Behind the Scenes: I Am the Very Model of a Modern-Day Canadian

Hello and welcome to the behind-the-scenes documentary video, whatever we're calling this, of the "I am the very model of a modern-day Canadian" video, which I hope you've seen by now. If not, please go watch it first, because that will make a lot more sense. In this video, I'm just gonna like reveal all the secrets behind the production of it. This was a production months in the making, involving hundreds of people, all of whom kept the secret, and it was quite a journey. And I learned about video editing too, because I really didn't know what I was doing before. Still don't. So I'll take you scene by scene in this video. I think you'll find it kind of entertaining. And also, if you're American and some of these references didn't make any sense to you, don't worry, I will explain those as well. Also, it sounds like I have a lisp and it's because I have like teeth straightener, teeth aligners in for my dental, dental stuff. So. All right. Let us begin with the original concept of this video. The original concept of this video What I wanted to do was create a video that got a lot of eyeballs on Vancouver Island so that we could recruit healthcare workers. What inspired me was two things. First, Randy Rainbow, who is a satire performer in the US, a political satirist, musical satirist, did a version of— like, the original song is from Pirates of Penzance. It's a Broadway musical. It's called I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General. I am the very model of a modern major general. I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral. I know the kings of England and I quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo. He did one called "I am the very model of a very stable genius," and it was making fun of Donald Trump. He's firmly resolute that how he thinks and feels and talks depends on any of the crap he may have heard that day on Fox and Friends. I thought it was fantastic. And I wanted to do something— I've always wanted to do something like that ever since I saw his video. The other thing that I really liked was that every September— I forget the date— 21st, 24th. There's a song by Earth, Wind Fire about a day in September. And this guy who's an actor in the US, every year on that date would make the funniest video. And it started out with him just kind of in his bedroom and it was just kind of goofy and fun. And then every year he did it, it just kind of got bigger and bigger. And then you realize like, oh wow, there's a kids choir behind him now. And like, oh wow, there's fireworks. And oh my God, he rented a stadium for this thing. You know, so I loved watching those videos and I loved watching it kind of evolve and I wanted to do a mixture. I wanted to do something to that song that Randy Rainbow also parodied. But Randy Rainbow just did it in his studio in front of a green screen. It was still brilliant, but it was not outside. I wanted to do it like bigger. I wanted to do like the September guy. That's where that started. So the first step was to write the words. That took a month. That took, yeah, almost a month, almost a month. It was sitting in like Apple Notes on my phone and I'd like come up with something. I'm like, "I don't know." There was one line in particular that got swapped out at the last minute. The line that is currently there is, "I keep the U in neighbor like a linguistic contrarian." The original line, which which was almost used, but thank goodness I changed my mind, was, "I belt out Frère Jacques like a drunken Acadian," or something like that. And I loved the line. I thought it was funny. But then I thought, you know what, the Acadians are not going to like that. So that's where linguistic contrarian came from. I ordered the book for that. Where is it? It's around here somewhere, the big dictionary book for that. Oh, also, we'll get to that, but I'll show you all of this. Let me turn off the camera here that I'm using, and you'll see just my horribly messy studio. Let me turn this little thing off here. So this is my office. Yes, it's messy. We're not going to talk about it. Back there where you see the green area, that's my green screen that I used for the opening shot. Every module of a modern-day Canadian. I watch your CBC debate like I'm their ombudsmanian. I cheer for the Quebec Nordiques and watch them get betrayed again. And then there's also a shot kind of in the middle where it's like— anytime you see me where I'm not like outdoors somewhere and I'm clearly in front of a green screen, it's just that one at the back of my office. I've got that light and that light, which I turned around and pointed. All right. So the first step was writing the lyrics. I was pretty happy with the lyrics. I think we did a good job. Jocelyn helped me an awful lot with it. And then I started trying to find a recording studio, as one does. And I had originally— I have a friend who is a musical theater person. She's done a show off-Broadway. She's super, super fucking talented. And I messaged her and I'm like, "Can you do the chorus for me? Like, I just need like you doubled up or tripled up for the, you you know, "He is a very model," and that kind of thing. And she was totally keen to help, but she's like in London performing, and so she was just too busy. So it was getting close to like the timeline for this, and so I just basically put a message out on like social media, and I'm like, "Listen, does anyone have any musical experience?" Like, I knew that I needed to have my own recording of that song. So like, you know, I could have taken the song and found like a karaoke version of it, but that would have been using someone's music, right? And I don't want to like get in trouble, and I don't want YouTube to— I don't want to go through hundreds and hundreds of hours of work to have YouTube strike it because of copyright. So I needed someone who could make the music for me, and then also coordinate a choir. Heavy ask, but holy moly, Dale Baglow, from Victoria, who is like an award-winning music producer, was like, "I mean, I could do it." And I got a bunch of people message back and they were like, "Well, I've got a guitar. I could try." Or, "My cousin's nephew knows someone who plays piano really well." Really well-meaning people, but Dale was like, "I have a studio and here's my website." And I emailed him back like a minute later. I'm like, "Done." done. And he was— he spent a ton of time. We'll get to that part in a second. And for very little money, for like an honorarium, essentially. And he coordinated the choir. The choir was so good. So let's start then with that as an explanation with the music, with the beginning of the music of this video. And we'll see how far we get. Oh, by the way, you're gonna hear— so the idea behind this opening sequence is that it's supposed to be background noise of just like a studio. All of this was done later in post-production. All the audio you hear, the tape rewinding and stuff, was stuff that Dale recorded months after we went down in the summer to record the audio tracks. I'm gonna pan those tracks into the middle a little bit just to fill in the center. "Uh, Tod, are you ready?" "Yep." So, um, him saying, "Tod, are you ready?" I asked him to do that like 3 or 4 times. We got that one. Me saying, "Yep," there's about 10 takes of me saying, "Yep." The beep and the click that you heard there were put in post-production. They're sound effects. There was not really ever a click. And what you're going to hear, all the music you're going to hear except for the fiddle thing, all the music Dale did all of it. All of it. It's incredible. That's the green screen back there. I'm a little pissed. You can see how my arm gets cut off there. But this was the last shot to be recorded just a couple of days ago. And getting this tie right was shockingly hard. Like getting the timing of it right was actually kind of difficult. And it's also like, I don't know what it's made of, nylon or something like it's really slippery. And by the time I realized that I'd cut off my arm in the green screen, I'm just like, I don't care, whatever. I am the very model of a modern-day Canadian. I watch each CBC debate like I'm their ombudsman-y. I'm going to stop it right there just in case you didn't catch it. On the bottom left, that's— I can't point to it. Here we go. Right up there. That's Bonhomme. So here's the first thing for Americans. The bottom left screen is not a real leaders debate. The top two are, and the bottom right is. This one is from like the '70s or something. But the bottom left is a joke. It's from This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Which is one of our comedy shows, and a couple years