Thank you, Tate McRae, for our new favourite meme
We’re all “Canada down”
People were pretty upset when notably Canadian pop singer Tate McRae starred in an ad promoting Team USA at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. We include ourselves when we say “people,” because why would she do that, especially amid US President Donald Trump’s continued “51st state” rhetoric? And her home province’s growing separatist movement? Read the room, Tate! You’re from Calgary. Like the name of the song you put on your own album?
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After backlash, she apologized, sort of, by posting a childhood photo to Instagram. In it, she’s holding a Canadian flag, and she attached a caption—now heard ’round social media—insisting, “Y’all know I’m Canada down.”
Everything happens for a reason, and if McRae’s treasonous Olympics ad at the worst possible geopolitical time is what needed to occur in exchange for days of hilarious additions to the internet lexicon, so be it. McRae’s caption has inspired a nostalgic cascade of niche Canadian references, some of which we’ve pulled below. Remember B44? They’d never forget their roots like this.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
