When it comes to comedy, Canada can produce the talent for the screen and the stage, but a certain question remains: who is our Onion?
Three satirical Canadian publications – The Beaverton, The Syrup Trap and The Lapine – are jockeying for fans, sponsors and that undisputed title, referring of course to the famous American outfit which has been publishing parody to global acclaim since 1988. The contender with perhaps the strongest resumé is The Beaverton, with an estimated monthly readership of half a million page views and offices in Toronto, Montreal and Whitehorse.
“I think our [readership] ceiling is closer to three million,” says Jacob Duarte Spiel, one of The Beaverton’s Toronto editors. “I’m not bragging when I say that. I just think that there’s an appetite for this kind of humour in Canada.”
Spiel has been with the publication for four years, and can testify to the surge of interest in sites like his during our viral age. In 2013, a pair of articles about astronaut Chris Hadfield – in which the Canadian icon was alternately purported to have been shocked at a million-dollar Rogers phone bill rung up whilst in orbit and removed from a theatre showing of the movie Gravity for his commentary on the film’s shortcomings – were shared by hundreds of thousands, many readers unaware of their satirical nature.
Spiel claims that, while no single article has since been as successful, their monthly numbers doubled just two years later, and the staff no longer have to rely on audience confusion for social media shares. Having established a consistent online audience, a growing number of people are conscious of The Beaverton as a publication that follows a familiar model with a Canadian focus, a vital designation in a nation that seems more and more capable of appreciating its own art. It’s not that the market for Canadian satire hasn’t always been there, but word has travelled with the help of omnipresent social media. Spiel also theorizes that Canadian interests and priorities appear to be edging away from our neighbours to the south.
“One guess is because the USA and Canada are starting to diverge more and more,” he says. “A lot of Canadians saw the October election as an opportunity to say, ‘We are not Americans.’”
Yet the fact remains that if we were Americans, our comedians would have a lot more to work with. “People try and compare Canadian and American show business, and really, they’re incomparable,” says Nick Zarzycki, founder and editor-in-chief at The Syrup Trap, another beloved satirical publication based out of Vancouver with a monthly readership that’s just over half of The Beaverton’s. “Imagine if we looked at the entertainment industry in Texas, alone – that’s about how big our industry is.”
Zarzycki launched The Syrup Trap in the spring of 2013, and while its business model certainly emulated The Onion’s in the early going, the self-branded humour magazine has since worked to branch out from fake news, producing pranks, videos and even a Christmas album composed entirely of the phrase O Christmas Tree.
Over at The Lapine, which features a more eclectic mix of satire parodying issues at home and abroad, editor Steve Boyd expresses doubts about Canada and America’s divergence.
“For content creators, the internet means the Canada/US border largely means zippo and there is an ever-increasing cross-breeding of the markets,” says Boyd, a declaration reflected in The Lapine’s impressive monthly page views (which reach north of one million), which are no doubt aided by its wider scope of site material and willingness to ignore said border.
The Lapine’s first article was published in 2012, and since then the publication has stayed committed to poking fun at the absurd without losing sight of satire’s importance. “Good satire takes on the dangerous, and I think that’s pretty damn important, no matter the state of things,” confides Boyd. With control-hungry Harper out of office, the “dangerous” immediately seems a little less so, though that hasn’t stopped Boyd from lampooning our leaders The Lapine’s “particles” (articles that are “partly true”) about Justin Trudeau actually draw more American page views than Canadian ones, reflecting Boyd’s statements about our disappearing border.
All three editors identify a need for expansion because page views don’t pay the bills.
“There’s always room for more good comedy writers,” continues Zarzycki, conceding that that space doesn’t come with payment. “But I think there’s a fake news saturation going on,” alluding to its widespread presence on major US television shows, such as those hosted by Trevor Noah and John Oliver, and Canada’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, among others.
The Beaverton’s editors hope not: they’re in the midst of producing an eponymous television show which, if picked up for a full season, will air on the Comedy Network (although it will present formats other than satirical news, like sketch comedy and more). The hope is that, with a wider presence and a greater cash flow, a platform can be created upon which more comedic talents can strut their stuff.
“We need stars to prop up our comedy industry, but we need a comedy industry to prop up those stars. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation,” claims Spiel. The Syrup Trap has had some mild success with a Patreon page, where readers can pledge monthly donations to the publication, but real growth requires greater investment. That’s why the staff is looking into podcasts (likely sketch comedy based), which tend to generate the highest ratio of monetization dollars to audience numbers of any kind of online media. Expanding past fake news is not just a creative urge, but a financial strategy as well, which makes the decision a no-brainer for these publications.
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