ago they did a fake leaders' debate. And Bonhomme is the mascot in white, is a popular Quebec festival mascot. And it's really hard to see in this clip, but if you go back and you look at it again, there's a person playing Elizabeth May in that shot. Elizabeth May is the Green Party candidate, Green Party into recycling and stuff like that, and she's rolling out her podium, but her podium is a blue box. It's like a recycling blue box. This hat you see me put on here. And I cheered for the Quebec. We, and I mentioned this inside of the post in like the behind the scenes stuff in the actual video, but I ordered a hat from eBay and the guy shipped it. And then like the next day Canada Post went on strike. So it's, I still don't have it as I'm recording this. So this was my wife. This is a piece of paper. She printed it out on our color laser printer, and she has hot glued it to the ball cap. And I found this ball cap at a thrift store down the street from us. It was like the closest color I could find. Quebec Nordiques and watch them get betrayed again. And that's from the reference to the Quebec Nordiques getting betrayed again is Quebec Nordiques were a hockey team, and they got sold a couple of times in Quebec. And honestly, the rest of Canada is still a little pissed about it. I keep the you in neighbor like a linguistic contrarian. I practice doing all of Celine Dion's choreography. Okay. So, this is at a dance studio. This was the first scene that I shot. Shout out to these people because they were so much fun. It was so great. I don't want to hear anyone mention this. No, no! You are never speaking about this ever. We're not going to talk about the outfit? I did have this outfit. I've had this outfit for a couple of years. I don't know why I had this outfit. I think it might have been a Halloween party, maybe, or something that I went to once. Yes, it was horribly embarrassing putting it on and coming out in front of these people. And we did like 4 takes and then I like bailed out right away. "Girfy collected every part of the tragic—" This is at a great record store in downtown Nanaimo, by the way, called Fascinating Rhythm. It's a really good record store. Like albums, records, cassettes, videotapes. It's huge. It's right downtown. And they were very kind enough to let me shoot there. "Really hip discography. I'm at the Rise of Bob and Doug, like cultural." So this is— I found on eBay as well. This is Bob and Doug McKenzie. Again, if you don't know, Bob and Doug McKenzie was a segment on SCTV, which was a Canadian very popular Canadian sitcom in the '80s, late '80s, early '90s, probably close to the early '90s. How's it going? Okay. What? Like, I don't know what's going on. Why is— why the letters didn't come up? The letters? Yeah. Oh, there they are. Okay, cool. A lot of Saturday Night Live people came out of that. Eugene Levy of Schitt's Creek fame came out of that. And Bob and Doug McKenzie here. Were like probably the blowout star characters of this show. It was phenomenal. And they were just hosers. They were just Canadian good boys that, you know, had back bacon cooking and drank beer. And they actually had an album called Strange Brew that was like really, really popular. So yeah, that's where this came from. Geography, I charted the Degrassi kids, most likely genealogy. I made reference to this in the video's, what do you call it, behind-the-scenes stuff. This is true. This chart is accurate. It took days to research this. Degrassi is a popular, was a popular, like a young adult series, but there were several series of them. There was a decade of it, and then they took a break, and then there was another decade. But the kids that you saw in the first in the first series. The reboot, they were back, but now they're adults, because of course they're adults. And they play them as the adults that were kids, and those adults had kids. So there is an actual genealogy to the fictional characters of this show. And when I wrote the line, I just thought that I would do kind of a general, you know, just kind of put random photos up that meant nothing. But this whole project has been driven by, beset by, plagued by, haunted by me saying, "Wouldn't it be cool if?" Everything you see that you liked came from me at night playing video games thinking, "Wouldn't it be cool if that chart were accurate?" And then for the next week I researched the genealogy. I had great help. I'm Jocelyn, and this week we're talking about the Degrassi documentary Whatever It Takes. She calls herself the Degrassi kid. She is on Instagram and a bunch of other places. She's so smart. She knows this stuff backwards. I think it's her job. Like, I mean, she's an influencer for Degrassi. She was so kind and helpful and tracked it down and drew out the initial chart, um, or gave me the, the, the, the, some of the data for it, and then we pieced it together. And then she was able to put me in touch with the original creator of the Degrassi series, like the person who co-created the whole thing. And I ran this chart by her and was like, "Does this seem accurate?" And it was like, "Yep." I never directly had— I mean, she's famous. She's like a legit, like, Hollywood, you know, Canadian version of Hollywood. So it was like through an intermediary, but she reviewed this apparently and signed off on it and said, "Yep, this is accurate." I really wanted people who were watching this video to see this scene, to see this chart come up. And if they knew the series, I wanted them to go, "Wait, that's accurate." I wanted that moment for them. So yeah. By the way, I'm wearing probably 8 or 9 different t-shirts in this whole thing. They're all Canadian. This is my favorite one, ketchup chips. The person you see here It is revealed in the behind-the-scenes act that this is the mayor. 2, 1, action. That's good. So people who know the mayor would know the back of his head here, but I hope that if you watched the video already, I hope that this was a surprise for you when it was revealed in the behind-the-scenes part that he— that like, oh, that guy's head, that was the mayor of Nanaimo. He was such a great sport. And he was super keen to do it. And he had his, you know, the mayor's regal chains, whatever they call that, the chains of the office, the medals and stuff like that. So yeah. Almost every outdoor shot we blocked ahead of time. So we did a rehearsal, a blocking rehearsal a few days before we had, maybe about a week or so before we shot it. And I was worried about this shot not being like the angles not being right, but it worked. So this is the Rough Riders scene. So this is— these guys are so good. I basically— all of these shots that you see where other people are involved, almost all of them are a result of me just putting out on social media, like on Blue Sky or Threads or something like, is anyone— is anyone a Riders fan here? Here's why I picked Riders, by the way, for the video and not like the Lions or the Blue Bombers or something like that. So this is a team in the CFL, in the Canadian Football League. I believe there are 11 teams in the CFL. But let me put it this way. There are 10 teams in the CFL and then there's the Rough Riders. The Riders fans are on another fucking planet, dude. I used to work— I own an engagement and moderation agency. That's my day job. One of our clients was the Grey Cup. The Grey Cup is the annual national championship of the league. It is our Super Bowl. And I used to work for them. They were a client. And there is a difference between CFL fans and Riders fans. Like, I don't know what it is, but they're just built different in all the right crazy joyous ways. So it had to be Riders fans. And I hope that if you're a CFL fan you got the joke. You got that it's like it was Riders. So I basically put out on the internet, I'm like, "Is anyone Riders fans?" And about maybe a dozen people said they'd come, and these guys showed up. I think it was about 8 or 9 of them. She wore face paint, which is just great. So then I did a line, "I know to keep my distance from the Roughriders." And it was just starting to rain, so they were good. This was shot on a football field. There were kids playing in the background. It's kind of hard to tell from this shot. They're just off the side of— I can't point very well with this. They're just off my right ear, you can see kids. The whole time that we were shooting this thing, because we did a bunch of takes, they started chanting, "Riders suck! Riders suck!" which was just great. "I tell my friends I'm indie peep but vote the liberal." So I tell my friends I'm indie peep but vote the liberal in again. This was hard to shoot. My original thought of this was, and we shot it this way, was that it was going to be from a moving