John Batt: No Government Affiliation
49:10 Share

This episode is brought to you by Disney's Mufasa, The Lion King. Get tickets now for the ultimate family holiday movie experience. Reunite with the characters you know and the untold story you'd never expect. Witness Mufasa's rise from orphan to king and see how the legendary villain Scar got his name. Disney's Mufasa, The Lion King. In theaters everywhere this Friday. The Kingdom Awaits.

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 Batt. 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 story.

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. Um,

You do live shows as well, and I'm going to get John Batt to speak to that. So, John, welcome to the Jan Arden Podcast and show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a true dream come true. You have no 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. 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 stage. Oh. Maybe he had a few drinks.

It's a vinyl cafe, folks, if you're not familiar with Stuart McLean. 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 am interested in silly things like Avril Lavigne conspiracy theories. As we all are. We all know she's been replaced by someone years ago. That's true.

That's right. I love Paul McCartney. I'm intrigued by things like the Peter McKay and Belinda Stronach breakup that happened many years ago.

A tough one for the country. Yeah, I was moved. The show is sort of a live presentation of the account, which is kind of pure chaos in and of itself. It really goes back and forth between serious and unserious. 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 memes of you. This 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 going to 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. 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 Domi immediately after. You know, she went down by at least nine inches. And I mean that height wise, not as far as the wiener goes.

And, or, or, or not. We don't know. I have no inside information on it. I just need to interject and tell a very, very quick Belinda-stronic 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 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 strategically wrapped around her neck. Picture Martha Stewart meets Catherine Deneuve.

like quaaludes and just very blankly staring forward, not really engaging in a conversation. I'm like eating food. Cause 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 nodded. 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. Yeah.

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 teabag. I don't know if she was trying to get camera ready for something or... Bringing your own is a next level. That's a rich person. It's a next level, right, John? Yeah, you grew up in a certain tier, I think. And even the best...

Key bag in France wasn't going to be good enough for you. That's such weird behavior. I love it. Anyway, 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, 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 fantastic,

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 is 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 Mountie 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 appreciation posts for like the bridge mixture, or then like the story you shared about the spying on Rita McNeil. So, 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. 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, for being a feminist. Um, I'm,

unbelievable that we went after her of all people. Yeah, I think Canadians are absolutely sick and tired of a prepackaged version of the country that is actually sort of

you know, meant for Americans almost, almost for the consumption of others than it is for ourselves. The version of Canada too, the one that I grew up with of sort of like, you know, mousse and hockey and maple syrup, mayonnaise, et cetera. It's for white men really too. It's for bros. And as obviously part of the 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 cishet,

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, 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's a touchy word too. Yeah. Well, and Canada proud being an organization in and of itself that I would never, ever go near that.

Well, even the flag itself, right? No, I know. 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.

Yeah, no, the camp started with me at an office job that I absolutely could not stand. It was just soul sucking. And I, 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,

the, the, the handle Canada.gov.ca. I thought that was funny that it was available. I thought the, the notion that the Canadian government or, or that the country as a whole would have an Instagram account. It seems very silly. Instagram sort of had a different, it was, it was still, it was younger at that time. Um,

It was sort of an unserious platform. And I thought it would be funny to sort of follow friends with that handle and post very mundane photos of the Canadian countryside and landscape, just like a boat in a harbor in St. John's, Newfoundland. 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. 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

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 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. 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 this guy. His name's John Batt. He's doing CanadaGov.ca. He's got a thing of you up, Jan. He's doing like a live show in Calgary. And I'm going to come to your live show, by the way. You are? Yeah, I'm going to come. I'm actually home. It's the 23rd of January. I just want to say that. Yeah. And it's in Calgary. What's the venue? It's at Best of Kin, which is a brewery. Okay. Well, I'll be there.

I 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 going to see? I usually come out to the beginning of When I'm Up by Great Big Sea. You know, it's that that acapella with Alan Dahl. I am the fountain of affection, instrument of joy. So then when the fiddles come out, I walk on stage. That's sort of my walk up song as if I'm a wrestler kind of.

