.
5. The Americans tried to take over during the Revolutionary War, marching on Canadian cities. That didn’t work out very well. They tried it again in the War of 1812, which saw trained American soldiers repelled by farmers with pitchforks. When the farmers got tired, some babies came out and threw rocks, and the Americans ran home crying. Canadians remain the only people to bring America to its knees on its home soil, but that’s more about Celine Dion in Vegas than the War of 1812.
6. The 19th century saw a major expansion west as Canada grew. A whole lot of people headed to the prairies to seek their fortunes, only to discover it’s damned hard to make things work on the prairies. There aren’t many trees, so they had to burn buffalo poo for warmth. They built their houses out of mud, but things started to go wrong when they hit water and tried to built mud boats powered by poo-burning engines. You can still see memorial monuments to poo in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
7. Another big Canadian development was the invention of the concept of standard time, by Sir Sanford Fleming, in 1879. Before he thought it up, everyone just set their watches whichever way they wanted. Fleming got a really loud bullhorn, climbed the CN Tower in Toronto and told the world “3 … 2 … 1 … MARK! Okay, folks, it’s noon.” Everyone listened except Newfoundland; they’re half an hour off because they missed the announcement. Hockey was on.
8. The First World War saw Canada fighting as part of the British forces. This was the first time the rest of the world got a look at Canadian heroism. It would see it again during the Second World War. Nobody fought like the Canadians. Meanwhile, paper shortages meant we couldn’t get American comic books, so Canadians invented their own: Johnny Canuck, Nitro and the Polka Dot Pirate.
9. After the Second World War, a Canadian invented parking meters. You’re welcome for that. Other innovations to come out of Canada include the zipper, basketball, chocolate bars, hockey, the light bulb (look that up, you’ll see I’m right), Superman and Trivial Pursuit. Also, tons of other great stuff.
10. We don’t have a president. We have a queen, and it’s the same queen England has, but she doesn’t come by often. And we have a prime minister. You may have heard of him: Sir Michael Myers.

For more on Canada, read this guide to our political system. It’s kind of stupid.

Also, one last thing: Canada is huge. Canada is so gigantic, we could put Europe in our back pocket. Check this out:

Canada 2050

"Send two more destroyers to the Bering Strait, scramble fighters over Baffin Island, and get me a cocoa!"

You may have seen this article in Time magazine about a new book, A Brief History Of The Future: What the World Will Look Like In 2050, by Jacques Attali. I quite enjoyed it, and will likely read the book. Futurism is a particular interest of mine, especially futurist musings from the past, which always make me either (a) marvel at how close that guy got it in 1950 or (b) wonder where my flying car’s at.

Reading about Attali’s book, though, got me wondering about what Canada will be like in 2050. I could still be alive by then, after all; I’d be 82 years old. My children could be grandparents by then. So I gave it some careful thought and came up with my predictions for Canada 2050:

• Tim Hortons controls everything. It would be like in Demolition Man: “After Tim Hortons won the franchise wars, everything is now Tim Hortons.” Except for Canadian Tire, which by 2050 is a small chain of grocery stores.
• There is a massive statue of William Shatner in Ottawa, commemorating how he came home to Canada in 2014, became Prime Minister and led the nation to victory in the Arctic War against Russia and the US. Shatner’s decisive strategies — freely adapted from Star Trek novels — helped Canada lay claim to the entire north pole. While the Americans claimed Shatner cheated, there was no evidence of this.
• The NHL has retracted back into Canada, abandoning US markets because everyone down there is now hooked on soccer. This would leave the NHL with 18 teams: the six that are there now (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa) and 12 more, all in Ontario and all owned by Jim Balsillie of Research in Motion.
• Jim Balsillie will be a half-human/half-BlackBerry cyborg. He is retired from day-to-day operations at RIM and now plays centre for Hamilton, and also is the Internet.
• The government finally shifted to a proportional representation system in Ottawa in 2029, meaning there are 36 different parties represented. The Prime Minister’s job is shared by a rotating panel of MPs. Xavier Trudeau is PM on Wednesdays.
• Quebec will have left, but come slinking back after realizing that nobody there had any idea what do next, and the Americans didn’t want them. In 2050, Quebec has territorial status.
• Alberta, riding a new resources boom, has absorbed Idaho for no reason whatsoever, just because they can.
• I am retired after a long and fulfilling second career as a bolter in the flying-car factory, but I work part-time at a Tim Hortons Teleportation Station because of debts incurred buying Star Trek toys in 2009.

When 2050 rolls around, you can email me by holographic projection to let me know how right I was. Or will be.