car, which took a few people. My wife can drive, but she can't, she can't move and hold a camera at the same time because she's paraplegic. She uses a wheelchair. So she can either move or hold a camera, but not both, because she needs her hands. So we recruited our next-door neighbor, Jess, who is lovely, and we did a shot, and the shot was great. I actually really liked the shot. The idea was that, you know, I'm putting up my sign, and then you see the back of it, and it's like, "Oh my god, he's also putting up a liberal sign." But she had her kid with her, and her kid got in the shot, and I could not figure out a way to blur the the kidlet out without messing up the shot. I didn't want to bug her again, so I just walked down to the park and did this shot. Now, I'm basically just sitting there waiting for someone to come by that can help me for this. I've got the sign set up. I'm just waiting. We live in a not particularly busy part of town, but pedestrians walk by. It was a nice day. This lovely woman comes by. She uses a walker. And she knows me. I don't know her. She knows me from my videos and stuff. And she's like, "Oh, what is this?" And I explained I'm shooting a video. And I said, "Did you want to help? Like, how's your mobility?" Because she's using a walker. She's young though. She's not like 100. She said, "Well, I'll give it a shot." But she was really, really slow. And it was on some uneven terrain on the grass. Originally I had that shot on the right of like where it's closer to the road. And I just didn't feel good about killing her. So that shot was scrubbed. Didn't work anyway. And then I moved the signs to the position of where they are now. And as I got them set up, this woman comes by, an elderly woman now, who I assume her name is Karen. She drives by, she stops immediately, pulls over the side of the road, comes over. My camera's rolling for all this. And she's like, is there another election? You're having an election? We are not. Oh, thank goodness. I know, right? And I said, no, no, no, we're just shooting a video. And she says, good, because I wouldn't vote for either of these guys. I wouldn't want either of these. So I said to her, did you stop your car just to say that? No, I stopped my car to come back and see what was wrong. Ah. So in the end, and no one else was coming. So in the end, I texted my wife, Jocelyn, and I'm like, can you bring my tripod down? So I shot it from two angles. I wanted this to be a nicer looking shot. It was going to be blurred in the background using iPhone cinematic mode, which a lot of the shots that you see were shot on like cinematic mode. That's why they kind of look a little more professional. I don't know what happened, but my phone started freezing when I was in cinematic mode. So that's why this shot is not as good as I'd like to be. Last comment about this scene. Finding these signs was actually really hard. I guess people just throw away their signs. And we've had like elections recently. So the NDP sign, uh, someone brought to me at some point somewhere along the line. Uh, oh no, I picked it up from their house. I picked it up from their house in North Nanaimo. And then, and then I wanted a Liberal sign and I couldn't find a Liberal sign anywhere. And I contacted the riding association chair and she didn't have a sign. And she's like, contact the candidate. So I contacted the candidate And she was like, yeah, I got a million of them in my garage. You want one? And I was like, yes, please. So she was kind enough that she brought it over that night, the former candidate, and dropped it off. And then a day later, someone messaged— again, I posted this on social media. Someone said, I have an actual Mark Carney sign. Would you like that? I'm like, oh my God, yes. So I'm sorry, Michelle, who is a candidate. We didn't end up using your sign. Your sign is there, actually. It's just behind the Mark Carney sign. And all of these shots are very, very quick. It's a surprise. I mean, that was hours of work for what is essentially a 1.5-second shot. But I'm kind of proud of that. "I know the goddamn difference between Casey and Finnegan." All right. So if you are American or you're of a certain age, you may not know who Casey and Finnegan are. There was a There was a kids' show in the '70s and '80s called Mr. Dress-Up. Very, very popular. It was our Mr. Rogers in Canada. And there were two puppets, Casey and Finnegan. And these were the original puppets. And again, this was a case of me at night, bored, going— because originally I thought, like, I just want— I just need Casey. Like, maybe someone has, like, fake puppets. Right? Or maybe someone has some memorabilia or something like that. So I put out a call and someone named Tara replied and was very nice and I think Tara and said I've got like a coloring book and I'm like that's great, that's great, I will probably use that. And then I'm playing Overwatch and I'm bored again and my brain is like wouldn't it be cool if we actually could find the real Casey and Finnegan? And I figured they're probably stored at the CBC somewhere, you know, Even as a former CBC host, I do not have any access to that, and it would be in Toronto if it were anywhere else. As it turns out, this woman, Judith, who was the original puppeteer on Mr. Dressup for Casey and Finnegan, lives on Hornby Island, which is not that far from Nanaimo, where I live. It's 4 ferries altogether. It's 2 ferries to get to Hornby Island and 2 ferries to come back. And she is the sweetest, loveliest woman. She was so kind. She must get this all the time, hey, people like, I really want to see Casey and Finnegan. I almost cried. Like, this is how, like, how much these puppets and her work means to Canadians of a certain generation. I almost wept when I saw Casey and Finnegan because I grew up with them. They were my friends, right? And she keeps them in like a little brown A little brown bag. And they're bigger than I thought as well, which was kind of weird. Anyway, so she— getting in touch with her though, once I figured out that she was on Hornby, getting in touch with her was not easy because that community, Hornby Island, is a very small island and they protect her. Let me tell you. I was like, I'm like, do you know anyone that could put me in touch with Judith? And the answer I got was, yes, we do know people who can put you in touch. Tell us what you want her for. And we will pass it along to the person who will review that, and that person will pass it along to someone who will review it, and then we might pass it along to Judith, which is fine. It's great. Anyway, eventually we got in touch— I got in touch with her, and all I did not have an email address for her. I just had a phone number. And so I was so nervous and I called and like, how do you explain this? Right? So I call and I'm like, hi. And I led with I'm a former CBC radio host, hoping that that would be some cred, and maybe it did. But regardless, she was incredibly gracious and so lovely, and she was like, "Sure, come over." So she lives on essentially a farm, sort of, and we spent some time there, and it was just— honestly, it was kind of like a little kid's dream come true in a way. So that was great. That was that scene. Probably my favorite scene because I want people to think, oh, that's a woman with Casey and Finnegan puppets, and then realize in the behind-the-scenes part of the video, wait, those were the Casey and Finnegan puppets. And if you don't, then break your neck for the handshake, shawinigan. Okay, this needs some explaining. So for Americans or people who don't get this reference, the shawinigan handshake. Jean Chrétien was prime minister a few, several years ago, 10 years ago, 15, something like that. And he was kind of a feisty Québécois guy from a town called Shawinigan in Quebec. And he used to call himself the little guy, I'm just a little guy from Shawinigan. He was at a protest and, well, he was at a thing and they came to protest him. And this protester got in his face, like I think it was a G7 protest maybe. —or climate thing, I'm not sure. Anyway, and, and like, protesters were being pepper sprayed as a result. Important point. And one protester, as he's leaving, just got right up in his face. He came face to face with one of the demonstrators. Suddenly, Chrétien took the man by the back of the neck. His other hand was over the protester's mouth. He pushed him aside. Seconds later, another protester approached the Prime Minister. Chrétien knocked over the bullhorn that was in his hands. I'm sure Americans, this is like shocking to you, but this happens. You can walk up to the prime minister in Canada. Like, they don't want you to smack them, but, you know, generally you can probably walk up