According to “Saturday Night Live,” Montrealers are weirdos who break into Céline Dion tunes at any provocation and think of Toronto first and foremost as a place where they might spot Drake. Hey, it’s a silly stereotype, but one this Montreal reporter can’t personally refute.

In a satirical sketch about a CBC Montreal morning show that aired this weekend, Bowen Yang and Kate McKinnon play Francophone news anchors hosting a show called “Bonjour-Hi.” (You might recall the seemingly innocuous bilingual greeting became a target of ire by the provincial government last year. Simpler times!)

The Montreal of the sketch — “the best parts of Canada and the worst parts of France” — is a place where everyone smokes, has “Jean” somewhere in their name, and the Québecois and European accents are interchangeable. (Yang’s accent is classic Quebec, but McKinnon’s veers much closer to French-from-France than French-Canadian.)

It also includes a segment by the week’s guest host, Issa Rae, as the Toronto correspondent on “Drake Watch.”

″I thought I saw Drake, but it was just my friend Étienne,” Rae said in a French (?) accent. ”Étienne looks a lot like Drake, plus, I was confused because he was crying in a basketball court.”

Welcome to 𝗕𝗼𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿-𝗛𝗶! pic.twitter.com/EyxsZsl4V5

— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) October 18, 2020

The morning show hosts then give their confused American guest a gift basket that turns into some heavy but predictable bagel slander. “Why is everything 25 per cent different here?” he asks.

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When it was time to “say ‘au revoir-bye,’” the hosts were sad to leave but “that’s the way it is,” they said, naturally breaking into their best Céline Dion croons.

SNL Canadian Skit – Canadian Credentials

The sketch has some actual Canadian credentials: Yang lived in Montreal as a child, and has talked before about how his time there introduced him to national treasure Céline Dion. And according to his Twitter account, one of the sketch’s co-writers was Celeste Yim, a Toronto native now based in New York.

Just a couple notes: an anglophone show in Montreal might highlight Canadians like Drake and Rachel MacAdams, but it’s unlikely that a francophone Quebec program would do the same. Ditto with the maple leaves on their coffee cups — those are anglo Canada things.

Also, the Canada that lives in the American imagination is always a land of hockey and free health care, without mention of the deep-seated racism and turmoil going on here. Bagels and cigarettes are easier to joke about than destruction of Indigenous fisheries that politicians including NDP leader Jagmeet Singh are calling terrorism.

Not all local outlets loved the sketch. “This may be the rare case of a ‘Bonjour-Hi’ so egregious that all Quebecers agree it should be banned,” the Montreal Gazette deadpanned.

But of course, in classic Canadian fashion, we’re happy just to be noticed.

You can watch the full sketch here, because — and this is the most Canadian thing of all — the YouTube clip is blocked to Canadian viewers.

SNL Canadian Skit – MORE CANCON ON “SNL”

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SNL Canadian Skit – Jim Carrey

There were some other Canadian elements to the “SNL” episode on NBC and Global — Toronto-born actor Jim Carrey returned to play U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and Stratford-Ont.-raised pop star Justin Bieber was the musical guest.

During the 1990s the show In Living Color rivalled Saturday Night Live as far as talent and the level of hilarious that it was able to reach. Not only was the show loaded with talent, it literally served as the launching pad for of the top stars of today, including J-Lo, Rosie Perez, Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, David Allen Greer, Tommy Davidson and the entire Wayans clan. When thinking of the countless skits that were performed on this show, it is hard to think of just one, but without question, Jim Carrey produced some unforgettable characters on this show that would serve as the foundation of characters that he would play later in movies.

Vera De Milo was a character that was so repulsive that she was irresistible. Carrey brought this character to life in ways that seared an image into the minds of Americans that no matter how hard they tried, they could not un-see it, so they just learned to embrace. Vera caused millions of American to cry out, make me hurt Jim, make me hurt. And, Jim did not disappoint.

 

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