I Just Read About That…

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[READ: February 2024] Rick Mercer The Road Years

Sixteen years ago I read Rick Mercer’s first book.  Since then I’ve read a couple of his other books, but I missed the first part of this memoir, Talking to Canadians.  I guess I’ll have to track that book down too.  Because I love the way Mercer writes.  I loved his show and now I love his print.

About his first book I wrote:

Rick Mercer is a great political comedian.  He puts all American political commentators to shame. I’m sure that much of this difference is the way Canada is structured. There seems to be so much more openness to politicians there than in our system.  For reasons I can’t fathom, politicians agree to hang out with Rick even though in the next segment he will rant about their incompetence.

Well, this book goes some way to take the blinds off how the show worked.

So this book picks up where his previous memoir finished–just as he was about to start The Rick Mercer Report.

He explains that the premise of this book and indeed of his show was “What does it mean to be Canadian?”  [Spoiler: he never does find the answer to that].

He talks about how the show was spun off from This Hour Has 22 Minutes and was originally The Monday Report.  (It was going to be on Mondays and they figured if they called it that then the CBC would never move it).  They didn’t really have a plan for the show–it was all kind of seat of the pants until they were about to start filming.  They decided that everywhere in Canada there was something interesting happening.  And he would go to check it out and show the rest of the country.  It would spur local and national pride.  And it would be funny as well.

So Rick travelled around the country and rode on “The Train of Death” (fortunately, the book comes with pictures).  And soon it was established that if Rick could be put in danger or humiliated, well, that was the show right there–locals getting the best of the snooty Toronto TV guy.

So he wore a beard of bees, he was tucked into bed by Prime Minster Stephen Harper, he pulled a sleeping polar bear out of its den and he had lots of crazy adventures with Jann Arden.

Jann Arden is a singer and their chance meeting on the show (his plan for the Calgary episode fell through at the last minute and Jann was available) sparked a whole series of insane adventures in which Rick and Jann (both cowards) would do scary (but not dangerous) things and make people laugh their asses off.

He met a young Justin Trudeau and has been to 24 Sussex Drive on several occasions (he’s a politics nerd, so it was a huge thrill to get to see it–and to see how differently it was kept by the various Prime Ministers).  He also got to raise the Canadian flag at Parliament Hill which was a pretty big deal for him.

He has had on the show lots of famous Canadians.  He’s had all three members of Rush *yes, even Neil Peart–who showed Rick how to play drums–Geddy rode a toboggan down a hill and Alex went indoor skydiving.

But the bulk of the book is saved for politics.  Both what he thought about the politicians (before and after they took office) and what it was like to hang out with them.  Politicians are weird.

It was also fun to read his take on Belinda Stronach who I knew of but not very much about (she’s a politician who went from conservative to Liberal in a breathtaking political move).  Belinda took Rick to Africa and he learned about the importance of mosquito nets.  The two of them started a campaign to get Canadians to donate to save lives.  They started Spreadthenet.ca and had schools win a chance to be on the show and raise a ton of money to save lives.

You don’t expect a memoir to bring you to tears, especially from a political comedian, but his stories about young people caring about others and the inspiring way they became engaged with good causes was pretty impressive.  And quite moving.

I do miss seeing the Mercer Report, but at least it’s all preserved online.

(Like this clip of Rick and Jann Ziplining)