to them as this protester did, got right in Chrétien's face. And Chrétien, who is, you know, probably like 65, 67 years old, just grabs the guy by the throat, just throttles him and pushes him down to the ground. Like, just It was so funny, and we all called it the "Shawinigan handshake." And then this, this with the steak. So the reason the steak is that at a news conference later that day, he was asked about, you know, throttling the protester, and there were people from the media asking questions, and one interviewer came up Fun fact, that interviewer was Nardwuar the Human Serviette. Nardwuar the Human Serviette, who is a legendary music journalist in Vancouver. Honestly legendary. One of the most incredible music journalists. If you ever, just go to YouTube and look up Nardwuar. He's incredible. Anyway, he was a young Nardwuar in the media. I think he worked for CITR, which was the UBC radio station that I worked at when I was 13. And he asked a question of Chrétien, you know, and he was like, all these people got pepper sprayed, what do you think of that? And Chrétien was like, I don't know what you mean. Like, he pretended to not understand. But I don't know what you mean by that. Mace, pepper spray, some other members. But I don't know, this technique did not exist in those days. For me, pepper, I put it on my plate. So that's why the reference to Schumannian Handshake and why I'm just like putting pepper on a steak. And here's the actual quote from, from Kretschmann. For me, pepper, I put it on my plate. The funniest part of this comes right afterwards. I just didn't have a way to put it in without ruining the tempo. But he goes like this in real life. He goes, for me, pepper, I put it on my plate. Next. This was shot at the Bold Knight Steakhouse, which is not far from our house. It's a steakhouse. The owner was super, super kind and let me shoot there before people came in, made a steak and everything. I did not eat the steak, but that was a fun scene to shoot for sure. And then, and then we get to the fiddle kids. So yes, you are hearing the fiddle kids for real. This is not, uh, background. So these— this is a group called Fidelium. They are incredible. Uh, back, back in April, uh, when Jocelyn and I did this, we, we did an event that, uh, we invited a whole bunch of Americans to Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, um, to spend money in our economy because the tariffs were hitting us and, um, Americans were saying we want to support Canada. So we're like, well, come up, spend your money in our restaurants and shop at our stores and stuff. It comes after an Nanaimo man's invite to Americans went viral. Like many Canadians, the annexation rhetoric had Tod Maffin, a digital marketer and former CBC host, incensed. And so he called for a family reunion. What if we picked a day in like a month and a half or so where all of you come up here to Vancouver Island? Hundreds said yes, and they did. Hundreds of Americans came up. As part of that, this group of musicians, young musicians from Fidelium, their main person reached out to me and said, "We'd love to have you and Jocelyn involved in some way. Can you come up on stage during one of our performances and play a couple of notes?" And we were really looking forward to it, but I think one of us, I think we had a medical appointment rescheduled or something like that, so we couldn't do it. But I'd been trying to figure out a way to work with them anyway. And here this was, I thought, like, again, wouldn't it be cool if all of a sudden we're now in front of kids playing fiddles? These kids rehearsed this for months. So this was complicated. This was more complicated than it seems because we had to get nailed down early, early, early on so that they had enough time to rehearse this. We had to nail down the right key that the music was going to be in. And the exact tempo so that it would match. Because if you listen, it goes right from the Siu Winigan, it goes right into the kids, musically. For me, pepper, I put it on my plate. So this was shot twice. The first time we shot it, Uh, or they shot it with just audio. So the audio that you're hearing was captured professionally, uh, about a couple of weeks before we actually shot the video. You're hearing the kids playing for real. You actually are. They were recorded a couple of weeks prior to this and then we did this video shoot. This was at a retirement care home. And so there's like some retirees in the back kind of watching, absolutely confused as to what's going on. I learned to spell Saskatchewan, but really just phonetically. I got it in my head at the last minute that because there's a line about double-double heritage mini catalog, double-doubles and toques. And as I was driving there, I thought, oh, you know what would be cool? You know what would be cool is if is if I had a Tim Hortons cup, because that's where double-double comes from. Double-double, by the way, for Americans, is how we refer to double cream and double sugar in a coffee. Give me a double-double. And a toque. I borrowed Jocelyn's toque, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if we just got that?" So I stopped and I got a large coffee, and I just dumped it out so it was just an empty cup. Then you'll see snow as well. Oh, and here, they're throwing it to me. And I tried numerous times to not look at it as they were throwing it to me off camera, but I dropped it every time. So in the end, you can see my eyes just kind of quickly dart to catch the object. Pathetically, I bargained over double doubles, jaywalking in Montreal. I've shivered in a toque while shouting, this is not that cold at all. Then they throw snow at me while shouting, this is not that cold. This snow, um, you can buy from like theater production companies. It's the weirdest stuff. So it comes in a little tiny bag, like smaller than this, like that. And I thought, oh, I have made a colossal purchasing mistake. It's not cheap, by the way. And I thought I had made a colossal purchasing mistake. I did not order as much. No, this stuff expands. So you basically put a little bit in and then a little bit of water and it's like, "Woof!" And it becomes snow. I don't know how to describe it. It's perfect snow. But it is incredibly slippery. I didn't check the chemicals. I don't know. I'm sure it's carcinogenic. I don't want to know. But it's super, super slippery and I failed. I brought a broom. But I did not actually test it at home. And what we needed was a mop. They had a mop there, luckily, so we were able to clean up afterwards. But I whiffed it on— I slipped right out and smacked my head on the ground a couple of times because it was so slippery. So I think we did 4 or 5 takes of this altogether. "Old Adele, I spent my childhood building forts with Chesterfields and Moosehead cans." So this is in our living room. The Moosehead cans were hard to find. As it turns out, I don't think Moosehead makes beer in cans very much anymore, which I really wish I'd have known when I had written the lyrics, because I would have picked another brand. Moosehead is 100% Canadian, which is why they were chosen for the line. So I begged and pleaded on social media, please, if anyone can find me them 50 or so empty Moosehead cans, Empty please. I need those. And for all of these things, you will get all of these things. And I'm a recovering alcoholic, so I'm not going to drink them. I'm like, empty cans are fine with me. I don't care. And so this lovely woman who's a nurse actually in town found them in the Fraser Valley, which is on the mainland, which is 5 hours from here. Easily and went and got them. I think she may have been there in that area anyway for family, but she went out of her way to a couple of different stores. And she called ahead and they're like, "We might have some Moosehead cans." And she showed up and there were no Moosehead cans. And she asked, she said, "I asked and they said there was." And the guy went to the back and found this one box of Moosehead cans. I did put duct tape across the word Moosehead there on the box. You can see on the far on the left there. I did reach out to Moosehead to give them a heads up and to see if they were willing to ship me— what my original thought for this shot was that it was going to be like 200 Moosehead cans. I'm glad it wasn't because I wouldn't have been able to use them in the shot. But they never replied, so who knows. But just in case, I thought I would just block their name out. These cans that you see were full at the time. I gave them to our tenant downstairs. We have a tenant suite in our house. He loves beer. He was very happy to get a case of free beer. But it was really hard to do this. So this is just beside our couch. On the