John Batt: No Government Affiliation

0:08  
Well, hello everyone. This is Jan Arden, and I'm here with Caitlin green and Sarah Burke. I am in Saskatoon. I am looking out a picturesque window from the James hotel, and we have a very special guest with us today. His name is John bat now, let me just tell you a little bit about John Batt. John batt is someone that Caitlin brought to me a few weeks ago, and he's got a very, very interesting Canada proud Instagram account called canada.gov.ca he was born and raised in Fredericton, and he now lives in Montreal, and he is the administrator behind the very, very popular Canadian history themed Instagram account. You do live shows as well. And I'm going to get John bat to speak to that. So John, welcome to the Jan Arton podcast and show.

1:03  
Thank you so much for having me. It's a true dream come true. You had no

1:06  
idea. Well, listen now, you tell me what it is that you do. I've been following you now you've seen me pop up on your following, and I am just intrigued. My curiosity has peaked. So walk us through canada.gov.ca,

1:22  
do okay, it's funny because a lot of people buy tickets to my show. I've still only been doing the show since January of 2023, and so the vast majority of people that buy tickets are similar to you have no idea what they're coming to see. I'm not a stand up comedian. I like to say it's like, maybe if Stuart McLean had a few drinks before he went on. Oh,

1:45  
it's a vinyl cafe, folks, if you're not familiar with Stuart McLean,

1:49  
yeah. I mean, he was obviously more fiction, like he was telling stories that were fictional, whereas, like, I am sort of focusing on hilarious stories of Canadian history that you won't find in textbooks. I'm interested in silly things like Avril Lavigne conspiracy theories. As we all are, we all know she's been replaced by someone years ago.

2:13  
That's right. I love Paul McCartney.

2:17  
I'm intrigued by things like the Peter McKay and Belinda stroke breakup that happened many years ago.

2:24  
Yes, a tough one for the country. Yeah. I was moved.

2:29  
I Yeah. The show is sort of a live presentation of the account, which is, which is kind of pure chaos in and of itself. It's, it really goes back and forth between serious and unserious. You know, this morning I did a post on the Ogilvy Christmas window in downtown Montreal, on St Catherine Street. I mean, that's obviously a very genuine and sincere post about something historical. But then on on Fridays, I post what are called My mood boards, and that's where I get much sillier, and that's where I make, you know, memes of you, this

3:00  
was pointed out to me, John, where did this begin? What made you wake up one day and go, You know what? The Peter McCabe Belinda thing is really bugging me, and I'm gonna do a deep dive into one of the biggest political breakups. Not only did she cross the fucking aisle, but she broke up with Peter McKay. It's incredible.

3:18  
It's amazing. It's good television, like they need to make a reality show about it or something. I don't know. And then she started dating, Ty do me.

3:27  
You know, she went down by at least nine inches. And I mean that height wise, not as far as the Wiener goes, and

3:36  
or not, we don't know. I have no inside information on

3:41  
I just need to interject and tell a very, very quick valenbatronic thing, because you'll appreciate this many, many years ago and I was still drinking. So can I please have that as a caveat to the story? So I was drunk at this particular dinner, so we are in, I'm going to say Paris. I'm pretty sure it was Paris, and it was a a young women's conference. And the conference, in and of itself, is fantastic. They invite entrepreneurial young women like teenage girls from all over the world with their ideas and stuff, and they do kind of this little mini symposium. And after this thing was presented, I sang a couple of tunes. I was quite sober at that. Belinda Stronach is the brains behind this, and I think rightly so. It was a really neat idea. I don't think it's still going on anyway, we went to a restaurant. I continued to get drunker. All this food came out right like miles and miles of food, and Belinda is sitting there with perfect posture, with a shawl like strategically wrapped around her neck. Picture Martha Stewart meets Catherine Deneuve on like Quaaludes, and just very blankly staring forward, not really engaging in a conversation. I'm like, eating food because I'm like, I'm really quite drunk and I need to eat something. Belinda pulled a tea bag out of her handbag. A tea bag came out, requested hot water, and sat there and just kind of nod. COVID. I felt like that was the last time I ever saw her. And I still, to this day, I'm bothered by the interaction. That's all I have to say. I want to move on, because I know I was super drunk. So Belinda, if you're listening, which you're not, I'm sorry. The only way through that was to drink a lot of French wine. But yeah, she just drank her tea bag. I don't know if she was trying to get camera ready for something or

5:23  
bringing your own. Is a next level. That's a that's a little, right? John, yeah, you grew up with a certain in a certain tier, I think, and even the best tea bag in France wasn't going to be good enough for you. So that's such weird behavior. I love it

