Rick Mercer is one of Canada’s most respected television writers and performers, and his career has successfully melded the quintessentially Canadian traditions of sketch comedy and political satire. But his contribution to the social and cultural landscape of Canada goes far beyond his considerable ability to entertain. Whether directed toward the perceived social and political arrogance of mainland Canada toward his home province of Newfoundland or contained within a wicked send-up of the network television production industry, Mercer’s satire not only is informed by social and political issues but also unmercifully dismantles them, revealing the underlying pretensions, contradictions, and absurdities. In 2000, for example, while still appearing as a regular on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC’s) news satire This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Mercer called for a national referendum to decide the issue of whether ultraconservative primeministerial candidate Stockwell Day should be forced to change his first name to Doris. Mercer justified the position by citing Day’s own platform, which included support for staging a national referendum whenever as few as 3 percent of Canadians called for one.

The roots of Mercer’s irreverent and antiestablishment comedy lay in Newfoundland, both Mercer’s birthplace and home to the legendary CODCO comedy troupe. His early stage work found him in the same local theaters as several of CODCO’s founding members, including Mary Walsh and Cathy Jones, with whom Mercer would later work on the long-running CBC production This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Mercer broke onto the national scene in the early 1990s, writing and performing several critically acclaimed one-man plays that established the foundations for his career as a “professional ranter.”

Mercer’s eight years on This Hour Has 22 Minutes (named for the legendary Canadian public affairs program This Hour Has Seven Days), built his reputation as Canada’s most indignant and incisive comic actor. But if its 1960s predecessor was often considered controversial for topics and approaches to stories that explored the boundaries of journalistic autonomy, This Hour Has 22 Minutes pushed the envelope even further by pointedly subverting some of Canada’s most entrenched public institutions, including broadcast journalism itself. Mercer’s contributions were among the show’s most subversive and the most popular. One of the Mercer trademarks was “Streeters,” two-minute tirades shot in grainy black-and-white film on the Halifax, Nova Scotia, waterfront, which featured an outraged Mercer venting the collective spleen of every Canadian who had ever been angered by the duplicity of federal politicians or the petty tyranny of bank tellers.

“Talking to Americans” would take Mercer’s angry-young-man act on the road. As a regular segment on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, “Talking to Americans” had Mercer traveling to major U.S. cities and recruiting unsuspecting victims to participate in seemingly benign “man on the street” interviews that collected American opinions on Canada’s geography, politics, and culture. Topics ranged from whether Canada should be forced to outlaw the polar bear slaughter in Toronto (though no polar bears live in this cosmopolitan urban center of some 2.5 million people) to whether Americans should embark on a bombing campaign against Bouchard (not a place but a person: Lucien Bouchard, the former leader of the Bloc Quebecois, the party advocating separation from Canada for French-speaking Quebec). The dismal failure of even American politicians to grasp fundamental facts about Canada emerged in the now infamous “Jean Poutine” episode. At a press event held by then–presidential candidate George W. Bush, Mercer asked the Texas Republican to comment on the support for his presidential run pledged by Canada’s prime minister, Jean Poutine. Bush’s unfortunate public failure to recall that the Canadian leader’s real name is Jean Chretien was compounded only by the fact that “poutine” is actually a fast-food item, popular in Quebec, consisting of french fries covered in gravy and melted cheese curds. This Hour Has 22 Minutes’ cameras captured the entire episode, much to the delight of the perpetually marginalized Canadian television audience.

An hour-long “Talking to Americans” compilation special gained the highest ratings in Canadian broadcasting history for a comedy show, while a text-based version of Streeters was published in 1998. Mercer’s eight years on This Hour would also net him 12 Gemini Awards for writing and performing as well as several Canadian Comedy Awards. He has also won regional awards in Canada for journalism and for contributions to the arts in Atlantic Canada.

While Mercer has proven his mettle as a stage actor, political satirist, news commentator, and news maker, in 1998 he turned his talents to writing and starring in a situation comedy. Made in Canada gleefully lampoons the Canadian private television production industry. Richard Strong, Mercer’s character, is head of production (a position earned by drugging and framing his brother-in-law and boss) at “Pyramid/Prodigy Productions,” where unbridled office politics and sleazy corporate competition provide the backdrop for Mercer’s character’s quest to destroy his enemies while churning out lamentably bad Canadian television for American syndication. Mercer has called the role a modern-day Richard III and characteristically subverts television convention by engaging the viewer in playful side commentary made directly into the camera. During the 2001–02 season, Made in Canada boasted cameos from a virtual “Who’s Who” of Canadian film and television actors, journalists, and media industry executives, all of whom seemed only too happy to be in on the joke that the series makes of the Canadian private TV industry.

But if Mercer’s career sometimes appears as a quixotic campaign to use television and journalism to expose the many flaws and ironies in Canadian political, social, and cultural life, it is also redolent with a seemingly sincere fondness and curiosity about the nation’s cultural heritage and institutions. As the host of It Seems Like Yesterday for Canada’s History Television Network, Mercer narrates half-hour retrospectives looking at newsworthy weeks in 20th-century history, emphasizing events and matters of particular importance to Canadians. In 1992 Secret Nation brought Mercer together with a collection of fellow Newfoundland artists, writers, and actors in a deft mystery exploring a fictional British-Canadian plot to sabotage a referendum, forcing Newfoundland into con federation with the rest of Canada in the 1940s. Mercer also routinely lends his considerable talents to hosting awards shows and CBC specials, appearing as a special guest on children’s programs and at comedy festivals.