left, it's really being held up by our living room table. And then the other side is just— this is just our duvet off of our bed, and these beer cans, which were duct taped on the back. And then duct tape to the side to the table. You can't see it, but behind me there is an incredibly intricate red-green style MacGyvering of duct tape keeping this whole thing afloat. And even then it was constantly falling down and crashing. And it got really hot under there too. It got really, really super hot under there. And this was— oh, this was Hilly, SillyHilly on TikTok, who is a friend of ours and who was the second unit camera. She did this shot, she did the shot in the record store. It was super helpful. "Watching shows with a giraffe and a small rooster in a bag." This reference, for you Americans, is from another children's TV show in Canada called The Friendly Giant. At the beginning of every Friendly Giant show, he would invite you into his castle and then it was like a little tiny miniature because of of course he was a giant, and he would put out a rocking chair in front of a fireplace and invite you to sit down. "And a bigger chair for 2 more to curl up in. Someone who likes to rock, a rocking chair in the middle." Again, very nostalgic to Canadians of a certain generation. This is not how I wanted this shot to look. That is the background, that backdrop that you see is actually what it looked like. That's actually a shot from the TV show. It was really hard to get a, just an image of just that without the chairs in the shot. Originally what I had in mind for this shot was a larger set looking a little bit more real, and in the end it was— I think it's pretty obvious it's two pieces of cardboard and some rocking chairs, one of which is a straight chair because I broke this. These were like 3D printed And they're super fragile. And I like, as soon as I got them, like one, one of their legs snapped off. So they're, one of them is held together and one of them we just gave up on, but that middle one did rock. And this was really hard to do. Cause every time I, I wanted to put it down and have it rock a little. Can I back up? Nope. I backed up too far. I wanted it to rock a little. Um, and which it did. "And a small rooster in a bag and knew the tea—" Like, a little bit. Not kind of what I was hoping for. But anyway, it worked. "Used to drive away grapple from 1000 games of Tekken." I hate this shot. This was just a couple of days ago. Again, one of the last shots. Now that I'm looking at it, I realize that my color correction is wrong in this. See, this is real. This is white. This is authentically what this looks like. And you can see it's blue up there. I must have I've forgotten to color correct it. Arrgh! However, I am wearing a Mr. Dress Up t-shirt, where Casey and Finnegan were from. So the line here is, "I knew the taste of driveway gravel from 1,000 games of tag." The idea is that when you're pushed, and as a kid you're playing tag and someone pushes you and you skid across your face into driveway gravel, so you know what it tastes like. I could not figure out a way to do this without injuring myself. As it turns out, even this shot, I kind of scraped myself. You don't see it in the shot, but I actually skidded my face into this shot. It just looked weird and I didn't take it, but I ended up with kind of a big scrape there. The original idea for this was to have a shot of someone, someone pushing my back, and then we were going to shoot it with me being dragged by a car so that there would be very, very slowly, just so that there was some movement. Like 1 kilometer an hour kind of thing. And then I would speed it up in post-production. But Jocelyn was not willing to do that for safety reasons, and I don't blame her. So this was the shot. This is my least favorite shot in the whole thing. Anyway, that's all that. And then the hockey guy. I smell the fermentation of my sister's unwashed hockey bag. I smell the fermentation of my sister's unwashed hockey bag. I smell the fermentation of my sister's unwashed hockey bag. I smell the fermentation of my sister's unwashed hockey bag. These guys are great. This is the Nanaimo Stickmen. They are a team from the Nanaimo Casual Hockey League. Super great. Originally, I wanted women to be in this shot, partially because the line is, "He smelled the fermentation of his sister's unwashed hockey bag." I used to date a woman who was a hockey player, and I would occasionally, I think, go to her games once or twice. But I remember that the hockey bags were stinky. And I remember that that's a thing as well. And I wanted it to be, you know, I wanted to kind of break a couple of gender things in here as well. Everyone assumes that hockey is men. I wanted it to be women. So anyway. And I reached out. There is a women's hockey league. And I know the person who is in charge is someone that I have had some occasional professional contact with in town. And we were in touch at the very, very beginning of this. I said, "Let me reach out to you when we're ready to shoot." And I emailed her like 3 or 4 times over the course of 2 months and never heard back. So I don't know whether they backed out, they're like, "We want nothing to do with this," or if my emails went to spam. I don't know. So it ended up being kind of a last-minute shot with these guys who were great. I showed up and I just— my contact was the guy who was dragging the thing past them. That's the league president, I think. Yeah, a league president. So I was in touch with him. I'm not certain he told them that I was coming because it was just a couple of days ago because I showed up at the hockey arena and he's like, we're in dressing room A. I went into dressing room A. If there are any of these guys who are watching right now, forgive me, but I'm just going to say this. It stank in there. Okay? It stank. I guess it's just these are, you know, big, masculine guys and enough to say about that. In just like a B.O. kind of way, which also kind of was funny because that was the whole point of the shot anyway. So I walked in carrying a couple tripods and a light stick and a laptop computer and they were like— because it looked like they had no idea I was coming. Maybe they did, but it looked like they didn't. And one of them was like, Uh, and then, you know, this fella, the, um, whose name escapes me now, uh, anyway, he was the lead captain and he's like, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. So this is Tod and he's gonna do a video. I'm like, oh shit. So I kind of explained to them, as soon as I back away, whoever is pulling the bag, just start going from right to left to straight across right in front. And then you guys are just thinking as it goes. Okay, so you want me to pull the bag then? I don't know, maybe they just had resting bitch face on or something, but they did not look happy to see me. I think here's what was going on. Ice time is incredibly precious in Canada. You get your booking of ice time, you get a certain amount, and you make use of every minute of it. And I'm pretty sure that they saw me, and as it was being explained, all they heard was, "This skinny jackass is going to take time away from our ice time." I don't blame them, to be perfectly honest. I really don't. I was invading their recreation time. They were incredibly gracious letting me take some of the time. I got up there. The second I stepped on the ice, I realized, "Wait, I don't have any appropriate footwear for this." I wiped out, got back on my feet. I had not blocked this one out. This is one of the few outside shots that the photographer and I had not gone to ahead of time. And blocked them out. Dirk, who was our principal photographer, like the main videographer for it, was there for the big shots. This one and a couple of other ones I just did on my own with a tripod. But again, it had to match a specific timing, and I wanted them to be in a certain position and stuff. So we did this a couple of times, and we got it eventually. They were still too fast for it, for that whole line, because that line lasts a while, right? "Um, I smell the fermentation of my sister's unwashed hockey pads." So because it lasts a while, he just kept— I was like, can we do it again slower? And it still was too fast. And I realized like, I'm just eating into their ice time and they're going to beat me up. So, so I just took what we had and I slowed it down in post-production. "Keep going. Little slower, little slower." which is why when this guy falls— "In the end, I actually kind of like it better that way anyway." You can hear in the actual sort of original footage of this, I forgot that— I forgot to tell them that I wanted one of them to pass out. So I just yelled out, "Someone