5:38  
anyway. It just, it's been bothersome, and I'm glad I can unload with you guys. Caitlin questions. You have many, I'm sure, so please lead us on. Well,

5:46  
it's sort of, it's like many questions, but also just, I feel like what I really loved so much about the account when it started was that it was this final to me, like appreciation of some of the ridiculous humor parts of Canada that I don't think regularly get celebrated or, you know, people think about, like beaver tails and like hockey. And I think there's a part of like Canadian culture that is really, really misunderstood, even by Canadian residents. I remember I grew up with like, a famous like, it was like an artist, and it was a piece that he did called the Canadian identity, and it was a little mounty sculpture holding a mirror. And it was like, because it's a question that I think if you work in media, especially, or in arts in any way, you kind of wonder about. And I feel like John hit the nail on the head with so many things, from like a appreciation post for, like the bridge mixture, or then, like the story you shared about the the spying on Rita McNeil. So, so many things like that that I just, I wish there was, I kind of wish there was that sort of a class in university and you filled that void.

6:50  
Well, I kind of talk about all the bad things that we've done, you know, like, Yeah, certainly not letting the RCMP off the hook for spying on Rita McNeil, for being a feminist, unbelievable that we went over her of all of all people. Yeah, I think Canadians are absolutely sick and tired of a pre packaged version of the country that is actually sort of, you know, meant for Americans, almost almost for the consumption of others, than, than it is for ourselves, the version of Canada too, the one that I grew up with of sort of like, you know, moose and hockey and and maple syrup, Mounties, etc. It's for white men, really, too. It's for it's for Bros and as a as, obviously part of that demographic myself, like even I've gotten sick of it. So I can't even imagine being a woman in this country, being like, not a CIS, het male, or not being white, I think that there's a larger story to be told. And I think that in terms of talking about the sort of the bad things, you know, Jan, I like when you said that it's, I'm sort of like a proud Canadian account, or whatever it's like, I try to be careful there, like I'm not necessarily a nationalist in any way, proud to touchy word too, yeah. Well, and Canada proud being an organization in and of itself, that I would never, ever go

8:10  
well, even, even the flag itself, right? No, I know

8:13  
we've sort of, I know that's the thing. Like, it's amazing with the flag. Like, if I'm at a friend's cottage in the Kawartha Lakes in Ontario, and I see a Canadian flag waving. I'm like, that's nice. If I see it on a truck, it's a different story. Yeah, yeah, no. The camp started with me at an office job that I absolutely could not stand. It was just soul sucking, and I honestly just was playing on my phone at work, sitting at my desk instead of working because I sort of worked backwards, I noticed that the account was available, the handle canada.gov.ca I thought that was funny, that it was available. I thought then the notion that the Canadian government, or that the country as a whole would have an Instagram account, seems very silly. Instagram sort of had a different it was, it was still, it was younger at that time, you know, it was, it was sort of an unserious platform. And I thought it would be funny to sort of follow friends with that handle and and post very mundane photos of the Canadian countryside and landscape, you know, just like a boat in a harbor in St John's need some land. Like, to me, that was just funny. What happened was I accidentally started to kind of Garner followers of people who mistook me, I think, for something real. You know, I'm an English major. I've always been sort of wanting attention, wanting people to listen to what I have to say. And so it was a kind of a happy accident, yeah? Concordia grad, yes, that's right, yeah. Concordia University. Essentially, after getting 500 or 1000 followers or so and posting very ironically and insincerely up to that point, I thought, well, you know, I've got this audience now. Why not start writing about things that I've found funny and interesting in the past? And these people are going to have to read it, because it's going to come across their their phone when I started to take the account. Seriously, it sort of really started to go up and up and up and yeah, now I'm at whatever. I'm at 82 or 83,000 followers. So it's great.

10:08  
I mean, that's got to blow your mind, right? That's a lot of people. What do you hope that people take away when they go and scroll through? Because what I've done is I've scrolled through, obviously, Caitlin, you know, turned me on to there's this guy. His name's John bad. He's doing Canada, gov.ca You got, he's, he's got a thing of you up jack, and he's doing, like, a live show in Calgary. And I'm gonna come to your live show. By the way, you are, yeah, I'm gonna come. I'm actually home. It's the 23rd of January. Just want to say that, yeah, and it's in Calgary. What's the venue?

