Evan here, Miss D-list internet girl herself. My colleague David and I are pulling double duty on this story, but you’re stuck with me in the writer’s seat for the first leg of this word trip.

Now then, who wants to talk about meme pages?

Looking at the body of my written work at Arthur, a couple patterns emerge to the attentive reader. Over the past two years of my employment at this small-but-scrappy publication, I have written extensively about the Internet. I am professedly obsessed with internet culture. It is a phenomenon incomprehensible in its vastness yet intuitive by virtue of its ubiquity.

Living as I do, in a semi-small-town Ontarian city still proximal to Toronto affords anyone with a bit of time to kill (or even a passing interest in history) an inexhaustible font of interesting curiosities. Peterborough’s got its fair share of notable landmarks in the form of a derelict General Electric factory, a Canoe Museum, a masonic lodge, a university campus designed by Ron Thom, and more goddamn churches than you can shake a barrel of sacramental wafers at. If we have a mascot it’s undoubtedly the Quaker Oats factory, the cinnamon-smelling crown jewel of the downtown. That, or the insipid lift lock which finds itself on almost every piece of touristic paraphernalia. What I’m trying to get at is that Peterborough possesses no shortage of fondly reminisced-upon institutions or buildings with their own apocryphal tales.

It makes sense then, that @canada.gov.ca caught my eye.

The account has remained a subject of perennial interest to myself and my colleague, David. Scrolling through the account’s feed, one finds an archive of Canadiana. Within the limitations afforded by Instagram’s maximum of ten slides and limit of 2,200 characters per caption, the account—listed as a “Tea Room” in Instagram’s business category settings—documents lesser-known elements of Canadian history, and cultural artifacts now forgotten or overlooked. This account, positioned at the intersection of my interest in the online and the memetic, and the unquenchable thirst for historical trivia which abides in everyone who grew up listening to The Tragically Hip, represented a novel mélange of interests I’d scarce expect to find outside of a Cultural Studies class or ArchiveOfOurOwn.org.

Outside of the informational posts and the occasional batch of Canadian-concocted memes, the account’s Instagram story is periodically punctuated by a sort of documentary practice undertaken by the administrator. Signs, scenery, and thrift store finds will populate the dozens of story slides, depicting curiosities lost and found all chronicling his journeys around the country. With this method, the Admin performs a rather peculiar form of signalling to his followers: posting a particular location or symbol of a place to let his followers decipher where he’s at. It was thus that on a dreary March evening, the admin had posted a slurry of vintage Petes’ jerseys, adorning the hallowed halls of the Memorial Centre.

Sitting in David’s apartment, making mac and cheese and prepping to watch Evangelion 1.00: You Can (Not) Redo, we got ourselves a crazy idea: why not interview the admin? I have interviewed meme pages before. I’m even friends with several people who collectively post to an audience of tens—if not hundreds—of thousands. These run the gamut from grad students, to professional acquaintances, to prolific shitposters. A number of them are all three. Really, what did we have to lose?

Later that same night it so happened that he posted a picture of the shuffleboard table at The Only Cafe, a Peterborough institution which myself and David patronize with notorious regularity. With that, we had ourselves an in.

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At three in the afternoon on March 10th, I sent the above direct message to, as I called him, “Mr. Gov dot ca,” surreptitiously mentioning my recognition of the shuffleboard table at a certain reputed Peterbar. Within four hours, he responded to confirm his interest. Now we were getting somewhere. We corresponded back and forth that evening before finally settling on a time to meet.

It was only fitting that it should take place at The Only. 

It was a grey, gloomy Saturday—a Peterborough standard—and the patch was only beginning to bustle as we stood outside. We joined the staff on a smoke break as we milled about, scarfing down our earlier-acquired bubble tea, lest we get kicked out for bringing outside food in. At this point I momentarily handed off proceedings to my esteemed colleague, myself being no good at this “socializing” business. I’ll take this opportunity then, to do the same for writing duty.

Godspeed, the Dave.

 The admin approached the cafe unassumingly, having corresponded to us that he’d be wearing an “Anne Murray cap,” and I, being the more outwardly insane of the pair, soy-pointed and yelled something along the lines of “yooooo, canada.gov.ca!” in recognition. I was wearing my uniform of denim jacket and Carhartt toque I wear with sitcom-esque regularity. Evan was wearing a white, ragged-cropped hoodie from a transfem artist whom we mutually admire, emblazoned across the chest with the declaratory statement “GIRL FAG.” Together we’d have made quite the sight for any Hunter Street passers-by.