Yeah. At least it's not, could I be your girl? Well, 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 Fredericton, 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 have been done as a fairly chatty person, I've been asked to MC weddings and stuff in the past that I

I kind of get tapped for that in my circle of friends sometimes. Of course 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. Yeah.

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 like a Q&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 have to tell you something.

So when Caitlin showed you the meme or when you, well, first of all, you were on my poster for the Calgary show. That's what she sent me. And then I said to her, I said, I don't know what the fuck this is. Well, I hope you weren't, I hope you didn't think I was using you. No, no, it was nothing like that. It was nothing 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,

what this gentleman does. And she was, he was so positive about it.

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, um, the meme that you usually do on your mood board Fridays. And it was using the, it was using the press image that we have in our, uh, 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 loves you, got a house. I was just like, I like this guy. It's good. Like, it's just good internet culture.

So our first ever interaction on the internet was actually a few years ago. And I thought you were going to say we slept together in Fredericton in 99. It was consensual. No, what happened was every Valentine's day, I make Valentine's on the account and I,

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 just my favorite Canadian celebrities and make a Valentine out of them. And so I made one of you. And 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 a simple little joke, obviously a reference to. Like the format of your childhood Valentines. Yeah. Like, like you would give away at elementary school. Yeah. Loved that day. Loved that day so much. But 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 stop the live export of horses to Japan. Yeah.

You know, that does not surprise me. Now, 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...

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 a very strange day for me. Do you see why I'm single now, John? 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 my God.

That's a crazy full circle moment. Life 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 going to do with the rest of her life? And, you know, Caitlin goes and fills in for somebody because they're like, so-and-so is going to do it. Can you come in and do the thing?

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 everything.

in that belief system. Like don't, it doesn't matter where it's going to go. It matters that you try. Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I, 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. Um, that, that was good enough for me really. Yeah.

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 job. And it was a beer launch that I did at Bellwoods Brewery. So I have my own beer now, if you can believe that.

The packaging 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 of commandeered those as part of my brand, the Venrez school chair. I'm not sure if those made it out all the way to Calgary, but they were ubiquitous on the East Coast. No, no. 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. There were no loose chairs. It was literally the desk with the bar. Yeah. 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 um but you you've been 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 um women in songs type of music in the household yeah and so you were you were definitely a part of that

Entertaining this holiday season?

Aperol Spritz is the perfect cocktail for hosting friends and family. Whether you're cosied up at home by the fire with snow falling outside, or you're heading out on a warm vacation, Aperol is the ideal companion to food and great company.

Adding a little pop of that orange color to your holiday decor isn't just gorgeous. Let's remember it represents the original secret recipe, an infusion of perfectly balanced herbs and roots, which is just as popular today as it was when it was created in 1919.

The holidays are a great excuse to get together and celebrate with friends. Cheers from Aperol, the perfect holiday aperitif and the Women in Media Network. Bring the spirit of Italy to your holiday, wherever you are. Join the joy and drink responsibly. 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 Sea, like When I'm Up is

It's not a great big C song. It's a cover by a British band, Oyster Band. And such a huge song for them. But insensitive. Yeah, insensitive. My neighbor wrote. Essentially, I created the original, but it was written by my neighbor. Her name's Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie, that's right. She was a waitress at a diner. And I would see her occasionally doing these crazy shows, charming things.

touching shows but she couldn't really sing and she'd be the first person to tell you that and the original version that i heard of insensitive that she had just written like three days before i really should have known by the time you drove me home but the bones of the song were there oh 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 got to 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. A lot of like South Asian artists. It really struck a chord. And if you go on YouTube, that thing has been recorded thousands of times. Crazy. Okay, wait. I feel like I just need to know what happened after with her. She had 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-Larie 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 to record another Anne song. And really, that was my rationale. Meanwhile, she could have gotten another house. Well,

And I feel silly about it. And actually years ago, probably 15 years ago, 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. 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 ahead of The Jan Show. It will lead the way. That is the engine to which my obituary will be pulled. We can start a document of how you want it to go if you'd like. No, it's not going to have anything to do with me. And I'm sure I can't control the photograph. I don't know if you guys ever think about this.

