Perry's Pen

Canadians love to define themselves, often in contrast to our neighbours to the south. We pride ourselves on civility, on a certain progressive outlook, and yes, sometimes we enjoy an “Elbows Up” moment when discussing American politics. The rise of figures like Donald Trump often sparks a collective head-scratching north of the border, leading to pronouncements about how “that could never happen here.”

But what happens when our own national narrative gets tangled in a decidedly un-Canadian knot of corporate power and sporting triumph?

Enter the Toronto Blue Jays. “Canada’s team,” they proudly proclaim, and as they charge towards a potential World Series victory, the nation is indeed rallying. Flags fly, jerseys are donned, and a collective sense of pride swells from St. John’s to Victoria.

Except for two rather significant details.

The First Irony: The Corporate Hand

The Blue Jays are owned by Rogers Communications. For many Canadians, the name evokes not warmth and fuzzy feelings, but rather exasperation over cell phone bills, internet outages, and a general sense of monolithic corporate control. Rogers is often high on the list of “most disliked corporations” in the country. They are the epitome of the corporate entity Canadians love to complain about. Many people refer to Rogers as “ROBBERS“.

And yet, here we are. “Canada’s team,” a powerful marketing slogan, is doing exactly what it’s designed to do: uniting the country under a single banner, masking — or perhaps, cleverly leveraging — the underlying corporate ownership.

Rogers stock has done quite well since their Toronto Blue Jays have done well in the playoffs:

Rogers Communications Inc Cl B NV (RCI-B-T)

The Second Irony: The Insult to True Canadian Teams

This is where the marketing slogan moves from clever to frankly insulting. The “Canada’s team” label is aggressively applied to a Blue Jays roster that often features zero, or perhaps one or two, actual Canadian players. The stars, the coaches, the management—they are overwhelmingly American or from other countries, assembled through the global free market of MLB.

A stunning act of corporate appropriation

To take a team with such a low percentage of Canadian content and plaster the national identity all over it is a stunning act of corporate appropriation. It cheapens the meaning of “Canada’s team” by ignoring the actual completely Canadian teams who put everything on the line for the flag.

Think about the 2002 Canadian Olympic Hockey Team—the true “Canada’s Team.” Every player, from Joe Sakic to Mario Lemieux, was Canadian. They weren’t just representing a city or a corporation; they were representing the country in a moment of pure, unadulterated national pride, with the entire world watching.

Canada’s Gold winning 2002 hockey team represented parents getting up before down for years on end, making sacrifices that hit close to the bone. They represented a Canadian accomplishment – finally bringing home the gold after half a century, and it tool ALL of us.

The 2002 Team Canada victory wasn’t a marketing tool; it was a cultural event.

Blue Jays: A carefully engineered distraction

By contrast, the Blue Jays’ moniker feels less like a rallying cry and more like a carefully engineered distraction. It asks Canadians to suspend their corporate grievances and forget the lack of Canadian representation on the field, all for the sake of the Rogers marketing department.

This is the ultimate irony: We might criticize the US for embracing political figures who seem to ignore the common good, yet we readily embrace a corporate narrative that co-opts our national identity for profit, choosing a product (the Jays) over the principle (true Canadian representation).

“Canada’s Team” is not what it seems

As the Blue Jays chase their dream, let’s enjoy the ride. But let’s also perhaps ponder the subtle ways our own narratives of national pride and corporate skepticism intertwine. Because sometimes, “Canada’s team” is a lot more complicated—and a lot less Canadian—than it seems.

The hangover is going to be expensive, Canada.

PS: Is THIS Team Canada?