pass out!" Perfect. Thank you. That's it. I think that's it. I think that's it. That's it. They did a great job. Honestly, this is one of my favorite shots in it. I offered land acknowledgement from someone else's land. I ran, I clapped off feet at a powwow. This is a green screen from behind me. The video is Long Lake, which is a beautiful fishing lake in essentially downtown Nanaimo. Felt like I was in Japan. I bought a drum from Amazon and played it like a frying pan. This is Coleridge Dam Park, close to where we live. Beautiful park. Look at this. Look at this beautiful park. This is a real frying pan I'm hitting. I never ended up getting a drum. I just didn't want to buy anything from Amazon. That's what it came down to, even though the line is there. Remember also the lyrics were written months ago, right? So before a lot of the anti-American shopping stuff had really become part of culture. So forgive me for that line. But I still think it kind of works because like the whole point is it's like, you know, the modern-day Canadian character in this is like a very well-meaning but, you know, sometimes mildly culturally ignorant person. Like, I think we all are many times. So that's sort of what's behind this is that like, like, you know, this person wants to, wants to do right by First Nations but just gets it wrong. So this was shot, I went down, this is just me with my tripod and gear and stuff. I get really embarrassed when people are watching me make my videos. Even just the ones that you've probably seen me just like walking up and down local streets. If a car starts to drive, if a car turns onto the street, I stop. I just, I'm just embarrassed, I don't know why. And this is a big popular park, so there was no way I could do it without without people here, and I had multiple takes because I had to get the banging of the things in line with the music, like to the tempo of the music, which was not easy. Bought a drum from Amazon and played it like a frying pan. In fact, I even missed that last beat a little bit, so it sounds perfect because I moved the audio for that last smack over a little bit to match. So people were watching, all that to say, and it was a little embarrassing. But after every take, they would applaud. I don't think any of them had any idea what it was about, which is unusual, actually. As we started, especially later in the shoot for this thing, as we started, people had heard word that I was working on this video project. For instance, at the ice skating arena, as I'm walking in and walking out of the building, people stopped me and said, "Is this for the secret video?" So they knew me, they knew what it was about, but these people I don't think did. Or if they did, they didn't say anything. Anyway, if you ever get a chance to see Coleridge Dam Park, it's beautiful. It's a fishing area. Dogs are welcome there. Behind there's all sorts of forest. There's a shot of it in the second— in the third act? Second act? Whatever. Second act. I do not have a drum banger. It turns out we didn't have a hammer either. So This that you're seeing me is one of those meat tenderizers from our kitchen. And that actually, if you look really closely on the scene where I'm hammering in the election signs, I'm using the same thing. I'm using a meat tenderizer for it. I ruined this pan. It didn't occur to me that by banging in the middle of it, it would dent it. So que sera sera. Did I really honor this? Then mix it up with Burning Man. He bought a drum from Amazon and played it like a frying pan. He's actually a really, really, really, really super guy. Can— let me just stop for a moment and, and tell you about the chorus singers. So you're hearing the chorus people here. In reality, there's only 3 of them. The chart of the degrassicus, most likely genealogy. They are so good. When we were recording this, I was like, they would, they would, they were just doing the harmonies on their own. Like it would require, like, it sounds like there's 30 of them because they did it 10 times for each one. Right. They did it a couple of times, especially the very last line, which we'll, which I'll mention when we get there. Um, they did. A million versions. And then Dale, the genius audio engineer, just put them all on the same track so that it sounds like it's a chorus of like 30 or 40 people, but it's just 3 of them. They sound so good. Those aren't the lyrics. That was a— that was the hardest line to lip sync to because it's not— there's not— it's not part of any beat. It's not part of any tempo. So the rest of the song, right? Everything— this— everything is— this was easy to lip sync to the rest of the song because it was on a beat. This one, though, was not on a beat and it was, it was difficult. Getting that right was probably just 3 takes unto itself. Those aren't the lyrics. In short. All right. So now we are at the final— this is the final shot. Maffeo Sutton Park, downtown. Beautiful park. This is where the Nanaimo infusion happened, by the way. These people in the background are not extras. They were just— they just happened to be there. This time I did not ask permission from the city to be there. I think you're supposed to book if you have a large event, like more than a dozen or two people coming, you're supposed to book through the city's thing, which I tried to do for the infusion. I tried to do it the right way for the Nanaimo infusion because we had like 500 people coming. And then I got, you know, they look at it as like a private event, like maybe a for-profit event, which obviously this and the other one wasn't. They were like, "Well, you're going to need insurance and you're going to need a sponsor." I actually ended up going to, for the Nanaimo Infusion, not for this, going to City Hall and making a presentation in front of the city councillors and said, "Can you guys please just adopt this as an official city event? I'm not going to buy insurance because if someone gets hurt and the insurance doesn't cover it, it's our house on the line? No." Anyway, the city did not adopt it as an official event. In the end. Legal reasons, I'm sure. But they did the next possible thing, which was basically to say, just show up. It's a free country in Canada still. Just show up. No one's going to turn you away. So during the infusion, there was a group that was actually booked there. It was the Tai Chi group. And someone at the city was kind enough to contact the Tai Chi people and say, listen, we got this thing, these people, they're Americans. Would you guys mind sharing the space. And the tai chi people were so lovely and they were like, oh, of course. And so they were in this shot. Anyway, this was shot just a couple of days ago in Nanaimo. This was again, I put out a thing on social media and I said, if you want to be part of this, come wear lots of red and white, bring the biggest flags you have. So these people in the background were just regular people that happened to be at the park that day. But we're proud to be sovereign and we don't deport immigrants. We don't dream up crises to start another few Our kids dodge homework, not live rounds. Our helpers are barbarian. We are the very model of the modern-day Canadian. I'm not sure why it's a little slow there. So yeah, 200 of them showed up, more than 200. It was phenomenal. They're all in the credits. I used a little bit of the audio. It was hard to get both them and the choir in at the same time. And also, I didn't think about recording the audio from this until the last minute, like literally when we were about to start the first take. And so Dirk, my cinematographer, he had an assistant, his daughter was with him helping. And I'm like, can I borrow your camera really quick, or your phone really quick? So I put her phone up on a tripod. You might even be able to see it in the shot actually. I put that up on a tripod so that it would— and we put it on like voice memos just so it would record the audio. And it was really windy that day. So the actual audio of it is super windy. Happy birthday, Ryan Hasegawa! And so I had to do a lot of work to take the wind kind of noise out of it. So as a result, these people are not quite as loud as I want them to be. Also, fuck this pylon. Fuck this orange pylon right smack dab in the middle of the shot that nobody saw. None of us saw this fucking orange pylon. Or if we did, none of us said anything. I certainly didn't say anything. I didn't see it. Jocelyn didn't see it. I don't think Dirk saw it. And it was there the whole time. And when he sent me the video and I got it and I put it up in the video editor and I'm like, are you kidding me? And there's not really— if there's a way to remove it through AI, I do not have those skills. So we had a whole bunch