Canada's Got 99 Problems But A Governor Gretzky Ain't One

Wayne's not worthy.

Wayne Gretzky, seen here with dressing room attendant Joey Moss, had much better taste in friends in his youth. (Screengrab)

There was no Christmas miracle at Mar-a-Lago this year. Neither the ghost of former partner in crime Roy Cohn nor the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come appear to have appeared at Grampa Scrooge’s aromatic bed chamber to frighten him into changing his evil ways, and the guy certainly didn’t summon Little Marco first thing in the morning to go find some big ol’ turkeys to send as last-minute gifts to E. Jean Carroll, Ruby Freeman, Shaye Moss, Stormy Daniels, or any of the other many, many, many people he’s wronged over the years.

Instead, Donald J. Trump marked Jesus H. Christ’s birthday by once again babbling about his wet dream of seizing Greenland, Panama, and/or Canada. To give the dotard his due, he at least managed to find a new angle for his regularly scheduled trolling of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — that if he doesn’t accept Trump’s ad nauseam offers to let him remain the “Governor” of Canada should the country find itself forcefully grabbed by the pussy, then the job could simply go instead to retired hockey great Wayne Gretzky.

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Here’s how the Very Stable Genius presented his latest stupid idea on his boss’s failing social media platform:

I just left Wayne Gretzky, “The Great One” as he is known in Ice Hockey circles. I said, “Wayne, why don’t you run for Prime Minister of Canada, soon to be known as the Governor of Canada - You would win easily, you wouldn’t even have to campaign.” He had no interest, but I think the people of Canada should start a DRAFT WAYNE GRETZKY Movement. It would be so much fun to watch!

The comedy stylings of Von ShitzInPantz, ladies and gentlemen. Try to imagine for a moment you are Justin Trudeau. It’s Christmas Day but also your 53rd birthday. Your wife doesn’t love you anymore and neither does the country you’ve devoted your life to, with the latest polls saying 69 percent of citizens think you should please go away now. (No word on if Sophie is one of them.) You can’t even go for a walk in the snow and ask for advice from one of the very few people to have been in a similar situation, your own father, because he died when you were only 28 years old. All you want to do is take a break from this awful new reality by spending a few days shredding powder in BC, and you start the day to this fucking bullshit from the president-elect of a nation meant to be the country’s closest friend and ally.

It’s been a hell of a fall from when Bobby Brainworm’s uncle had this to say about the special relationship between the two countries when visiting back in 1961:

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.

Trudeau finally stopped turning the other cheek after putting up with governor “jokes” for nearly a month, waiting until Boxing Day to respond with a light diplomatic counterjab:

Some information about Canada for Americans.

The six-minute video narrated by Tom Brokaw originally aired in the buildup to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games as a reminder to dimmer NBC viewers perhaps unaware that Canada is actually not the unofficial 51st state but an entirely different country. It’s pure patriotic pablum and, funnily enough, the polar opposite of a clip from the film Canadian Bacon embedded in a post two weeks ago that imagined a proto-Fox News outlet cooking up propaganda to sell Americans on the necessity of invading their northern neighbors.

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Although Brokaw made a good observation about a fundamental difference between the two countries at the end when he mentioned to a co-host that the prime minister at the time, Stephen Harper, felt compelled to tell Canadians it’s actually not rude to demonstrate a bit of national pride during the frickin Olympics and wave the flag a little, eh. It’s hard to imagine it would’ve ever occured to Dubya to remind Americans it’s OK to chant “U.S.A! U.S.A!” at the Salt Lake City Olympics.

Not that the NHL’s all-time leading scorer would even be a shoo-in with Dear Leader’s fantasy of turning the country into Wayne’s World. The cliché of Canadians being obsessed with the best game you can name is widely accurate but there aren’t many cases of hockey royalty parlaying their prowess on the ice into a political career.

The best example is Ken Dryden, a bookish goalie who was between the pipes when Team Canada narrowly defeated the Soviet Union in the Summit Series exhibition tournament back in 1972, which was essentially our Cold War-era version of the moon landing with most of the country glued to their TV screens. The Tragically Hip even did a song about it.

Dryden, who has SIX Stanley Cup rings to the Great One’s mere four, even planned ahead and took a year off from tending the net for the Montreal Canadiens mid-career to earn a law degree, and won his first foray into federal politics by a landslide in 2004 before being named the new Liberal minister of social development. But that was as high as he climbed, and the Hockey Hall of Famer lost his Toronto seat seven years later to Mark Adler, a Conservative MP best remembered today for lying about being the son of Holocaust survivors while campaigning in an electoral district with a large Jewish population.

Gretzky wasn’t even the first overall pick when he was drafted as a skinny teenager. Wayner went third overall in 1977 to the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in what is now the Ontario Hockey League after being chosen behind Tom McCarthy, who at least had a legitimate NHL career, and Steve Peters, who most definitely did not.

To be fair, the pride of Brantford made the shortlist of a much ballyhooed CBC contest in the early aughts to choose the “Greatest Canadian” but ultimately came in last among the 10 finalists. Which happens to have been seven spots behind Justin Trudeau’s aforementioned papa. The winner was NDP leader Tommy Douglas, a socialist from Saskatchewan known as the founding father of the country’s universal healthcare system and best known outside the country for being Shirley MacLaine’s dad Keifer Sutherland’s grandfather. (This post has been updated to correct misinformation about the head Dipper’s family tree.)

This was twenty years ago when memories of Gretzky’s on-ice magic were still fresh in people’s minds, and it’s hard to imagine his stock has gone up much in the years since. Certainly the growing public awareness of his relationship with his treasonous golf buddy is unlikely to help. But, as much as Canadians love watching elite hockey players in action, we like being able to receive essential medical care without going bankrupt even more.

[CBC / Foreign Policy / Nothing but Blue Sky]