10:39  
It's at best of kin, which is a brewery, okay, well, I'll be there. Amazing. I

10:44  
bet you they have something I can drink. So now I'm coming into the show, and I'm walking in and I sit down. I've had my ticket. What am I gonna see? I

10:53  
usually come out to the beginning of when I'm up by Great Big Sea. You know, it's that that acapella with Alan doll, I am the founder of a big fan instrumental joy. So then when the fiddles come out, I walk on stage. That's sort of my walk up. Song is, if I'm a wrestler,

11:08  
yeah, at least it's not, could I be your girl so well,

11:12  
you know what's funny the way I set up the show, because I was asked by a gentleman by the name of Zach Atkinson, who runs a music festival in my hometown of Frederick, and shivering songs. He was the one that asked me, Would you ever consider doing a show? And I hadn't considered that. I had, but I was scared. I didn't know what it looked like. He said, Well, I'll pay you to do it. I said, Great, I'll get right to work. And I started writing that night. But what I what I have been done as as a fairly chatty person, I've been asked to, like, emcee weddings and stuff in the past that I kind of get tapped for that in my circle of friends, sometimes you do. I basically set up this show as if I was emceeing a wedding, and instead of like, the best man speech, or the maid of honor or whatever, I sort of just replaced those blocks in a Word doc with deep dives that I've done in the past. And yeah, so I sort of just sort of took a template of them seeing a wedding and made it about me entirely, or made it about the account. So that's sort of how I framed it. You know, you come out, you tell people who you are, you give them a bit of context. There's a bit of an introduction, and then you get into the meat of it, the show is about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Sometimes there's a bit of a like a Q and A at the end, because I'm anonymous on the account. A lot of people come to the show wanting to see who I am, same, yeah. Well, it's funny to think that I've become the content. It's sort of the opposite of what I ever expected to happen? You know, it's like Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message. This is sort of, this has happened with me, which is very strange, but, yeah, no, it's a really good time. But Jan, I had to tell you something. So when Caitlin showed you the meme, or when, well, first of all, you were on my poster for the Calgary show. That's

12:59  
what she sent me. And and then I said to her, I said, I don't know what the fuck this is like. Well,

13:03  
I hope you weren't, I hope you didn't think I was using you. It was nothing

13:07  
like that. I was looking at who else was on the different images of this poster, and I'm like, wow, this is super Canadian. And Caitlin was trying her best to kind of describe what this gentleman does. And she was, he was so positive about it.

13:23  
I just was like, this is it's like, it's funny. It's like, meme culture. And then you did, and then Jan, I sent you the the meme that he usually do on your mood board Fridays. And it was using the, it was using the the press image that we have in our in our podcast, like thumbnail. And it was the acronym, TFW the face when you've got money in your pocket, like, the color of your hair, got a friend who

13:45  
loves you, got a house. I was just like, I like this guy, it's good. Like, it's just good internet

13:49  
culture.

13:50  
So our first ever interaction on the internet was actually a few years ago, and I

13:57  
thought you're gonna say we slept together in 99 it was consensual.

14:03  
No, what happened was, every Valentine's Day, I make Valentines on the account, and over the years, it's sort of changed. Now I do it in a different kind of way. I mostly make fun of conservative politicians with it. But they started very sincere, and I would take, you know, just my favorite Canadian celebrities and and make, make a Valentine out of them. And so I made one of you, and it was, it was a photo of you, and it just said, Could I be your girl? And it said to from and I just, you know, it was very just an simple little joke, obviously a reference to, like,

14:42  
the format of your childhood Valentines, yeah, like,

14:45  
like you would give away at elementary school.

14:47  
Yeah, loved that day. Loved that day so much. But

14:50  
what was funny was that, and you're not the first to do this, but you you clearly mistook me for the actual Canadian government because you commented on the post. Please. Up the live export of horses to

15:05  
Japan. Now that does not surprise me. Now

15:09  
I'm not taking anything away from your cause, because I think it is a very good one, but you have to understand how funny this was to me, especially because I truly am a lifelong fan, like I've been a fan my whole life. So for our very first interaction to ever be you accusing me of exporting live horses was, was a very strange day for me.

15:34  
Do you see why I'm single now? John,

15:38  
well, I replied to your comment. And I said, Hi, Jan, big misunderstanding here. I'm actually not affiliated with the Canadian government in any way, shape or form. I've never exported any live horses myself. And I said, but I am a proud owner of a ticket stub to your concert at the Aiken center in Fredericton of 1997 my first ever concert. Oh,

16:03  
God, my God, that's a crazy, full circle moment. Life

16:08  
is so filled with wonderful surprises because you had no idea where this thing was headed. You're sitting having a day at a job that you don't like and wondering how you can shift your future. And I really love this, because I had no designs, nor did Caitlin, and I think nor did Sarah on the directions that we are going. We all started out in a field, kind of, well, I literally was in a field holding a stubby beer with a hard helmet on with a bunch of people listening to Bob Seger, like, literally, I was in a field going, I am fucking doomed. What is a fucking thumb like me gonna do with the rest of her life? And, you know, Caitlyn goes and fills in for somebody because they're like, So and so is gonna grow. Can you come in and do them here? And then it turned in, 13 years later, she's on chum, you know, with Marilyn Dennis on the biggest radio show in the world. And Sarah is now running and has created a podcasting network that is ever expanding every week. She's telling me, I just added so and so. I just added so and so so I love the idea of doing something, just taking a chance on yourself and for all our listeners out there, you know, this is a lesson in, in, in that belief system, like, don't it doesn't matter where it's gonna go. It matters that you try.

