In a new tune, the creators of ‘Come From Away’ sing the praises of Canada

David Hein and Irene Sankoff, whose display gained a Tony award in 2017, produced “This Is Canada Great” very last month. The music celebrates the country’s enjoyable attributes. A sample lyric: “NICE as the Rock and the Rockies, extensive the prairie sky, as higher as Niagara Falls — hey dude, check out out OUR aspect!” For the 90-2nd animated video clip, the pair teamed up with Location Canada, the country’s official tourism business office Wanderlust, a layout studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia and a variety of Canadian personalities, like “Come From Away” forged members, an illustrious Quebecois drag queen and the country’s to start with female astronaut. (The latter types contributed their voices to the challenge.) The married few, who are hunkering down in Ontario with their 7-12 months-previous daughter, have been sort plenty of to go over by email the inspiration for the song as well as why Canada is so gosh-darn agreeable.

Q: How did you arrive up with the “wonderful” plan?

Residing in New York, we ended up frequently recognised as the “nice” Canadians — our exhibit is generally known as good — and it is generally what some others think of Canada. Generally that we’re really well mannered. Having said that, when we started off hunting into it, we identified that everybody has a unique definition — from caring about science and the ecosystem, to our exclusive new music and foods, to the bravery of welcoming strangers. We understood that working with different definitions allowed us to rejoice Canada’s range and all of the amazing points about our state.

Q: Explain your creative process.

A: We started out producing down all the things we beloved about Canada on Submit-it notes all about our wall and then questioned other folks what they cherished. Before long, it took more than the total wall! We wanted the definition of “nice” to be handed from a person human being to a further, in a flowing type of poetry: discovering the joy in becoming a member of BeaverTails [the restaurant chain that specializes in the eponymous pastry] and butter tarts jointly or celebrating the creation and innovation of insulin. We wrote a million verses, trying to decide on the best way to represent an whole region in 90 seconds. We also attempted to make the audio and animation style of just about every verse sense equally diverse. Fortunately, we had been thrilled to husband or wife with Wonderlust, an remarkable Halifax-primarily based animation enterprise, and Hayward Parrott, an award-winning music producer. They served us pack in as many Easter eggs as possible, from a beaver looking at a copy of “The Handmaid’s TAIL” to a bagpipe player segueing the initially 4 notes of our nationwide anthem.

We then talked about our dream solid. We needed as diverse a team as probable — men and women from throughout our nation, folks new to our region, experts, artists, sporting activities stars and anything in among — all passing the torch of the term “nice” to each individual other. We were thrilled to perform with some of our heroes — Canadian icons this kind of as [musician] Bruce Cockburn and Roberta Bondar, our 1st woman astronaut athletes like Angela James, “the feminine Wayne Gretzky” indigenous artists like iskwē and new rappers like Wolf Castle the fabulous Rita Baga from [“RuPaul’s] Drag Race” and Tareq Hadhad, a Syrian refugee who begun a chocolate firm listed here identified as Peace by Chocolate. And, of program, we brought our excellent “Come From Away” solid along for the trip. The greatest element was that inside of this time of crisis, when so lots of artists are out of operate, we received to employ numerous musicians, animators and performers, and build a piece of art jointly.

Q: What message do you hope the track imparts?

A: When we initial started, this was intended to be a piece that would encourage and persuade individuals to go out and take a look at Canada. Even though we can not vacation now, we will in the long run, so right until then this feels more like a concept of hope. That when this gets far better, the things we all appreciate will nevertheless be there, and we can continue on to occur alongside one another, even from our properties and even if our definitions are diverse.

Q: Is the tune an extension of “Come From Away,” which concentrated on a Newfoundland town’s acts of kindness following the 9/11 tragedy?

A: We definitely gave some winks to Newfoundland and the “Come From Away” local community in the lyrics, “Nice as the Rock and the Rockies” and in the point out of “Kissing the cod au gratin.” But I also imagine that when we first started out studying kindness in Newfoundland more than 9/11, it truly adjusted us. We’ve been a lot more open up to sharing our dwelling with people today who need to have it when we journey, just as the Newfoundlanders did for us when we were there. We check out kindness as a way you can react to darkness, whether or not it is the tragedy of 9/11 or a pandemic — it is how we take care of one particular a further. So this feels far more significant than ever to celebrate “nice” stories and ways we can come across prevalent ground.

