A creator reads Canadian place names that sound made up—Spuzzum, Punkydoodles Corners, Dildo, Crotch Lake—and reveals they're all real. Each has a genuine history, from Indigenous hunting grounds to quirky naming stories, like Jimmy Kimmel becoming honorary mayor of Dildo.
Don't go away, it's time to play which one of these Canadian cities and towns are actually real places and which are ones that I made up. I need a better name. Don't go away, it's time to play Real or Not. I'm gonna read off a bunch of town names and city names from Canada and you have to tell me which one of these are real and which ones are made up. Okay. Bacon Ridge, Manitoba. Spuzzum, British Columbia. Stoner, BC. Balls Falls, Ontario. Climax, Saskatchewan. Punkydoodles Corners in Ontario. St. Louis de Haha in Quebec, Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, Alberta, Dildo, Newfoundland, Big Beaver, Saskatchewan, Blow Me Down, Newfoundland, and Crotch Lake, Ontario. Which one of those are real? They're all real. So Bacon Ridge is actually an ecological reserve. It's considered an endangered space. No, there are no pigs there. It is home to neotropical migratory birds. The name Spuzzum comes from the Inuklaqatma people. In their language, it means little flat, although people in BC use the name literally as a synonym for middle of nowhere. Nobody knows for sure where Stoner came from, but the The best guess was a settler named Walter Stoner, or maybe an engineer who worked on the railway survey in the area. It's not very clear. Balls Falls has two waterfalls, so they are balls, or at least plural. Okay, Climax is named after Climax, Minnesota, and Climax, Minnesota was named after a chewing tobacco company. Apparently they still have fun with their name. One of their tourism taglines recently was Climax, more than just a feeling. Ew, that was weird. Punkydoodles Corners. Legend has it that a German-speaking innkeeper was trying to sing Yankee Doodle, but his accent made people think that he was saying Punkydoodles. Anyway, their highway sign gets stolen all the time. Saint-Louis-de-Haha, Quebec. The "haha" translates to an old French term that means "obstacle." Now, as for those exclamation marks in its name, you know, it's the French. They're emotional. Head-Smashing Buffalo Jump is a place used for thousands of years by Indigenous people to hunt bison by driving them off these high cliffs. In fact, it's even in the logo. Dildo, Newfoundland. So it's actually a local service district. It's not really a town. So It doesn't have a mayor, but a few years back, the American late-night host Jimmy Kimmel decided that he wanted to be mayor and started campaigning. They named him an honorary mayor, and apparently the whole gag brought millions of dollars of tourism to the area. Big Beaver, Saskatchewan. Now, in its heyday in the 1920s, Big Beaver had the biggest inland grain terminal in the British Empire. Today, its population is 10. Blow me down, Newfoundland! It's really windy there. That's the reason. That's the whole— God love the Newfoundlanders, right to the point. And Crotch Lake, Ontario, is because the lake has two connected basins that some people say look like the crotch of a tree, but I don't see it. I know I missed some. Tell me in the comments what I missed, and tell me if you want a part 2.
Ten times Canada helped the U.S. with its wildfires, instead of whining about the smoke. 