After making our introductions with the admin and his fiancé, we slunk inside to sit down to business. Luckily for us, the crow’s nest lay vacant, so we laid claim to the best seat in the house.

“It was my first game,” the admin confessed of the Petes game postings that tipped us off. As we waited for our drinks to pour—coffee for myself, him and Ev each grabbing a pint—he added: “I’m definitely a Petes’ guy now.”

The admin is your standard Anglo-Canadian guy: thrifted camping sweater, aforementioned cap, a propensity for blue jeans. He’s a Fredericton boy, and he talks as such with that slight east-coast twang. Online he goes by Jason Robichaud, a facetious portmanteau he got from bashing together “the worst Anglo white-boy hockey name and the most Acadian surname you can think of.” At first glance, you wouldn’t take him for the curator responsible for maintaining and steering a project of such calibre, yet when he starts to talk, he hits the ground running. While we’d prepared questions over lunch that morning, we sure as hell didn’t need ‘em. 

He sussed us out initially, asking “So, you guys undergrads?” and chatting about our respective paths in life. somehow he even managed to coax from me my position of being in the midst of resuming my educational career after around seven years of dicking around. 

Mr. Admin reassured me. “It took me fourteen years to do my undergrad,” he said with a chuckle.

The admin gave us a little peek into his background, fleshing out the personal basis for his account. His passion for what he does is evident. You can tell he’s a natural storyteller, absolutely at home in weaving this great tapestry for us as we sat in the crow’s nest, awestruck by this great mythical figure that had dominated the feeds of us and our friends alike. He was very down-to-earth and matter-of-fact, two attributes lost to the monotony of the toneless Internet. 

It was like talking to an old friend. The man has little ego about what he does, despite how much he admits to loving attention. What started as a joke username he snagged for shits and giggles has grown beyond its initial confines, gaining a following of way over 50,000 people. As he’s happy to point out, “Canada.gov.ca” is a completely made-up domain. Type the URL into your browser and it’ll scream that you’ve made a typo. This, in effect, has become part of his whole schtick.

The admin and his fiancé told us of the account’s humble beginnings as a bit, from how he’d been building it up from all of nil followers in 2017, to how out of control it’s become today. The early years were a process of experimentation, of finding what is now his trademark flair. Along the way, there were false starts, detours, and decisions born of a cheery “why not?” attitude. Mr. Robichaud even confided in us that back in the day he’d done “brand endorsements” (via coupon codes) for an online dispensary who—to sweeten the pot—sent him copious amounts of pot.

“I can’t believe I ever got away with promoting dope on the account,” he confessed with a laugh.

This was back when weed had only just been legalized in Canada, and as he reminisced he pondered the legality of slinging hash on an American website. “I probably could have gotten in a lot of trouble,” he mused. “I mean, the account coulda been shut down.”

Needless to say, our conversation went everywhere. The admin is full of Trivial Pursuit answers to his own questions, yet the segue from one topic to another was so natural, almost second-nature. 

Just as he was beginning to expound upon the circumstances by which k.d. lang sued the Rolling Stones, a friend of the account, Cam Maclean, broached the nest, welcomed with a raucous chorus of applause as befitting such a beloved recurring character. Cam occupies a storied place on the canada.gov.ca account, playing songs and covers which are featured on the account’s story fairly frequently. On this evening he sported no guitar, however, though he did bear a couple of gifts for the admin: a copy of the Perth County Conspiracy’s live record Alive, and a generously-laden LCBO gift card. 

Quickly, he handed off the gifts and pulled up a chair, offering to grab us refills as he did. Not missing a single beat, the admin began an impromptu lecture on the Perth County Conspiracy —a band which (by their own proclamation) did not exist, insofar as having practically no permanent members, playing just about anywhere that would take them, and once infamously touring on two different routes in opposing directions concurrently, such that their fans had no clue which was the “real” PCC. Maybe neither was. As we wrapped up the spirited discussion of Southwestern Ontario jam bands, Cam asked if we had any requests.