17:30  
Yeah, well, I mean, I kept a day job for the longest time because there was no income on, on what I was doing. But I posted relentlessly. I just it wasn't like, oh, someday it'll break through. It didn't matter. I just did it for the sake of doing it. I liked the attention Exactly. That was good enough for me, really. But about a year ago, I actually was able to quit my day job to do this full time. So I've been the admin professionally for one year, and I had a show in Toronto that was exactly one year to the day of my last day at my at my job, and it was a, it was a beer launch that I did at Bellwoods brewery. So they I have my own beer. Now, if you can believe that the packaging

18:13  
for this beer is unreal, because it's like the old school plastic chairs we used to have in elementary school on the beer, it's really, yeah, I've kind

18:21  
of commandeered those as part of my brand, the venres School chair. I'm not sure if those made it out all the way to Calgary, but they were ubiquitous on the east. No, no,

18:30  
we had them. I mean, I'm much older than you guys, but when I first started out, it was a metal chair that was attached to the desk. All right, so there were no loose chairs. It was literally the desk with the bar? Yeah,

18:41  
no, but it's funny what you were saying about how, like different decisions that you, that you make, take you different places, like, I mean, just, yeah, sitting there one day to, you know, on my phone at work, and instead of working to now, actually sitting here and speaking with you. That's very, very funny and very insane to me. But you, you've been at. You were a topic, like, a number of times on the account, just because I am, like, I have two older sisters. I grew up with a lot of women in songs, type of music in the household, yeah. And so you were, you were definitely a part of

that. I covered you at a show that I did one time where I was talking about songs you didn't know were covers. Like, for example, the great big C like, when I'm up is not a great big C song. It's a cover by a British band, Oyster band, and such a huge

19:33  
song for them. But insensitive, yeah, insensitive my neighbor wrote, essentially, I created the original, but it's it was written by my neighbor. Her name's Anne Marie. Anne Marie, that's right, she was a waitress, a waitress at a diner, and I would see her occasionally doing these crazy shows, charming, touching shows, but she she couldn't really sing, and she'd be the first person to tell you that. And the original version that I heard. Insensitive that she had just written, like, three days before. I really should have known by the time you drove me home by

20:10  
but the bones of the song were there. Oh,

20:12  
I just listened to it. I'm like, when she hit insensitive, I'm like, Holy shit balls. And it was before I even had a record deal. But anyway, yeah, that song changed my life. It changed her life. She bought a house, and when I first played it to her, the end of 93 going into 94 we sat her in my little office that I had in Calgary, my management company, and she had her head bowed down, and she looked up after we played it really loud on this little blaster, and she said, Oh, you've gone commercial. Oh, come on. She roasted you. Well, it wasn't, I think any writer is disappointed in a vision that they had. I added a lead break and I doubled the chorus at the end. So when we recorded it, because the song was two minutes long. So I'm like, we gotta repeat the chorus again, and anyway, but it has been covered now. Leanne rimes has covered it. There has been abundant amount of Filipino artists that have covered insensitive, lot of like South Asian artists. It really struck a chord. And if you go on YouTube, that thing has been recorded 1000s of times. Crazy.

21:20  
Okay, wait, I feel like I just need to know what happened after with her, she had

21:25  
no interest in it. She's got another song called on the verge that I always wanted to record, and selfishly, I thought, I can't record another Anne Laurie song that's going to be a smash hit that completely usurps everything I've ever done in my career. So I was very reticent, too, to record another and song. And I really that was my rational. She

21:46  
could have gotten another house. Well, I and I

21:49  
feel silly about it, and actually, years ago, probably 15 years ago, she re I asked if she could resend me the demo of that, and it's a beautiful song I've seen her just a few times over the last 30 years. And I think there's an appreciation for each other, but yeah, it probably was as difficult for her as it was for me. Yeah, you know, when I die, it's going to be insensitive singer, Jan Arden, and I know that, and sometimes it bugs me, because it will be ahead of good mother. It will be ahead of, could I be your girl? It will be ahead of any books that I've ever written. It'll be head of the Jan show. It will be, it will lead the way. That is the engine to which my obituary will

22:32  
be pulled. We can start a document of how you want it to go, if you'd like. No,

22:36  
it's not. It's not going to have anything to do with me and I, I'm sure I can't control the photograph. I don't know if you guys ever think about this, but CBC has already got, like, an obituary, a reel in the can. We've talked about that on this show before, anyone that's in the public eye, really, you know? Yeah, wow, that's

22:53  
so weird. You got to beat the internet. You have to beat TMZ. So,

22:56  
yeah, I don't know if I like that. No,

22:59  
it's true. It's weird.

