Canadians have successfully passed as non-Canadians for years. But how successful are natives of other countries at playing Canucks?
What follows is a decidedly non-exhaustive list of non-Canadian thespians stiffening up their facial muscles in order to portray an array of the Frozen People: Mounties, hockey players, fur traders, beer barons, and more.
1. In the 1936 musical romance Rose Marie, American actor Nelson Eddy stars as Sergeant Bruce, the singing Mountie. Eddy’s posture-perfect portrayal was supposedly the inspiration for Dudley Do-Right.
The film marked Eddy’s first pairing with singer and actress Jeannette Macdonald, who plays an operatic soprano looking for her Mountie-killing fugitive brother (a young Jimmy Stewart). The silver lining of this tragic situation? Love duets.
2. Near the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film The 39 Steps, Richard Hanney, played by English actor Robert Donat, tests the perfect recall of music-hall performer Mr. Memory by asking, “How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?”
“A Canadian gentleman,” Mr. Memory notes, even though Donat’s accent is plummily English. Hanney neither confirms nor denies. (It’s 1,424 miles, according to the movie.)
Hanney soon finds himself in a classic Hitchcockian wrong-man scenario. He wakes up with a dead spy in his apartment and must flee while trying to clear his name. (The entire film can be seen here.)
Hitchcock’s film differed from John Buchan’s 1915 novel in many ways. For instance, in the book, Richard Hanney is Scottish. But the Canucks claimed John Buchan in the end. He went on to become Governor General of Canada from 1935 until his death in Ottawa in 1940.
Another Hitchcock film, the 1953 drama I Confess, starred Montgomery Clift as a Roman Catholic priest, Anne Baxter as his former paramour, and Karl Malden as police inspector Larrue. The movie was set and filmed in Quebec City.
3. Reggie Dunlop, the protagonist of George Roy Hill’s 1977 movie Slap Shot, doesn’t go around flashing a Canadian passport, but he does sleep with a gigantic maple leaf flag above his bed.
American actor Paul Newman slides into the role of Dunlop, a wily, washed-up hockey player/coach of modest expectations. Out of desperation, Dunlop’s minor-league team, the Charleston Chiefs, recruits a couple of violent players in order to boost the Chiefs’ popularity and save the franchise. Newman also delivers one of the most un-peppy (and therefore very Canadian) pep talks in the history of sports movies.
4. And then there’s the Alberta-born Wolverine, played in several pictures by an Australian, Hugh Jackman. Some of you may remember him.
5. Nazis accidentally arrive in Hudson’s Bay and attempt to escape to the then-neutral United States in 49th Parallel, a 1940 propaganda film by British writer-director team Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (also known as The Archers). A mustachioed Laurence Olivier has the small role of Johnny, a French-Canadian trapper. Olivier’s accent has been cited as one of the worst in movie history. Should you wish to judge for yourself, the whole movie is available here. The Olivier magic begins at around 15:35.
In addition, The 49th Parallel also features Chinese actor Ley On playing “Nick, the Eskimo” (yeah). Welsh actor Glynis Johns, aka Mrs. Banks from Mary Poppins, portrays a Hutterite (think Amish or Mennonite-type) maiden.
6. In The Proposal (2009), American Sandra Bullock stars as an uptight Canadian editor who decides to marry her assistant in order to get a green card. In a stunning reversal, Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds portrays her Alaska-born matrimonial target. Crazy!
Bullock does a good job saying “Toronto,” in a way that is very Toronto, but really, she spends the rest of the movie acting like a New Yorker, which is probably why she wants to stay Stateside.
7. The Canucks, the Scots, the English, and the Americans, all lay claim to Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. In The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939), American Don Ameche seems to decide in favor of the Yanks, playing the inventor with a golly-gee-willikers affect. The whole film can be viewed here.
Incidentally, in the classic 1941 comedy Ball of Fire, Barbara Stanwyck, while playing a “slang expert,” delivers this proclamation: “An Ameche is the telephone, on account of he invented it… Like, you know, in the movies.”