“You have a radio show, you should be all over this thing!” the admin jeered at me. This fun fact had been coming up a lot.

“Constant Craving,” I sputtered. How fitting.

They nodded in unison, and shortly after, Cam left us to our dirty work.

The community reporter in me jumped at the chance to ask about his connections to Peterborough, as previously observed, he’d been in town a lot as of late.

 “Peterborough has been one of the most responsive groups of followers to my content,” Robichaud said. He added that whenever he posts about Peterborough or anything tangentially related to it, he gets oodles of messages from followers, either recognizing it or providing additional context to the relevant content. 

“Maybe this is the perfect kind of town, and maybe if I weren't from the Maritimes, this could be a town in the Maritimes, just like how Fredericton could be a town in Ontario,” he told us.

Robichaud loves fan interactions like these: the admin frequently professed his adoration for his fans and followers, citing that they’re the “best in the world” and it has made his love for what he does grow exponentially with the community he’s curated through his account. He connects with others through posting and establishing an understanding of a Canadiana unseen. At several points, we got diverted by lengthy conversations about the nebulous network of semi-famous Instagram accounts and the somewhat insular community therein of ones unabashed in their Canadianism.

After some back-and-forth about our beloved grocery monopoly, Jason urged us to stress the nature of the account to our readership. This was where the floodgates opened. We had reached the last bastion of our interview: the polarizing opinions finally started to bear fulsome fruit as the admin began to describe the political underpinnings of his account. 

 “This country kind of sucks,” he declared. “This is not a pro-Canada account. This is a pro-people account.” This aspect of @canada.gov.ca lends itself well to the satirical overview of current Canadian events that the admin employs, but he also isn’t afraid to get seriously political on his account, citing his postings about the violence in Mi'kmaq fisheries in Nova Scotia back in the autumn of 2020.

“I mean, in the ’60s, there was this cool thing where we didn't really have a culture. All of the poets were Jewish immigrants, and the best artists were people of colour,” he said, gesturing to himself, “While I look like him, the “I Am Canadian” guy is a lie!”

The admin explains that we’re being sold a white-washed culture that’s prepackaged for mass consumption, and we’re buying into it. @canada.gov.ca does everything to dismantle this by documenting a Canada that is far more full of life and colour than the sterilized version we are bottle-fed. “People stick around for my politics, ‘cause I take shots at everybody,” he explained. “It’s a bit harder for Jagmeet Singh, but sometimes he’s the worst because we need him the most.”

Mr. Robichaud knows his appeal and uses his audience to his advantage, be it through the means of shitposting or earnest plea, all winding back to the sincere, passionate engagement between the admin and his little community.

As the night wore on and the raucous din of The Only on a Saturday night got louder, we concluded our night with a ceremonial smoke. We then thanked Mr. Robichaud and his betrothed, going our separate ways shortly thereafter. David and I returned to the crow’s nest to go over our notes and demolish two gargantuan plates of bar snacks. 

“This was such a good idea,” David mumbled, covered in cracker crumbs after having already scavenged all dozen pickles before I’d so much as had the chance to taste one. Glancing over at the bar’s TV playing the Super Metroid title screen, we went about our general business, discussing what direction this particular story would take. 

This is not where the night ended, though, with Mr. Robichaud inviting us over to the coveted shuffleboard table, only to summarily kick our asses. On that exact same shuffleboard that tipped us off initially.

When it was all said and done, we were left with a profound sense of what @canada.gov.ca and its admin mean, especially to us, but more-so to its audience, the people of the real Canada, not some wish-wash bundle of niceties that graciously afford us more war-crimes than you can shake a banana at. The people that weave the tapestry of Canadian culture should be people like @canada.gov.ca and B.A. Johnston, the underdogs in the fight against the actualized Canadian self that only lives to serve the dynasty failsons: the Westons, the Fords, and the Trudeaus, wealthy manchildren of a certain ilk that tumble into politics, silver spoon in hand, and tell us to buy overpriced groceries or die starving. 

@canada.gov.ca is a carefully crafted ode to a living Canada, one full of Peterboroughs and Frederictions, and the people that have breathed life into its beautiful cultural story. We (the people of Peterborough) are merely a patch in this quilt. There is so much more to Canadian identity than some white guy shouting for a beer commercial, and we are so much more than our habits of consumption.

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