of people. Unfortunately, my wife is not in this shot, which I'm kind of sad for. She's off to the right and she's like directing when to sing the Canadian. The, you know, the movement part. There are some nurses kicking like showgirls at a Broadway thing. And if you're watching this and you were here for this, thank you so, so much. Look at how great you guys look. Came out great. End of Act 1. Act 2 is the— now that you've seen a little bit of Nanaimo, let's talk about you as a healthcare worker coming— I kind of— what I spent a good 4 hours trying to make it so that the words would fall behind the mountain instead of just— and I could not make it work. I kind of got it working, but it looked gimmicky. I will say this shot is not Vancouver Island. I don't know where this shot is from. It's really hard to find stock photography that is stock video that is not super expensive. Or that is not someone else's copyright. You know, like I could have gone onto YouTube and just found it, but that's someone's copyright. And I wanted to make sure that, you know, if we're honoring the land and we're honoring the healthcare workers, we should be honoring copyright as well. So I don't know where this shot is, but I will say that this is exactly what it looks like at Vancouver Island. So I hope that people— <LYRICS>The fire burns so bright that I know it can only be sunshine.</LYRICS> By the way, I am recording this that you're watching about just 2 hours after I uploaded the actual video. I'm recording this right now, Monday, October 6th, at about 3:30 in the afternoon. The video has just gone up on YouTube a couple of hours ago in my world. And so it's possible I'm going to see a mistake, and if I do, I'm going to be really mad because I've seen this a million times, but you know how these things work. I feel the rays of a distant light wash over me, but I know Oh, most of these shots I went down and shot them. I got nailed in the midsection. Let's just call it the midsection, okay? Again, look Fidelium up on like Spotify, Apple Music. As you can see, they are the Canadian Folk Music Award winners from last year. They're so good. These folks were in dress rehearsal and I begged and pleaded. I'm like, "Please, please let me come and just— I promise I'm just gonna be there for like— it is a 2-second shot." And so this maid went one way and went the other way and they were very nice to let me shoot that. The idea behind this act is like, here's a whole bunch of reasons you should move. Like, we have culture and queer folks are welcome and there's beautiful hiking and you can fish. Like, it was just kind of like a, here's everything about it. So this shot was not mine, this came from the organizer. The only reason I put salmon fishing in there was that the guy who is the Nanaimo Hockey League fellow that organized, the guy that dragged the thing behind me, because I'm not an outdoor guy, I'm kind of an indoor cat, he's like, well, you're gonna be talking about the salmon fishing, right? And I'm like, Yes, yes, I will. This is where we reveal it's the mayor. And I hope, I hope, I hope that most people who watch this video did not realize that it was the mayor in the shot. They just thought it was some random extra. And then we spin the camera around and we realize that it was His Worship the whole time. And he was such a, such a good sport for this. This was at Drag Bingo that Jocelyn and I went to a few weeks ago. It was So much fun. That's Jocelyn, by the way. I wanted to have mountain biking, regular mountain biking in it, and then also accessible mountain biking for people with disabilities. This is her hand cycle. I'm not sure where this was shot. Probably out on the— I don't know, one of the many mountain bike trails we have. Coleridge Dam Park, remember the scene where I'm banging the frying pan? So this is just around the corner from it. Beautiful, beautiful area. Salish Sea is, we used to call it the Georgia Strait. It's the part of the land, it's the part of the ocean, it's the Pacific Ocean between Vancouver Island and the mainland. Used to be called the Georgia Strait, we call it the Salish Sea now. By the way, this farmers market that I shot, this was just yesterday. Yesterday we shot this. This is at the Cedar Farmers Market in Cedar on Vancouver Island, which is just south of Nanaimo. It's like 10 minutes away from Nanaimo. This one, this particular farmers market is not year-round. It's May to October. But there is a year-round one in Nanaimo, and it's at Beban Park. I think it's every Wednesday afternoon. But yeah, then we leave Act 2 and we go into Act 3, which is like the behind the scenes stuff, which was my favorite part of it all. We reveal that it was the Merrill— oh no, this was the explaining the Degrassi. So we're basically revealing the stuff that I've told you about. My original idea The idea for this shot, incidentally, was me holding the puppets going, "I know the goddamn difference between Casey and Finnegan." These puppets are like 50 years old, 40 years old or something. 50 years old probably. I'm sure they're kept up well, but I mean, I asked her once. I said, "My idea for this is me holding that, or if you want, you can do it." I was hoping that she would pick up on letting me do it. But she didn't, and no problem. So that's— Okay, behind the scenes info only, this is a complete lie. There was actually no bungee jumping scene in the original concept of it because I'm not going to fucking bungee jump because I am legitimately terrified of heights. I couldn't even go up the skywalk, the Malahat Skywalk. When our niece from Montreal came and visited, My wife and her went up on her own, on their own. I stayed halfway up and I gripped. This that you see me is what I was actually doing in the Mile High Skywalk. But I wanted a funny scene in this act of saying that we cut the scene because I chickened out. So I went to the bungee jumping place, Wild Play. By the way, Wild Play, south of Nanaimo, not even 10 minutes. They have an always-on discount for healthcare workers if you want to take your family. They have axe throwing, they have beautiful trails. Yeah, bungee jumping, as you can see. So I was never planning to bungee jump. I just went there to get this shot of me looking terrified. Sorry. That's Jocelyn in her craft room. We had a number of shots of this, but we ended up doing— And it's true, I did own this can of tart before. I think it was a Halloween costume, maybe. That's my phone. Would you believe me if I told you? So there's Dale, who's our recording engineer. He made— not only did he do the audio mix and everything and direct the singers and everything, but he did the music. So not the current music that you hear. We'll get to that. But the music in the first act with the comedy song, he did all that music himself. All through she is sunshine. These are the chorus singers. They were so good. I was so, so happy with them and that, that whole recording that we were there for a few hours that night. My wife and I drove down to Victoria and stayed overnight there for it. But it was— man, these guys sounded so good. Would you understand? This is Trish. She is the director of Fidelium. So she, she like— you have to understand that you can't just like hum it to the fiddle players and say, "All right, now can you do it?" They need sheet music. But she couldn't get sheet music until we had figured out the key. I didn't know what key because Dale was like, "What key do you sing in?" I'm like, "I don't know, all of them. Any of them? I don't know how any of this works." He's like, "Well, are you an alto or tenor or baritone?" I'm like, "I don't know." So we guessed. I think the key was D. He told me later that he was quite afraid this whole time after we'd not locked it down, after we locked down This is before I was there for recording the singing part. Because we had to have enough time to get to Trish so she could write the sheet music to give to the kids so that they would have a couple of months' time to rehearse. And as it turns out, I was able to hit that low note in the song. That is Hillary, our friend who recorded. She was second unit, so she did some of the shots like this one in the record store. That gives you a— this is just one hallway of the record store. It's a ton. That's my phone with the phone case. I'm actually really proud of that phone case. Hang on a second. Let's see if we can get another close-up. There. Can you see it? There's like a toque. There's an axe. There's a tent. There's a maple leaf. There's fish. There's a beaver. There's— I see maple syrup there. There's a campfire. Anyway, it's a very Canadian phone case. All right, this is the band Cosmosaurus. I don't know how I ended up with their song in my