Q: How did you decide the Canadian emblems, these kinds of as poutine and the Rockies? Did any stop up on the slicing-place ground?

A: We set in as substantially as achievable! Ketchup chips, the fact that we invented basketball, incredible gals like [civil rights activist ] Viola Desmond, who an individual must write a musical about. And if we could not incorporate it in the lyrics, the animators did, like the CanadaARM. But there had been so lots of we could not match in, like celebrating some of our amazing websites — the viking settlement of L’Anse aux Meadows or skiing in Banff — or our fictional internet sites, like Green Gables and Schitt’s Creek.

Q: Is Canada pleasant from coast to coastline or are some places nicer than others?

A: Just one of the French lyrics is actually “from coastline to coastline.” So yes, in a lot of methods, it is genuinely this kind of a lovely position, from the prairie sky in Saskatchewan to polar bears in Manitoba. But then you go to a little city like Gander [the featured location in the musical] and you discover that it is the persons who are truly extraordinary. There was essentially a analyze accomplished of tweets by Canadians that discovered that we commonly use more beneficial language and tons of hearts and smiley faces [than Americans]. Canada is not great although — there
’s a large amount we however will need to do the job on — but at minimum we believe that we have the likely to be great. That we ought to be. With any luck , we strive for it, and we test to rejoice that element of us with the planet and welcome them in to check out it.

Q: Why do you imagine Canadians are so nice?

A: We think pleasant is typically misunderstood. It is not weak or remaining a doormat. It is hunting at the higher fantastic. When we have been in Newfoundland, we achieved people today who have been elevated to believe that that if a stranger arrived on your doorstep, you welcomed them in, [or] if your neighbor essential meals, you gave them fifty percent of yours. That’s how they survived their winters, by coming collectively as a group. And that is how we’ll get by this. So we believe it is not that all Canadians are so pleasant, it’s that we all have that potential, and often we just need to have a reminder that it’s in us all.

Q: Why is this information more vital than ever?

A: There’s never a negative time to rejoice becoming great to a person one more, but we assume it is also important to recall the bravery of niceness. In “Come From Absent,” the men and women of Gander had just about every right to maintain these [passengers] on the planes. To keep that worry and anger locked up. But as an alternative, they welcomed them into their residences. As [Gander Mayor Claude] Elliot claims, “We begun with 7,000 strangers on the tarmac. Middle of the week, we experienced 7,000 buddies. And by the finish of the 7 days, we mentioned goodbye to 7,000 spouse and children users.” That’s the power of niceness. They defused the circumstance and turned it close to. They located strategies to appear alongside one another with people today of all races and religions, by recognizing that they had been all in the exact same storm.[

Q: Where have you been living during the pandemic and how are you staying busy and sane?

A: We drove back to Canada from New York in March. We expected to be here a few weeks — maybe a month. And almost a year later, we’re living in a small town north of Toronto. It’s been quite an adjustment, but we’ve kept sane by trying to do some good — raising money, buying a 3-D printer for a young man who was making face masks and delivering as much PPE as we could source. Like many parents, we’ve had our challenges learning to home-school our daughter, though we’ve really had some wonderful times together as a family. We just built a tiny ice rink in our backyard for her to skate on. How Canadian is that? We’re lucky that we’re writers and can work at home. We’ve got a Disney TV movie we’re working on, a TV show we’re pitching and some new projects for the stage when it comes back. Because it will come back.

Q: Once we can travel again, are there parts of Canada you can’t wait to visit?

A: All of it. Our kid wants to skate on the longest skating rink in the world in Ottawa. And I [David] generally preferred to exhibit her the northern lights I grew up with in Saskatchewan. Another person just established up a actual-lifetime Rosebud Motel [from “Schitt’s Creek”], and we always preferred to go to Eco-friendly Gables in Prince Edward Island. And, of system, we can’t hold out to be back in our theaters. But earlier mentioned all, we want to see our friends in Newfoundland. Additional than ever, it feels like we could all use a minor little bit of their definition of “nice.”