23:01  
Speaking of short songs, though, what can you tell me about? Like, run like mad. Run like

23:06  
mad was it's been such a crazy trip on that, like, this has got to go back over 20 years ago, 25 years ago. Yeah, to the Dawson's Creek. The Dawson's Oh, Nicole, I don't want to wait for my love to be over. They pay me to sing. Can you tell some guy had been using some of my songs in Dawson's Creek? I know good mother played. They probably used seven or eight of my tracks. And then the music director, when the Paula Cole stuff started happening and they needed to pay her out all this money, they thought, No, we're gonna have our own theme. He's like, Oh, we've used Jan's music. We just need 30 seconds. That's what he said to me, are you willing to write a theme song for the show? And then I immediately had to watch the show. I'd never seen an episode in my life. So I watched like, five episodes, and wrote this with my friend Bob Foster who wrote good mother with me in his little studio, and I wrote exactly 32 seconds. Wow. That's what they said I needed. I didn't even write a whole song.

24:04  
That's so funny. It's like a fake song. It's a facade. People hated me so like, another, another 90 minutes. Like, doesn't even ever exist, ever like, you didn't ever finish it, or anything. No, that's it. Wow. That's it's like a jingle. We sang

24:19  
it on tour once we did like, we did a version of it on tour, and people just sat there dazed. They're like, What the fuck is this? Like? Stop doing

24:28  
like they lost the rights to Paula Cole sting, and then so they had to go back. So on Netflix, I think it is run like mad,

24:36  
is it? I thought that Sony had done some kind of deal anyway. I got so much hate mail. People hated me, and then people kind of got used to run like mad. And then there was a big thing, Paula and Jan and and I could see Paula Cole commenting, you know, it's not really Jan's fault. She had nothing to do with it. I'm not mad at her, because that was a I didn't give a shit. But Paula, that was really a huge part of her branding and her career. And I think the. Fact that I was so I just didn't care. I'm like, okay, don't I don't care. And I don't mean that meanly. It was just a job that I did period. The

25:09  
other thing I heard was that their original first choice for the theme was hand in my pocket by Linus Morse. Oh,

25:17  
and I wonder if she just flat out said no, but I think they paid me $10,000 that was it. There was no really. There was nothing. It was a one time payout, and that's what they wanted.

25:29  
It's on Amazon Prime, I think in Hulu, Dawson's Creek right now, I just did a quick check. But whenever I went to watch, like binge watch it, whenever I was sick at some point over the last three years, I heard both. So whatever season it was, it was uploaded as is.

25:43  
Oh, okay, well, sorry. Paula Cole I honest to God, I didn't know anything about anything. I think she did fine. The 90s were weird for Song placement, because there was, I mean, I would be sitting watching Baywatch, and David Hasselhoff would be diving into the ocean 300 feet down on a single breath, rescuing someone out of a sunken Cessna and I would die for you would be playing. Do people get permission for this stuff

26:11  
that's crazy? Like the

26:14  
list of TV shows in the 90s that were playing my music was really, really cute.

26:19  
Like, your song, you don't know me, like, well, your cover of it was in one of my very favorite it might be my favorite rom com of all time, my best friend's wedding. Yeah. Great soundtrack, really good, really good sound. And like, a very good movie. And so if you're a millennial, Jan is like, I feel like you're kind of like, ingrained in our culture, which is sort of the demographic that you know John and Sarah and I belong to but

26:41  
people don't know I am, like, I'm not. I've had a really great career, in a sense that sorry John, that we ended up talking about me, but you're gonna, you're stuck with it. Now. I don't have this omnipresent career, like I go through Costco on a weekend. People will be very friendly to me, but I've never been on an arc where I'm super famous or super anything, and that's really my perception of it. I still work. I mean, I'm out doing, like, smaller towns and cities for this Christmas tour, and it's manageable, and I really like it. I don't have that kind of fame. My fame is very Canadian. I think it's very Canadian. Oh, so

27:20  
getting

27:28  
it back to you, what is some of your favorite Canadian foods? And I know Caitlin had mentioned that you might have got the note that we're curious about food on this show, yeah? As