playlist. I think it was— I think during the infusion I have— I had this playlist of like Nanaimo area musicians for people to listen to on their way up. There must have been where I got— where I found them. It must have been. Anyways, I'm thinking about this. I'm trying to think about like this, this, this closing sequence where the credits are, and this song comes up randomly, you know, random shuffle mode on as I'm driving somewhere. I'm like, this is it. This is the closing. This is the theme song that we use for the whole— for all— for Act 2, 3, and 4, right? It was the "this is what Nanaimo looks like for your family" act. It was the behind-the-scenes act, and it's the credits act. And like, I have to have— I have to have this piece of music. Um, and I, I could not reach them for, for a while. Not their fault. I was just like— I, like, I sent them a message through their Bandcamp page And I don't know, maybe, maybe they have to pay to get those messages or something, but I got no response. And then I sent them a message to SoundCloud and got no response. And I'm like, um, I think I may have even posted like, does anyone know anyone from the band Cosmosaurus? And finally they reached out and I'm like, listen, I don't have a budget, so I can't pay you, but can I please use your song? Can I please have the rights to it for this song? And they were like, absolutely. Absolutely. They were so generous. And I hope that they've made a lot of money in the last— or a little bit of money off of my plays on Apple Music, because every time I've been in the car for the last 3 or 4 months, I have put that song on. Well, not 2 or 3 months. I put that song on because I wanted to hear all the beats. Like, if you'll notice, there's like the acts kind of come with the major parts of the song as well. I just— I love the song. I love the energy. It's optimistic. It talks about, you know, at the end, their closing line, which I'll— we'll let play out when we get there. Anyway, I— my wish for them is that they— is that this gives them a bump. I don't know how many views this video is going to get, you know, like the main video is going to get, but I hope— I just— this is just such a beautiful, perfect song. It was all the dancers, all the dodgeball players, all the people who came out for that final shot, the big Canadian flag shot and everything. As many, as many as I could get onto this screen, essentially. I had a website address and I said go to this website address and you can fill in your name, and I hope I got everyone. And I apologize if you're watching this and you were a part of this video and I did not put you in the credits, it was not on purpose. It was a slip and I apologize. Everyone did. Hundreds of people were involved in this project and some of them kept this secret for months. That's our dog Churro. Yeah, the, the closing line of their song, "I feel the rays of a distant light wash over me," near the end I heard it again as I was like going to get groceries or something, because literally every time I was in the car I would play this song. And I thought, you know what, that's a perfect line for the ending too. Like, if we think about American healthcare workers and it's dark where they are right now, then come here to Canada. 'Come to Vancouver Island and feel the rays of a distant light.' You know, Canada's distant and it's light here. It's not dark where they are. I just fell in love with this song again. And then the closing thing is that all the money— so the video will be monetized on YouTube. I was very worried that YouTube would take down the video as soon as I put it up. Because of either the song, the actual music, like the main Act 1 comedy song, even though Dale did it, but it is, you know, it's a cover of a real song, or that somehow YouTube's system would catch Cosmosaurus's song. And even though I would have the rights to use it because they said, and I emailed them, I'm like, are there any other rights holders? Like often, you know, there's Like, the band will say yes, but the label might not want you to, or the person who wrote the lyrics might— Luckily, they owned all the rights, so they were able to say yes. But if they were, like, logged in YouTube's Content ID system, that system may have caught it. And no matter— I can't call anyone at YouTube and say, "The band gave me permission. Release the hold." So, secretly, the main song, the comedy song, And this song has secretly been up on YouTube for a couple of months now, on my YouTube channel. They've been unlisted videos, so no one's been able to see them unless you knew the address, but they've been sitting there with monetization on just to see if it would be caught, and it has not been caught, so I think we're good. As I mentioned, all of the— this will be monetized, so there'll be ads on it, which will generate revenue, and every penny above our cost, so like I paid Dirk, who is our photographer. There were some costs to, you know, like the little diorama, the Bob and Doug thing. So it's a couple of thousand dollars. But all after the— after just reimbursing that, all of the money is going to be going to this foundation, Gord Downie and Chaney Wenjack Fund. It's worth a look if you're American. You don't know the stories behind either of these two. It's worth looking up Gord Downie, a lead singer of The Tragically Hip, one of Canada's most beloved bands. He died of brain cancer a few years ago. Chanie Wenjack, an Indigenous child, incredible story that he has as well, also worth looking up. And their namesakes have this fund which is— they use it to help promote essentially relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. So all the net revenue is going to that. And then the very last scene, I said to Dale, you'll know at the very, very beginning of this, there's some chatter. He's chattering about, "I'm going to pan it to the middle and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that." And I said, "Can you just give me 3 or 4 things an engineer would say?" Because I wanted it to sound kind of behind the scene like. Are you happy with your headphone level? Can you hear yourself okay? And then he also kind of went off on a tangent and he gave me like all of these like kind of funny ones. And this was one of them where he's like, okay, that wasn't bad, but, um, this time can you sing it in the same key as the music is? I never asked him for it. It was so funny. It was a perfect ending of it, I think, because it kind of, it makes you smile at the end. It's also self-deprecating. It is factually accurate. I'm not a good singer. I think he may have auto-tuned me a little, possibly. Anyway, the only change I had to make— I had him do another take of it because in the original take of this last line, he said, "Okay, that was good." Okay, that wasn't bad. He just didn't use the word "Todd," or the name "Todd," and since it came immediately after "Cosmosaurus," I didn't want people to think that he was commenting on them. So I said, "Can you just re-record it so it says, 'Okay, Tod?'" Okay, Tod. And that is why it is that. And there you go. This little card that I put at the end of all my videos. And there you go. That is the behind the scenes, as much as I can remember anyway, of how this whole thing came together. As I mentioned, hundreds of people around Vancouver Island have been involved in this for months and have kept the secret. And to them I want to say thank you so, so, so much. Especially if you were in the early days of this. Because as this project grew and I kept going, "Wouldn't it be cool if?" I put more and more demands on them. Some of these scenes were shot a couple of times and I just wanted to thank you for your time in making this happen and in keeping the secret. And also, if you're watching this, again, I'm just gonna do the last pitch. If you're a healthcare worker and you are looking for a home, I hope, I hope my video showed you a little bit about it. The whole point of this video was so that Canadians can laugh at ourselves a little. It's dark here too sometimes. I think we all need a little bit of Canadian pride. It was partially that, um, but it was partially as kind of a welcome, a, a big giant olive branch, a welcome branch. To healthcare workers around the world. You don't have to be American. You can be in Quebec, you can be in Ontario, it's fine. Anywhere. The US. We need healthcare workers here, uh, not just Vancouver Island, but across BC, across Canada. Canada will be glad to have you. We'll welcome you with open arms. Um, we are a civilized country. We still have a democracy. We believe in decency. And I hope that you'll come join us. And thank you for watching. All right. I'm going to go have a big-ass nap now. Thanks. Goodbye.