8. Austrian-born Paul Muni, portrays French-Canadian fur trapper/explorer Pierre-Esprit Radisson in Hudson’s Bay (1941). The film looks at Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers’ (American Laird Cregar) attempt to establish a trading post in Canada in 1667. Gene Tierney and Vincent Price have small roles.
At the time of its release, the film was promoted in Hudson’s Bay stores (known to Canadians simply as The Bay). The company continues to exist and their signature striped blankets are still pretty great.
9. Sometimes, international star power is brought in to burnish homegrown Canadian films. In the British-Canadian co-production, Margaret’s Museum (1995), English actor Helena Bonham Carter plays Margaret McNeil, a 1940s Cape Bretoner who loses her father, brother, and eventually her husband, to coal mining accidents. The film was based on Sheldon Currie’s The Glace Bay Mine Museum.
American Richard Dreyfuss stars as the eponymous Montreal real-estate hustler in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), an adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s 1959 novel. Another adaptation of a Richler novel, Barney’s Version (2010), featured Paul Giamatti as Barney Panofsky, and Dustin Hoffman as his father.
10. Italian movie legend Isabella Rossellini, plays Depression-era Winnipeg beer baroness Lady Helen Port-Huntley, in art-house director Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World (2003). Lady Port-Huntley has (figuratively) a heart of stone and (literally) a glass leg filled with beer. She organizes a contest to find the most melancholy song that the world can offer. (Winnipeggers will recognize many of the performers from their annual culture-fest, Folklorama.) Kids in the Hall alumnus Mark McKinney plays the unsuccessful Broadway producer trying to win top prize.
Rossellini is not the only illustrious actor to portray pure, beery evil. Swedish actor Max von Sydow played Brewmaster Smith in The Adventures of Bob and Doug Mackenzie: Strange Brew (1983). Because when you’ve played Jesus and worked with Ingmar Bergman, sometimes it’s important to stretch your artistic muscles by playing a Canadian beer-brewing villain.
Tags: canada, commonwealth day, lawrence olivier, movies, singing mounties, wolverine
OMG Winnipeg got mentioned twice in a non-punchline capacity? WHAT?
Haha, this is great. Wolverine is my favorite X-Man – is his accent even close? Canadians get pretty mad when one mistakes them for Americans but sorry guys I can’t really tell the difference unless you’re a full-on original-Degrassi-style “oot and aboot” Canadian. It’s OK, I get taken for a Kiwi or a Brit half the time.
yeah I don’t really think there are TOO obvious differences in pronunciation for most people, although I do say “eh?” a lot.
Just ask them to say “sorry.” If it sound like “sore-y,” you’ve got a Canadian on your hands!
That’s how I do it: “sore-y” vs. “sarr-y”. And if they’re Canadian, chances are they’ll say “sorry” within the first five minutes of conversation anyway.
That was the first Canadian thing I noticed when watching Anne of Green Gables as a kid – Gilbert’s “sorry”. I wasn’t old enough to use the geographical references and markers to realize they were somewhere other than the U.S. before that.
“Luke, I’m sore-y I ever said anything aboot your hair.”
Also related: When I was living in England, I was talking to someone with (what I thought was) an American accent. “Where are you from?” I asked. “Where do you THINK I’m from?” he retorted. Then I knew he was Canadian, because no American would get so immediately defensive.
ahahahahhaa this is very true.
i think the main thing that gets noticed is “out and about” but i pronounce it like “oat” and “a-boat”, rather than stressing the ‘u’. mostly we sound like news anchors, actually.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Canada (I’ve lived internationally, you see [*hair flip*]), and I notice a lot of differences in cadence, mostly. Sure, there’s the upspeak? Where everything’s a question? But in general–at least to me anyway–Canadian English sounds more lyrical, almost sing-songy.
So basically, I imagine my Canadian friends just constantly living in a sweeping musical.
