Harold Ramis was an hono(u)rary Canadian:
Those of us who grew up watching Harold Ramis on SCTV — before the show was a glint in America’s eye — surely feel particularly pained by his passing.
As a teen, I just assumed Ramis was Canadian, or at the very least, a draft dodger.
(Which he was, but that’s not what he was doing up here.)
SCTV, like Monty Python’s Flying Circus, was one of those TV shows that made my crappy adolescence worth living.
My Catholic school friends and I conversed easily in SCTV catchphrases; my husband and I still do.
There are situations, even (make that “especially”) serious ones, when yelling “Sell 40 shares!” or “I’m the guy with the snake on his face” strikes us as the most apt initial reaction, conveying more meaning in fewer words than anything we can think up ourselves.
Americans reached for Chris Farley references to describe Rob Ford, but my fellow Gen-X Torontonians were more inclined to recall John Candy as Mayor Tommy Shanks.
While not quite as unbreachable as Navaho, SCTV lingo could serve as a crude Canadians-only code in a pinch, perhaps during some admittedly unlikely Pueblo-type incident.