27:41  
someone from the East Coast really into garlic fingers and garlic fingers, it's absolutely huge out east. And sometimes it will be, they'll be served with, like, like, kind of like a candied bacon on top, and don't air sauce. I'm sure you've heard of donair being out in, yes, so garlic fingers is sort of like a, it's like a pizza, except there's no tomato sauce. It's like, sort of like a garlicky thing with with cheese. Some people would call it like, kind of garlic cheese bread. We call it garlic fingers. It's sliced up into fingers, never in, like a pizza shape, and then you dip it in donair sauce. That's huge out east. Like, you can't go out east without ordering garlic fingers with

28:26  
I'm so hungry that that is making the back of my glands. I'm drinking cold hotel coffee,

28:31  
yeah. Oh my god, so yeah. Big fan of, like, sort of that kind of, like, regional stuff, uh, big fan of Sussex brand ginger ale that I don't know. Oh, really, that's, that's absolutely huge on the East Coast. We're not really Canada Dry. People out there where, well, some we a little bit, especially the cranberry. Canada Dry is just elite, absolutely incredible stuff. But we drink like your grandmother would give you Sussex ginger ale growing up. It's a golden ginger ale, and it is medicinal. It hits like, I don't know what really gingery. Yeah, ginger and, like, a golden ginger ale is different from Canada Dry. Canada Dry is a dry ginger ale. Hence, hence the name. I'm definitely, I'm a fan of poutine. Obviously, I live in Quebec. Definitely a fan of poutine. I will eat bad poutine because I'm from New Brunswick. So we, we bastardize protein all the time out there, you know, like we do it incorrectly, like, I grew up eating protein at a rink, actually, like the Aiken center where you performed in 1997

29:33  
um, with, like, shrimp. Oh, bring that up again.

29:36  
That was a great show, and a pretty big room, big building, that's a big arena. So it was, it was a good night. I went with my sister.

29:44  
Do you think the world has us wrong? John Canada as a whole? Because I do get sick of the quintessential maple syrup, Canadian back bacon, the poutine gets to me a little bit. I think that we are the people in. I think the United States in particular perceives us as the old lady in the attic. They know we're up here, but they really don't pay us much attention, and they know nothing about us, like zero. That's why

30:10  
I've said that. Like, you know, the the version of Canada, the one in the I am Canadian, Molson, like, like that, that sort of version of us from the 90s is, is over. I think we can retire it. Yeah. And I think that this idea of Canada as being peacekeepers in the world is over. I think that many of us from every generation, I think, is more and more and more aware that we are three mining companies in a trench coat that this is that this isn't really a real country at all, that we're just a series of of companies. And we've, we've done, we've been more colonizing and as evil as as any other country. So this, this whitewashing, or this, this, this sort of version of Canada as being like so nice. I think it's just, it's not doing us any good. It's not it's not helping us. I think we need to be more honest with ourselves about our treatment of indigenous people. We have to be more honest with ourselves with where we go. You know, militarily on a yearly basis or weekly basis. Look at that. I am Canadian commercial too. It's like a white guy in a in a plaid shirt, like this is the real so this is the Canada people miss. It doesn't work for me. That's that's absolutely no good. I

31:28  
can tell you firsthand, I've traveled more in this country than really any other person that I know. I've been doing it for 40 years, and I have been to every little town. I have traveled by air. I have been on a ski doo. I have been in a white panel van. I have been in a broken down bus. I've been in pickup trucks. I'm traveling right now in my own car with my road manager because I won't go on the bus anymore with a band. I don't want to get whatever those boys get chest colds and all that stuff. But this country is so diverse. It is so many different things. I'm telling you, driving 45 kilometers from one town to another in Saskatchewan is so diametrically opposed as to what they do, who they are, how they talk, what they like. It's unbelievable. And as far as the coast to coast to coast thing, I can't even tell you who we are. We are everything I wanted to ask you before we let you go, how we became so us and them, and how it got so divided, because It troubles me, and I make a little speech at the end of every show about we can't buy into that idea of who we are, yeah?

32:41  
Well, because as long as we're having a culture war, we're not having a class war, yeah. So that's, that's why so much is shoved down our throats, I think, to make us squabble instead of organize any

32:54  
ideas of how that can be reconciled.

33:00  
Well, when I go around and do my shows and stuff, I don't think there's any mistaking where I stand politically, but I also know that I can, sort of, I can use humor and everything to persuade people, but I'm also aware of what my limits are in terms of, you know, sort of changing the world. But I can, I can help. I think. Is it a bit of an echo chamber, maybe, but that's okay.