I’m Canadian and I can hear the difference, but it’s subtle and hard to mimic. Also, people from BC and Alberta sound more American than people from out east. Newfies have their own accent, and so do rural people from Southern Ontario. I am Manitoban and can immediately tell when I’m talking to a Saskatchewanite, but I doubt anyone who isn’t from either province could. (Saskatchwanites pronounce it SasKETCHwin and Manitobans say SisKAHTCHwan).
Love the singing Canadian mountees! Classic.
Is Paul Newman wearing maple leaf boxers!
Jenn, is this some ploy to get me to stare at Paul Newman’s boxers?
*gets popcorn*
Yes. (Like you weren’t already looking,)
It’s pronounced ‘Tranna’, Sandra Bullock!
When I was living in Europe, telling people where I was from would often result in polite nods and faces of incomprehension. And then I’d continue talking about my hometown, and then eventually they would say, “Oh! To-ron-to!”
It’s definitely “Toronno”! Sandra Bullock is way off.
This has nothing to do with fake Canadians, but one of my Dutch friends has Canadian cousins. She went to visit once and was mystified that they didn’t speak Dutch. Apparently there’s some big Dutch-Canadian community I didn’t know about!
Maybe in western Canada? Where I live all the hill-folk are Dutch farmers. And the towns are full of Germans.
I vaguely recall it was around Toronto but who knows.
Also apparently the Canadians were the big force in liberating the Netherlands, and the Dutch royal family went there during the war. So there are links!
I don’t know from where these ‘a-boot’ saying Canadians come. I don’t know anyone who talks like that and I definitely don’t know anyone who sounds Minnesotan either (for the record, I’m from a Prairie capital.) However, I definitely say sore-y and don’t use that flat, wide, nasal ‘a’ vowel much (paw-sta, not pass-sta, mostly), though. When I’m abroad, I get accused of sounding everything from Kiwi to South African, American to Finnish (huh?) People generally are not good at the accent game with Canadians.
The Minnesotan accents are definitely the Ottawa Valley folks. I am friends with a woman from there and our friend group regularly makes her repeat certain words for entertainment.
My old Canadian boss, who was from Toronto, talked like this–aboot, and eh? He also called soda ” pop” and talked incessantly about Tim Hogan donuts.
Tim Hortons!
I want to say that Ian Holm played a Canadian lawyer in The Sweet Hereafter, AKA one of the more depressing/disturbing movies I’ve ever seen, although in real life he’s a Brit.
…I think he’s Canadian?And the town he visits to stir up feeling for the lawsuit is in BC? Basic Google research has not clarified this point.
‘…a 1940s Cape Bretoner who loses her father, brother, and eventually her husband, to coal mining accidents.”
HAHAHAHA THAT IS SO FUCKING CANADIAN.*
*I am allowed to say this, I was basically a Canadian literature major.
'…a 1940s Cape Bretoner who loses her father, brother, and eventually her husband, to coal mining accidents."
HAHAHAHA THAT IS SO FUCKING CANADIAN.*
*I am allowed to say this, I was basically a Canadian literature major.
I have lived in Toronto, Montreal, and Manitoba, and I have met ALMOST no one who says “oot” or “aboot”. “Tarana,” or “Trahno” yes, “sorey,” yes, but what is with the “oot aboot” thing?? No one says it! Almost no one. Not me, anyway.
Everyone on the original Degrassi series. Sorry! That was my formative Canada experience and so I assumed you all talked that way!
It’s definitely a Degrassi thing. That and I can always tell when there is a Lifetime movie that’s been made in Canada because of it.
It's definitely a Degrassi thing. That and I can always tell when there is a Lifetime movie that's been made in Canada because of it.
I’m a Vancouver native now in Toronto (with a brief stint in Central Ontario), and to me the Ontario accent is more stereotypically “Canadian.” Central Ontario also has the Minnesotan-type accent (“hockey” becomes “hackey”) and I’ve also heard “oot” and “aboot”!