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Rick Mercer reflects on his very Canadian career in new memoir

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In 1999, comedian Rick Mercer managed to gather what may have been the most Canadian crowd of TV celebrities ever assembled.

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He had been enlisted to host that year’s Gemini Awards in Toronto, a predecessor to the Canadian Screen Awards that celebrated the achievements of homegrown television. Mercer wanted to create a cold open that would have him wander through a so-called “Gemini Lounge” to schmooze with past winners, a virtual who’s who of the Great White North’s TV personalities.

On hand that day were actors Gordon Pinsent, Al Waxman, Sonja Smits and Maury Chaykin. The Royal Canadian Air Farce was there, as were David Suzuki, Mr. Dressup, Knowlton Nash, Red Green and even Dudley the Dragon.

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In his new memoir, Talking to Canadians, Mercer describes the scene in typically Canadian fashion: “Collectively the egos in that room were no different than what you might find on any given day at any Robin’s Donuts in Thunder Bay,” he writes. It certainly isn’t the only time Mercer flies the Canuck-celebrity flag in his book. At one point, the comedian and former star of This Hour Has 22 Minutes fanboys over singer-songwriter Tom Cochrane. He refers to the 1998 impromptu joke that led to his famous Talking to Americans segments. It involved Mercer telling a number of people in Washington, D.C. that Canada’s “president” was Ralph Benmergui, a CBC personality whose name might test the memories of even the most devoted of Mother Corp’s supporters. At one point, Mercer makes reference to the internal strife of Newfoundland’s now-defunct Celtic band Great Big Sea.

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In short, Mercer’s Talking to Canadians may be the most Canadian book ever written about a life in show business. This is because Canada has rarely produced a figure as distinctly Canadian as Mercer, who has managed to build a charmed career doing exactly what he wants without ever leaving.

“I totally understand why the vast majority of people in the entertainment industry at some point head to Los Angeles,” says Mercer, in an interview with Postmedia. “If you are in my business, it’s the largest English market in the world. It makes perfect sense. I just didn’t have to because of a series of fortuitous events that led to me getting 22 Minutes and it became a hit. So it is very Canadian.”

In fact, Talking to Canadians doesn’t even mention that Mercer was once offered the hosting spot for the American version of The Weakest Link, a hit game show.

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“It was a time when I had to decide whether I wanted to stop doing Made in Canada and 22 Minutes and move to Los Angeles and do the Weakest Link,” he says. “The money was stupid. But, to me, it just couldn’t compare. I had these shows I was writing and starring in and then I would go read a teleprompter on a game show? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just not what I wanted to do.”

On the day of this interview, Mercer is talking with Postmedia from Middle Cove, Nfld., where he is celebrating his father’s 89th birthday. This is where Mercer grew up and where Talking to Canadians begins, kicking off a 35-year journey that takes readers from his early school days as a slightly rebellious child, through his discovery of theatre and comedy in high school, to his early career in standup and one-man shows, to his national success with 22 Minutes, Talking to Americans and the satirical sitcom Made in Canada. The book ends just as he is about to embark on The Rick Mercer Report, which ran from 2004 to 2018.

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Throughout his career, Mercer has tended to be private and guarded about his life outside the public eye. Most of Talking to Canadians is about his career. Gerald Lunz, his spouse since 1990, appears throughout the book, although often in the context of being Mercer’s long-term business partner and executive producer. Mercer does write briefly about coming out of the closet after getting together with Lunz, concluding that “our earth-shattering news was mostly met with a collective shrug.” There is also nothing in the chapters about his early years that would suggest his sexuality caused any inner turmoil or that he faced a lot of homophobia.

“There wasn’t a lot of angst and I don’t know why,” Mercer says. “I would hate to be the poster child for how you should act if you’re a young man or young woman in the closet. I had a lot going for me. I had a family I knew would support me, no strings attached. I was never stressed by that. I wasn’t the kind of guy that people were yelling at in the hallways, like some people who by the time they’re 12 had a sign that said ‘I’m gay’ on their forehead. It was something I could put out of sight, out of mind. Which is how I dealt with it for most of my teenage years. I’m not suggesting in any way what people should do, but that’s what I did. I do write about it. But even as a public figure when I went off to do 22 Minutes, while I wasn’t talking about being gay in the media, I made the decision if anybody asked me I wouldn’t deny it. But no one ever asked.”

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So most of the book focuses on career triumphs, both comedic and otherwise. They include some of the more memorable moments in Canadian television. Mercer writes about how he got future commander-in-chief George W. Bush, who was the frontrunner to become the Republican nominee for the presidency in 2000, to thank “Canadian Prime Minister Jean Poutine” for his endorsement; or then Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to congratulate Canada on its “National Igloo.” He writes about how he convinced more than a million Canadians to sign a “citizen-initiated” referendum demanding conservative politician Stockwell Day change his name to Doris Day. It was a humorous piece, but was also grounded in Mercer’s discomfort with Day and other right-wingers using this method to “advance hot-button policies and sweeping legislation without needing the guts to do so publicly.” “I saw it for what it was,” Mercer writes, “a back-door method to clear the way for that triumvirate of socially conservative obsessions: introducing the death penalty, limiting access to abortions and, of course, banning gay marriage.”

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This shows that Mercer, well-known for his often political “rants”, has a serious side. The book celebrates some non-comedic successes in his career as well, most notably his work honouring Canadian troops. In 2000, Mercer organized a way for Canadians to send Christmas messages to Canadian peacekeepers in Bosnia and other areas of the world. In 2003, he hosted the CBC special Christmas in Kabul, in which he was joined by Cochrane and others to bring some yuletide cheer to the troops.

“With 22 Minutes, there are things that are just funny like Talking to Americans,” he says. “It might have a small cultural impact in the sense people are talking about it the next day. But then there was Christmas in Kabul or Bosnia. Bosnia led to action. It led to thousands and thousands of messages being sent to peacekeepers in Bosnia. That had never happened before. In many ways, I was in the right place at the right time. I was using this new platform — the Internet! — to do this thing that hadn’t been done before. Also, this hit TV show was showing people what our peacekeepers were doing leading up to Christmas. It was very personally satisfying.”

Rick Mercer will be joined by Jann Arden in conversation online on Dec. 7 as part of Wordfest’s Imagine On Air at 7 p.m. Visit wordfest.com.

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