Live! With Regis....I mean....Kelly!...In Banff!

For those daytime talk show fans out there, most of you may know that Live! With Kelly is in Banff, Alberta with her show this week. I've been allowing CTV get me all hyped up with their ads. Yay, an American show is coming to Canada! That gives us validation and means that we're important! Yay! But seriously folks, I really was getting excited about this...even if the Reg wasn't coming along this year (anyone else miss Regis yelling things out randomly?).

I'm watching this morning and I'm noticing something. It's like Kelly has been trained in what to say to get the audience going. I'm sitting here too, smiling at the Canadian references she's dropping. She made the 'ol Regina sounds like something something joke. She even made her co-host wear a beaver hat right after. Haha. She went on about how her favourite obsession at the moment is poutine (well, that's a kinda a far stretch...we all know where you get the best poutine in Canada...Quebec!). But any ways, it's cool. It's cool. You know, maybe they like their poutine in Banff.

As I was watching this all unfold and watching the audience love every moment of her banter, I noticed her co-host looking more and more confused. As the crowds cheered Kelly after her Regina comment, I heard him mumble, "That's not a real place...is it?" And Kelly just nodded...knowing not to bring up what he just said as it might anger the crowds. As he was given the beaver hat to wear he got the joke, but I don't think he got the Canadian meaning of the beaver. As Kelly went on about poutine, again, he looked confused. Kelly explained to him, "It's Canadian french fries." I think I heard the uproar in Quebec from here in London when she said that. Every Canadian knows that it's more correctly, a FRENCH Canadian thing. You can get poutine here...but let's face it...it sucks! Not compared to the stuff I've had in Montreal and Ottawa (which is so close to the Quebec boarder that of course they're going to get it right).

Oh, and the craziest insult of all! The person they called for their daily contest was from New York. Kelly asked her if she'd ever been to Banff, and the lady responded, "Before you went, Kelly, I'd never heard of it." She was actually booed.

Now we all know how much Canadians just hate not being noticed. We want to be known for our accomplishments...our contributions to the world. We get annoyed when people ask us where our dog sleds are. If we have summer up here. If Canada is cold (um, yeah, anywhere with winter in the middle of February is going to be cold). I get asked loads of these questions when I venture south and people just have no idea.

But we're used to that, aren't we? We know how great our country is. I'd rather live in no other place. I love my free health care. I love how beautiful this place is. I love our seasons (even if construction is one of them...). Canada is number one in all of our eyes (didn't we prove that in Vancouver 2010?). And aren't we fifth on the World Happiness Report? Yeah! We love our country!

I would hate for the rest of the world to take away from this whole Live! With Kelly experience that we're uptight. We should be glad that Kelly made the effort to get to know some of the references that would make us laugh (even if her co-host was still clueless). Um, hello? We love that stuff! We eat it up! And the exposure that Banff, Alberta is getting is insane! I've never seen so many come visit Alberta commercials ever. And maybe that contest winner from New York will want to come up for a visit.

Ben Mulroney is her co-host tomorrow. So at least he'll understand all of the Canadian jokes. When Kelly said who was co-hosting tomorrow it was more of a, "yay?" rather than "YAAAAAAAYYYY!". 'Cause we all know how much we love our Mulroneys! Right? Naw, just kidding. Enjoy the show, Canada. It's nice to see Canada on an American stage once in a while.