Rene Roy from Canada writes: What do you think about the Canadian Tire Guy being dumped?
Leah: I just heard about that. It’s kind of sad.
I’m glad Rene Roy asked this important question during last week’s Globe and Mail chat with Leah McLaren, what with boring topics like Crash-lash and intra- and extra-office romance getting all the press. 🙂 But I have to weigh in, and now’s as good a time as any: nothing against Ted Simonett or Gloria Slade, but their Canadian Tire couple ads were nothing but a ripoff of Home Hardware’s long-running earlier campaign featuring Keith Kemps and Kaya McGregor.
Kaya and Keith were superior in every way: they had realistic relationships and conversations between themselves and their neighbours, they weren’t obnoxiously condescending, and they each had (sometimes unexpected) strengths and weaknesses. (Among other things, I love the fact that she was the handy one.) I bought their characters and characterizations so much that I wrote to Stuart McLean at one point suggesting that, should his Vinyl Cafe stories ever be filmed, Keith and Kaya would be shoo-ins to play Dave and Morley.
So, with all due respect to Leah McLaren, good riddance to the CTC. May they be cursed with spending eternity with Canadian Tire’s equally- and always-obnoxious Scrooge and Santa.
