Streeters: Rants and Raves from This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Tamara Jones is Production Stage Manager/Operations Supervisor,
Entertainment Department, Paramount Canada’s Wonderland.

Streeters is a collection of Rick Mercer’s solo contributions to This
Hour Has 22 Minutes from 1993 to 1997. Mercer’s street rants focus on
political and social issues and find their most consistent targets among
Canada’s elites. How did they come into being? “I started yelling at
a TV camera once a week,” he writes, “and I haven’t shut up
since.”

In their transition from screen to page, the rants have lost none of
their punch. Mercer responds to the Bank of Montreal’s advertising
campaign that used Bob Dylan’s song “The Times They Are
A-Changin’” by noting: “What used to be an anthem against people
like the bank is now a jingle for the bank. And it’s a nice jingle,
too. If you listen carefully, you can actually hear the sound of Woody
Guthrie spinning in his grave.” In “Impressions of Washington,” he
reflections on the U.S.–Canada relationship: “Still, sometimes
you’d like to give them such a smack! ... erase this whole
elephant/mouse analogy. America is not an elephant. For one thing,
elephants never forget, whereas Americans don’t really know much to
begin with.”

Mercer has been called “one of Canada’s brilliant comedians and
social critics.” Streeters brilliantly confirms his reputation as
“Canada’s Unofficial Opposition.”