May 14th, 2008
Your Dad Wasn’t A Metrosexual: But His Best Buddy Was
Mmmmm. Retrosexual masculinity. Served in a rocks glass. Effortless. Unselfconscious. Dated.
It tastes just like your… dad.
Unlike you, of course. You moisturize. Go to the gym. Watch what you eat. Fret about whether you’re worthy of love. Worry about what masculinity actually means. And taste of tea-tree oil and lavender.
If only we could bring those days back: days when you could operate heavy machinery and speedboats pissed out of your mind. When no one thought you might be homo. When the only magazines you bought were Angling Times and Penthouse. When women couldn’t keep their hands off you even though you had no dress sense, smelt bad and your hair was full of lard.
And when toned, topless, tweaking 1970s hustlers checked themselves out in rest room mirrors while waiting for their next married punter. (Yes, that picture caught my eye too.)
Canadan Club: for the the man who, like most men today, is on the outside looking in. Aching to be sold back by advertising the very thing that advertising has deprived him of. How many of the men reading this ad today even speak to their dad, or know what he drinks?
As I have pointed out before, it’s a measure of how self-conscious and mediated masculinity is now that ‘real guys’ whatever they were/are now just another annoying fad. Faux retro.
On the rocks.
Tip: Fresca Davis

May 15th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Thought you’d like that–you sure did it justice.
(What did Capt. Kirk taste of?)
May 15th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Spock.
May 16th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Touché!
May 17th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Good point, Mr.Simpson. My dad is 65 and he recently ran his 27th marathon. During his youth, he served as a military aid in Vietnam, and he fought in the 1980s in Mozambique as liutenant-colonel in the U.N peace troops. He smokes thick cigars, drinks whiskey on the rocks, and grew up in a World where boys weared pants and girls weared skirts adn there was no gender confusion whatsoever. Dads over age 55 are the last real men left. When the last one of them dies, all there will be left are women and pseudo-males. Freud did say once that dads are the ultimate figures of masculinity, and he was right.
May 17th, 2008 at 6:50 am
I see these ads all over Toronto and love ‘em.
Soon to be released:
“Your mother wore sunglasses occationally for a reason - - - Danm right your dad drank it!”
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:55 pm
It may be irrelevant, but can i just point out that Canadian Club is actually a pretty rubbish whisky?
May 24th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I don’t think it’s irrelevant - CC are trying to make a virtue out of their rubbishness, at the same time as trying to depict themselves as stylishly anti-stylish.
I do it all the time.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Mark, I meant to contact you back when I first saw this ad.
Back when Bertie, then POW, was touring the US in 20’s, your one-time king-for-ten months composed the following doggerel:
Four and twenty Yankees feeling mighty dry
went across the border to get a drink of rye!
When the rye was open the Yanks began to sing
“God bless America, but God Save the King!”
I’m a Crown Royal man myself
June 12th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Republicanism is enough to drive anyone to drink. Even to Canada.