33:26  
Do you feel hopeful? I mean, I know we were in for a bit of a ride here. This next 567, years, there will be a changing of the government. Oh yeah, for sure, will be a conservative majority. And that is no secret, and it has happened for the last 60 years, we've seen it time and time again. They get sick of the conservatives, the Harper administration, all of that stuff, then it swaps over. So it's not like, it's not like, Oh, what a surprise this has been. We just didn't see it coming. It happens every decade. So

33:55  
am I hopeful? Like, I mean, I think trio has like, sort of like a trick up his sleeve. I'm not sure what it is. I think it's me. I think one, yeah,

34:04  
John, I'm going to be the next prime minister of Canada,

34:08  
Jan Rick Mercer ticket, do you know? And

34:11  
I'm not kidding you, I think Canada would actually buy into a Jan Rick ticket, yeah. I think if Rick ran for prime minister and I was behind him, they would go, yes. I think, I mean, I think we'd get the majority, honest to God, I really believe we're in this entertainment age.

34:26  
What if I started here? That would certainly be exciting. But I think, I think Trudeau is gonna pull some kind of rabbit out of a hat, whether it's suggesting universal basic income or stepping aside, or both. He's definitely become effective recently in making polyev look more and more like a hypocrite by getting him to vote against tax breaks increasingly right now, because he's all vote taxes, tax that exit tax, exit tax.

34:52  
And they knew they would. Yeah, you cannot tell me that in a room full of very smart you know whether it's for. And Melanie jovid and that they sat around going, guess what? The Conservatives are going to vote against this tax

35:05  
break? Yeah, but again, I mean, people are so decided, though, so I don't know if that's going to actually change everything. It would have to be something absolutely massive, like suggesting universal basic income, where people get, you know, two, $3,000 a month, sort of something like Serb. They sort of tried it with Cerb. It was a success. The country didn't fall apart.

35:24  
I know a lot of people still struggling to pay that back, though, yeah,

35:28  
well, with universal basic income, they wouldn't be paying it back. Okay? And it's certainly something we can afford. It's just like one subsidy to some mining company up in northern Ontario that we don't get, I know, like we don't before it

35:43  
started on the cattle industry, cattle, any kind of agriculture. I mean, the money that's poured into that, and rightly so, some of it is very justified when you're growing the food for a country, not things that are systematically killing people and ruining their health. That shouldn't have a billion dollars poured into it every and I'm sure I'm exaggerating. Listen, where do you want to go with this? Canada.gov.ca, what's the end game here? John, well,

36:08  
I've done pretty well not having an end game. And just sort of love that, seeing where it's been going, like I, you know, having done a year now of going around and doing shows, and I'm fairly confident with what I've booked for 2025 that I'm going to be able to say that I did it for two years at least. I'm kind of looking at it a year at a time, 10,000 hours. Ron, yeah, that's what they say, right? My favorite things about sort of the country growing up were sort of the weird elements of things like, for example, Patty Schmidt as host of brave new waves in the middle of the night on CBC. That shit was incredible. It was so insane. Driving around stone with your friends and her just being like, you were just listening to turtle fucker out of Berlin, and you were just like, What the hell is that? Or, like, some of the NFB shorts that would be on, like CBC television at like, two in the morning, where they were just like, loved

37:04  
those. The National Film Board of Canada.

37:07  
I love those. So

37:08  
that is the kind of stuff that has has shaped me. And if I could, I don't know if I ever had the chance to do something with the NFB in the future that would just be like a dream come true, or maybe like something with CVC, I don't know. Well, I'm

37:24  
gonna rally for that. Listen, in a perfect world if I had John batt open one of my shows, if I gave John a half hour to open a show for me, what would that be? Do you come out in a in a denim tuxedo? What happens sometimes

37:41  
when I am a cane tuxedo, it's completely by accident, and I forget that that exists. That's that's one of those things where that really is us. We really do dress like, yeah, it would depend, Jan, on the city that we're in. Because one of the things that I do, which is very silly, is I tailor my show to the city that I'm in, which is dumb, because when the show's over, it's not, well, no, nothing dumb about it's hard, it's harder. It's a lot more work, I guess is what I was trying to say. Because when I'm done the show, I have to rip it up and throw it away and onto the next city. So when I do, like in late January, I'm doing Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Saskatoon, all like doing those four cities and four nights. Those will be four different shows that I do, one after another. So depending on where we were, if I was opening for you, I would certainly tailor it to some sort of funny things that have happened in that town's history. So great. I just love it. Where I have to be careful is that I'm not telling people what they've already what they already know about their town, like I don't think that'll happen. Well, you gotta, you have to dig a little bit. You gotta go nerdware on their town a little bit, and and then I think you can be pretty effective.

38:47  
That's who you should do a collab with. And you also need to come up with merch, because I do feel like you have an eye for branding. Just saying, I,

38:53  
yeah, I have merch on my shows for sure. I've sold a bunch of stuff to the account I had, like a croconal provincial champions hoodie that I had for a while. I had a maritimes thing.