But CBC's 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 so weird. You got to beat the internet. You have to beat TMZ. So yeah. I don't know if I like that. No, it's true. It's weird. Speaking of short songs though, what can you tell me about like Run Like Mad? Run Like 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 Dawson's Creek. To Dawson's Creek. Paula Cole, I don't want to wait for my life to be over. They pay me to sing. Can you tell? Yeah.

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 going to have our own theme song.

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.

It's so funny. It's like a fake song. It's a facade. People hated me.

So like another 90 minutes like doesn't even ever exist. You didn't ever finish it or anything. No, that's it. Wow. That's so bizarre. I don't even know it. It's like a jingle almost. We sang 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 it. Wow. Like they lost the rights to Paula Cole's thing. And then so they had to go back. So on Netflix, I think it is Run Like Mad.

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 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 other thing I heard was that their original first choice for the theme was hand in my pocket by Linus Morissette. Oh, and I wonder if she just flat out said no, but I think they paid me $10,000. That was it. There was no residual. There was nothing. It was a one-time payout and that's what they wanted. Yeah.

It's on Amazon Prime, I think, and 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. Oh, okay. Well, sorry, Paula Cole. Honest to God, I didn't know anything about anything. I think she did fine. The 90s were weird for song placement because...

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. What?

I'd be like, do people get permission for this stuff? That's crazy. It's been a while. But Felicity, like the list of TV shows in the 90s that were playing my music was really, really cute. Your song, You Don't Know Me, 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. Yeah. Great soundtrack. Really good. Really good soundtrack. 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 people don't know I am like I'm 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 going to 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. For over 50 years, Burlington's legacy has been great deals on coats for all weather conditions. So before you're caught unprepared for the winter weather...

Head to Burlington for name brands, quality items, and surprising fits for every family member. Stock up on coats, sweaters, and accessories before the cold hits so you can finally stop avoiding the elements and start living comfortably. Warm up at your nearest Burlington location less than one mile away. Burlington. Deals. Brands. Wow.

This episode is brought to you by Allstate. Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking Allstate first. Like you know to check the date of the big game first,

So getting 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 someone from the East Coast, really into garlic fingers.

And what is that? 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 donair sauce. I'm sure you've heard of donair being out in Alberta. 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 sauce.

thing 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 doner sauce. That's huge out east. Like you can't go out east without ordering garlic fingers. I'm so hungry right now. That is making the back of my glands. I'm drinking cold hotel coffee. Oh my God. So yeah, big fan of like sort of that kind of like regional stuff. Big fan of Sussex brand ginger ale. That I don't know. Oh really? That's absolutely huge on the east coast.

We're not really Canada dry people out there. Well, some of us, we are 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, gingery. Like a golden ginger ale is different from Canada dry. Canada dry is a dry ginger ale, 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 poutine all the time out there you know like we we do it incorrectly like I grew up eating poutine at a rink actually like the Aiken Center where you performed in 1997 with like shredded bring that up again that was a great show

And a pretty big room, big building. It's a big arena. So it was a good night. I went with my sister. 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...

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 I've said that, like, you know, the version of Canada, the one in the I am Canadian Molson, like that sort of version of us from the 90s 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 isn't really a real country at all. That we're just a series of...

And we've been more colonizing and as evil as any other country. So this whitewashing or 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 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 from

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 plaid shirt. Like this is the real, so this is the Canada people miss. It doesn't work for me. That's absolutely no good. I 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 skidoo. 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. Well, because as long as we're having a culture war, we're not having a class war. Yeah. So that's why so much is shoved down our throats, I think, to make us squabble instead of organize. Any ideas of how that can be reconciled?

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 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. Do you feel hopeful? I mean, I know we were in for a bit of a ride here this next five, six, seven years. There will be a changing of the government. Oh, yeah, for sure. There 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. No, I know. So am I hopeful? Like, I mean, I think Trudeau has like sort of like a trick up his sleeve. I'm not sure what it is. I think it's me. It's me, John. I'm going to be the next prime minister of Canada. It's a Jan Rick Mercer ticket. Do you know,

And 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 mean, I think we'd get the majority. Honest to God, I really believe we're in this entertainment age. What have I started here? That would certainly be exciting. But I think Trudeau is going to 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 about taxes, tax that, tax the tax, tax the tax. And they knew they would. Yeah.

