A couple weeks ago, I hosted the London, Ontario, Yuk Yuk’s and in the middle of my “whose birthday is it?” routine, I called on a 31-year-old audience member named Joe.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked him. “I’m a window tinter,” he replied, before adding, “And I probably make more money than you!”
“You’re probably right,” I responded, wistfully gazing toward an invisible horizon before telling him that my primary occupation was fucking his mother.
Welcome to Canadian comedy! I’m Andrew Johnston, Toronto’s resident alpha-gay comedian with over a decade spent concussing myself on the Canadian entertainment industry’s thick, cold, concrete ceiling. I’m a veteran stand-up comic who has toured coast to coast. I created, host and produce Toronto’s Bitch Salad, a show founded in 2007 featuring female comedians before Sarah Silverman and Ali Wong were household names.
For several years, I enjoyed micro-celebrity as a regular on MuchMusic’s Video On Trial – and by that I mean I once got to cut the line at a gay bar in Ottawa. And Im one of countless Canadian comedians who have recently spent a small fortune on my U.S. Green Card (cue Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway).
Don’t get me/us wrong: Canada is an amazing country and will always be home. There are many things to love about living here: health care for all, sparkling infrastructure, little-to-no guns, which makes it so frustrating that in a country that’s never looked more desirable to the rest of the world, our entertainment industry is barely on life support.
You might be saying, “But last year I saw a comic who’s name I can’t remember at Comedy Bar and I assume the rest of you are gainfully employed on Schitt’s Creek! Whaddaya mean life support?”
God bless. It’s hard to explain to the average Canadian how impossible our situation is, particularly in the age of Peak TV when seemingly every American comic with a full set of teeth and 20 minutes of passable material has a streaming cable special.
In case you’re keeping track, the grand total of Canadian comedians who have recorded high-profile specials for streaming platforms in Canada is ZERO point ZERO. And it’s certainly not because there’s a lack of killer Canuck comedians that deserve to see their name billed alongside noted feminist comedian Iliza Shlesinger, who thinks female comics should stop talking about their vaginas. It’s because these broadcasters don’t need to, and quite frankly, there’s no demand for us anyway.
But before we get into that, a brief history of the decay of the Canadian comedy business: 10 years ago, when I was a fresh-faced amateur comic doing a bit about Paris Hiltons lazy eye as my closer, the Canadian cable universe was limited to 60 channels – if you can believe it. The entire country was a captive audience to nationally televised comedy shows like Video On Trial, Comedy Now, Kenny Vs. Spenny, Train 48, even Body Break was still in re-runs (and yes, I count that as a comedy show). Not that any of these shows paid handsomely. My top-dollar rate for Video On Trial was a cool $250 an episode with no residuals. But at least that was national exposure, which could be parlayed into live gigs in God-Foresaken-Ville, Ontario, with some fanfare and a decent price point because I was on TV. Flash-forward to 2010: Canadians cut their cable cords, started pirating shows or watching Netflix, and Canadian content was as passé as Snookis bumpit.
While the tall-poppy syndrome in which successful people are resented has always been used to explain why we don’t have a Canadian star system, I’ll go one step further: Canadian culture and identity are so vague that there’s no need to see it represented on TV.
Even though weekly Canadian shows like This Hour Has 22 Minutes and The Beaverton are at the top of their game, employing exclusively Canadian comedians tackling Canadian topics, the Canadian audience is still largely tuning in to syndicated American shows where Jimmy Fallon plays rock-paper-scissors with Kendall Jenner.
It’s as simple as this: without national TV exposure, a Canadian comedian doesn’t have the clout of playing your local arts centre, let alone your local pub, let alone judging your local fucking pie-eating contest. We are left suffering the window-tintin’ Joes who make more money than us, and without a path to success in this country.
Unlike Canadian theatre artists or musicians, comedians aren’t eligible for government grants because what we do isn’t considered art. Canadian heritage minister Melanie Joly’s supposed $500 million agreement with Netflix for Canadian content is a mystery. It’s unclear when and how that money will be dispersed, and there is no commitment that the resulting programming must also air.
A comedian’s normal course of upward mobility is writing on or creating a TV show, but with a whopping total of two broadcasters to pitch to in this country, thousands of us need to fight over the scraps that are leftover after legacy acts and their children take their share.
And, as fun as a night playing a gig at a bar called Leapin’ Lizards in Bancroft, Ontario, for $100 sounds, a working Canadian comedian’s audience is always defined by what I call the stone-faced hockey hero in the back of the room. Here’s how you crack this nut: self-deprecating humour, followed by self-effacing humour, followed by wrestling jokes, followed by reinforcing gender stereotypes, throw in something mildly racist and cap it off with a Tim Hortons reference. He cracks a smile, thinks, “This guys not better than me,” and everyone else falls in line. This is not how and where I want to die.
So, do I think I’ll like living in the States? Well, for starters, living through the Ford administration in Toronto has amply prepared me for living through the Trump administration.
Do I think that I’m going to achieve super-stardom? No, not at all. It’s not that the grass is greener in the U.S., it’s that there isn’t any grass in Canada. All I want is to make a living wage working in my field. Is that horribly un-Canadian of me?
I dream of entry-level show business gigs that are non-existent in Canada. Like writing for a game show and making the money in two months that I’d make here in a year. Or doing audience warm-up for Sherri Shepherd’s inevitable talk show. Or something else that my American counterparts think is beneath them, but they’ll offer to me because they think it’s cute that I pronounce sorry like Corey.
Let’s see a heritage moment about THAT.
Andrew Johnston can currently be seen as part of the Laugh Sabbath comedy collective every Thursday at Comedy Bar until his Green Card is activated.
stage@nowtoronto.com | @_andrewjohnston
