Many Americans were thrilled when Mike Myers returned to Saturday Night Live last month to mock Elon Musk. But as LateNighter’s man in Canada Bill Brioux explains, it was Myers putting out the bat signal to his fellow Canucks during the show’s goodnights that’s made an outsized impact north of the border.
Canadians are rightfully pissed right now. We don’t know how to behave; we can’t believe we’re being attacked by Doctor Evil.
So, yes, Mike Myers—elbows up.
Seeing the Scarborough, Ontario-born comedian re-emerge three weeks ago on Saturday Night Live and proudly display his “Canada is not For Sale” T-shirt was, for many of us, a late night moment of Zen.
That was topped moments later when Myers snuck in that double-secret “elbows up” signal. (He repeated it when he returned the following week.) This was, to put it in American terms, Paul Revere territory. We all got the message and replayed it over and over and over.
Thank you, @Shanemgillis, Tate McRae, and Mike Myers! Goodnight! pic.twitter.com/Lm5PNYwwDV
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 2, 2025
For those not in the know: the phrase “elbows up” comes from hockey, that ever-so-Canadian sport, and legendarily tough Canadian player Gordie Howe, who famously used his elbows to protect himself and create space on the ice.
Know this: Canadians go bananas when anybody on American television notices us. We loved it when The Simpsons did a whole episode about Howe, even if he broke Edna Krabappel’s heart. We are a bit needy that way. When it is one of ours who made it big in the States, that really scores, especially in the midst of a long, cold, and painfully stupid winter. We needed Austin Powers to take on Goldmember, and he stepped up. Yeah, Baby.
Sure, Myers hasn’t lived in the north for a long time. But his unending allegiance to the Toronto Maple Leafs—an NHL team that hasn’t won a Stanley Cup since Neil Young was, well, young—has bought him decades of sympathy. He knows how to stick with a cause.
Suddenly a Canadian election is called in the middle of this crisis, and a new prime minister needs a way to cut through an epidemic of fake news. He enlists Myers to record a minute-long video with him that blows up on social media. The clip sees Myers by the boards with new PM Carney (whom he openly endorsed in a second video released Monday), wearing a red and white hockey sweater (not a jersey). The name and number on the back: “Never 51.”
You have no idea what a rallying moment this has been.
Myers, of course, also gave us “Wayne’s World.” Another Wayne, Gretzky, used to be our Captain Canada. Now we’re booing him off the ice. He’s too cozy with Mr. Mar-A-Lago. A month ago, he tapped gloves past the American bench before dropping the puck at the finals of the Four Nations hockey tournament. If his hero Gordie Howe were alive, he would elbow that sheepish grin right off Gretz’s face. He’d be spitting chicklets from here to Saskatchewan.
This is no time to be on the fence. We’re waiting for Ryan Reynolds to step up. If John Candy was here he’d Uncle Buck Trump’s ass all the way up Schitt’s Creek.
What we appreciate is that things have gotten real and that there are consequences. Myers has waded into a white-hot moment on both sides of the border. Wayne and Garth would likely be deported out of their mom’s basement. Shrek would be banished from the kingdom.
And that is the whole, glorious thing about Myers stepping up. The notion that when our best comedians come face-to-face with the ridiculous, they go to war.
Nobody has lampooned more injustice in the last half century than Lorne Michaels. Several of our stay-at-home comedians, such as veteran road warrior Ron James and This Hour Has 22 Minutes frontman Mark Critch, have gained many new fans from pulling the emperor’s pants way down. Sketch troupes such as The Royal Canadian Air Farce dropped F-bombs (a mess of smelly goo that fell from the sky) on portraits of Trump even before he was first elected. If there were tariffs on satire, there would be a serious imbalance in trade.
In these touchy times, however, taking sides is a showbiz taboo. Besides elbows, you need elbow pads, or at least an armour of goodwill. Remember when Myers was sandbagged next to Kanye West when the latter blurted a televised attack on President George W. Bush in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? That wasn’t Myers fight, and he kept elbows down.
In Canada, the comedian has signalled his affection in ways silly as well as profound. His Netflix series from 2022, The Pentaverate, was built around, and excuse the redundancy, one of the most obscure Canadian TV personalities ever. His name was Glenn Cochrane. Nobody, outside of Myers and about a dozen people who grew up in Toronto in the ‘70s, remember this guy. However, if you were to build a good news reporter out of toques, Tim Bits and Maple syrup, and top him with hair that looked like it was cut by a rusty skate blade, that was Glenn Cochrane.
Despite or perhaps because of his decades in America, Myers gets that Canadians are different. He loves that there is a border, but he also feels at home, and among friends, in both countries. He understands that Canadians say “sorry” instead of “excuse me,” but he also is ready with the elbows when provoked. We love him for it and can only add a sign-off you occasionally hear from ex-NHLers: “helmet on.”
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