You cannot tell me that in a room full of very smart, you know, whether it's Freeland and Melanie Jolie and that they sat around going, guess what? The conservatives are going to vote against this tax break. Yeah, 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 CERB. They sort of tried it with CERB. It was a success. The country didn't fall apart. I know a lot of people still struggling to pay that back though. Yeah. Well with universal basic income, they wouldn't be paying it back. Okay. And it's, 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 that. Like we 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 year. 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, I've done pretty well not having an end game and just sort of seeing where it's been going. 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

the country growing up were sort of the weird elements of things. Like, for example, Patti 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 stoned 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 those, the national film board of Canada. I love those. So that is the kind of stuff that has, has shaped me. And if I could, I don't know if, 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, or, or maybe like something with CBC. I don't know. Well, I'm going to 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 denim tuxedo? What happens? Sometimes when I am a cane tuxedo, it's completely by accident and I forget that that exists. That's one of those things where that really is us. We really do dress like that. 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... No, it's not. There's nothing dumb about that. 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 on to the next city. So when I do... Like in late January, I'm doing...

Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Saskatoon, doing those four cities in 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 already know about their town. Oh, I don't think that'll happen. Well, you have to dig a little bit. You got to go nard war on their town a little bit.

And then I think you can be pretty effective. That's who you should do a collab with. And you also need to come out with merch because I do feel like you have an eye for branding. Just saying. Yeah, I have merch on my shows for sure. I've sold a bunch of stuff to the account. I had like a Crokinole Provincial Champions hoodie that I had for a while. I had a Maritimes thing. I've got to get some merch. I've got to 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 Badd 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 handle.

It's so crazy. Canada.gov. I thought I was so confused, but now that I know, now that I'm in 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 ex-guy? No, it's just, it's no. What?

I'm very close to going off myself. I still use it a little bit to read. I've made the jump over to Blue Sky. But in terms of the content for the account, it's just on Instagram. I'm not 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. 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 going to love this. They're going to love going on to...

to see what you're all about and to learn things about their country. You know, the Schoenigin handshake is just as important. Yes. Our little inside jokes that truly unify us. Next time we speak, I want to know how we fucking ended up losing Alaska. Like we got to get this straightened out. What the fuck? And the 51st state thing that has dropping out of Trump's mouth and,

It's going to 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 on the 23rd. Incredible. I'm going to bring some friends and we'll drink. Hopefully they have a de-alcoholized beer. Yeah.

Or I'll just bring my own teabag. I'll just sit there. Excellent callback there. Hey, 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 be doing a podcast.

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 Jan Arden 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 event.

end of the year event. And yeah, so you want to explain to our listeners what it is? Yeah, it's for it's it's for our only Jans. And that's what we have come to affectionately refer to our Patreon subscribers as. So what's going to happen is we're throwing kind of like an end of year recording party. And if you subscribe to us on Patreon, we're going to pick five to 10 very lucky only Jans and they're going to 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. Um, so what we'll do is 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.

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 going to, we're going to be there. But yeah, what we just saw, what a fun way to kind of see everybody because your faces are going to be up on the screen and

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 we always do holiday content. Like we usually do sort of a holiday specific episodes. 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 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, I love that. And that's only fair. We can't talk to everybody as much as I'd love to. You're going to have to just do that with me and Costco when we see each other. You're just going to have to ask me stuff in real time. It'll be fun. John, keep kicking ass. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time. Toodly-doo.

I'm Jessica Morehouse, money expert and host of the More Money podcast, and my book, Everything But Money, The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom, is now available for pre-order. Having had hundreds of conversations with people just like you for over a decade, what I've discovered is most people's struggles with money are actually about everything but

but money. Luckily, this book holds the answers for how to break free from those barriers, develop a much healthier relationship with money, and ultimately set yourself on a path toward financial freedom. To pre-order your copy today, visit jessicamoorehouse.com slash book or any major online book retailer. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.