39:03  
I gotta get some merch. I gotta start promoting you. I'm glad that Caitlin showed me your Instagram account. And for anybody listening right now, our listeners, please go to canada.gov.ca, John bat is the anonymous brains behind this account, and like he said, he started out going, he couldn't believe that this handle had not been picked up by the Canadian government. The Canadian government did not give a shit enough to actually have like, an official. It's so crazy canada.gov I thought I was so confused, but now that I know, now that I'm in on the on the joke, I love it so much. We are going to make sure in the show notes, we're going to have links to your Instagram page. Are you on Twitter? Are you an

39:46  
ex guy? No, it's just it's no,

39:49  
I'm very close to going off myself. I still

39:51  
use it a little bit to read. I've made to jump over to blue sky. But in terms of the content for the account, it's just on Instagram. I'm not sure. Sure how that will look in the future. I know that apps live and die, so it'll be interesting to see. But no, I've been only ever there on Instagram.

40:11  
Well, listen, you have been an absolute pleasure to have on the show today. I'm so grateful that Caitlin, she's got her ear to the ground. I'm just like this aging person traveling to North Battleford singing old songs that are now 30 years old, which blows my mind. Everyone's gonna love this. They're gonna love going on to to see what you're all about and to learn things about their country. You know,

40:33  
the shewin again handshake is just as important. Yes, our little inside jokes that truly unify us. I think next

40:40  
time we speak, I want to know how we fucking ended up losing Alaska. Like we gotta get this right now. What the fuck and the 51st date thing that has dropping out of Trump's mouth? And, you know, I it's gonna be a really interesting time. I hope you'll come back. I would be honored to, and I'm looking forward to meeting you. I promise you I will be there in the 23rd incredible I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring some friends and we'll drink, hopefully they have a day alcoholized beer or or I'll just bring my own tea bag. I'll just sit there.

41:09  
Excellent call back there. Hey,

41:10  
that's what I do night after night. You're a true pro. Well, it's just been an absolute pleasure, and thank you for taking time for us. And I wish you continued success, folks. Everything's going to be in the show notes, so make sure you subscribe. Make sure you give us a review. We appreciate five stars. It helps people find this podcast. And we want to thank all our sponsors and one huge, giant holiday announcement before we leave, we're going to do something really special for our only Jans on Patreon, and that is going to be a live event for some contest winners on Patreon. Caitlin, please do explain, because I'm just not doing it justice. The January podcast is going to have a big like, let's send out the drones, send out the fireworks, the sparklers. We're going to have a big end of the year event. And yeah, so we want to explain to our listeners what it is. Yeah,

41:58  
it's for, it's it's for our only janss, and that's what we have come to affectionately refer to our Patreon subscribers as. So what's gonna happen is we're throwing kind of like an end of your recording party. And if you subscribe to us on Patreon, we're gonna pick five to 10, very lucky, only Jans, and they're gonna be selected to join our actual recording session. So you'll kind of be like a guest. It's like when we have guests on our show regularly, and so you'll kind of be part of the show that week. You can join one of our segments where we ask you questions. You can ask a question to Jan. So what we'll do is it, for anyone who already subscribes to us on Patreon, you'll see like an entry form come up, and if you don't already subscribe to us on Patreon, then get the heck over there and you can join us for our holiday year end party.

42:40  
I can't wait. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I have questions for myself. I have questions okay, that I'm going to ask, but yeah, if you and if you have any little stories that you want to tell us, there's all kinds of things, all kinds of ways to approach this. Certainly questions are great. But if you have some really fun little stories that you want to tell that are, you know, 60 seconds long, we're gonna, we're gonna be there. But yeah, what we decide, what a fun way to kind of see everybody, because your faces are going to be up on the screen, and Sarah is the, She's the brains behind all the technical stuff that needs to happen in order to do this. We've been talking about it for the last week, of how we can make this work and how we can make it fun for everybody. Yeah, and holiday

43:20  
content, like we usually do, sort of a holiday specific episode. So we were like, why not add in, like, a little Christmas party for all of our only jams on Patreon. So it'll be there. If you join

43:30  
the Christmas party, everyone gets access to chat and to be a part of it and to be on the screen. Just the lucky five to 10 winners will have access to actually speak and be a part of a segment? Well,

43:42  
I love that, and that's only fair. We can't talk to everybody as much as I'd love to. You're gonna have to just do that with me and Costco when we see each other, you're just gonna have to ask me stuff in real time. It'll be fun, John, keep kicking ass.

43:54  
Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time. Totally, dude. Oh.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai