Jeslek
Banned
In a surprise statement today, the White House admitted that the nation of Canada is an elaborate hoax that was perpetrated on the American public in response to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The United States’ immediate neighbor to the north is actually Russia itself.
According to newly declassified government documents, the “Canada Project” was originally a closely guarded secret known only to the American President and his immediate advisors. However, the hoax became to large to be managed by such a small group and, at the end of the Second World War, was handed over to Walt Disney, under the supervision of the newly created CIA.
“The idea was to make it just like a real country, with its own newspaper and its own airplanes and everything,” explained White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, “Like Disney World is today, only without the attractions.”
“All this has to be seen within the context of the Cold War,” Fleischer continued, “Woodrow Wilson felt that we couldn’t let the American people know that there were tens of millions of hostile communists just a stone’s throw away who were ready to invade at any minute. He acted in haste because he wanted to avoid panic. Ironically, the misrepresentation suited the Russians too, because it would provide them with the element of surprise if they ever launched an actual invasion. Neither side wanted to let the cat out of the bag.”
“The trick,” said Fleischer, “was to create an imaginary culture that was somewhere in the middle between Britain and the United States, so that it wouldn’t be of any great interest on either side of the Atlantic. Disney suggested using Australia as a model and then taking away the marsupials, the coral reef, the beach and the Foster’s lager.” A letter from Disney to President Harry Truman was among the newly declassified documents.
The ruse seemed about to unravel in the early 1970s after a series of incidents in which hikers on day trips from Seattle returned from across the border with alarming reports of encounters with native Russian speakers. The Nixon administration eventually had to take the daring step of adding French as a second Canadian national language. Although this approach provided a means for explaining away the presence of non-English speakers just over the border, it was a hazardous scheme and was almost blown wide open in 1976 when an Algerian terrorist tried to divert an Aeroflot airliner to Montreal. It also meant that the CIA had to keep close tabs on all French speaking US residents to make sure that none of the fourteen ventured too far North.
The news came as a severe blow to a number of celebrities purporting to be of Canadian descent. Pop diva Alanis Morisette was reported to be “devastated and kind of hostile.” Peter Jennings was not returning calls. Neil Young said he was “Moving back to Alabama and getting out of the business.” At Ebay, the cost of Jim Carrey’s autograph plummeted and Margaret Trudeau’s wedding dress did not reach its reserve value of 18 inches of string and a stick of chewing gum.
Yesterday afternoon, pony rides into Russia were already being offered to enthusiastic Oregonian schoolchildren. Meanwhile across America travel agencies were being hit with lawsuits from former visitors to “Canada.” A spokesman for Cook’s Travel said, “This is going to hit us big. Think how many Americans have traveled to Canada as tourists since 1917. There are probably hundreds of them.
According to newly declassified government documents, the “Canada Project” was originally a closely guarded secret known only to the American President and his immediate advisors. However, the hoax became to large to be managed by such a small group and, at the end of the Second World War, was handed over to Walt Disney, under the supervision of the newly created CIA.
“The idea was to make it just like a real country, with its own newspaper and its own airplanes and everything,” explained White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, “Like Disney World is today, only without the attractions.”
“All this has to be seen within the context of the Cold War,” Fleischer continued, “Woodrow Wilson felt that we couldn’t let the American people know that there were tens of millions of hostile communists just a stone’s throw away who were ready to invade at any minute. He acted in haste because he wanted to avoid panic. Ironically, the misrepresentation suited the Russians too, because it would provide them with the element of surprise if they ever launched an actual invasion. Neither side wanted to let the cat out of the bag.”
“The trick,” said Fleischer, “was to create an imaginary culture that was somewhere in the middle between Britain and the United States, so that it wouldn’t be of any great interest on either side of the Atlantic. Disney suggested using Australia as a model and then taking away the marsupials, the coral reef, the beach and the Foster’s lager.” A letter from Disney to President Harry Truman was among the newly declassified documents.
The ruse seemed about to unravel in the early 1970s after a series of incidents in which hikers on day trips from Seattle returned from across the border with alarming reports of encounters with native Russian speakers. The Nixon administration eventually had to take the daring step of adding French as a second Canadian national language. Although this approach provided a means for explaining away the presence of non-English speakers just over the border, it was a hazardous scheme and was almost blown wide open in 1976 when an Algerian terrorist tried to divert an Aeroflot airliner to Montreal. It also meant that the CIA had to keep close tabs on all French speaking US residents to make sure that none of the fourteen ventured too far North.
The news came as a severe blow to a number of celebrities purporting to be of Canadian descent. Pop diva Alanis Morisette was reported to be “devastated and kind of hostile.” Peter Jennings was not returning calls. Neil Young said he was “Moving back to Alabama and getting out of the business.” At Ebay, the cost of Jim Carrey’s autograph plummeted and Margaret Trudeau’s wedding dress did not reach its reserve value of 18 inches of string and a stick of chewing gum.
Yesterday afternoon, pony rides into Russia were already being offered to enthusiastic Oregonian schoolchildren. Meanwhile across America travel agencies were being hit with lawsuits from former visitors to “Canada.” A spokesman for Cook’s Travel said, “This is going to hit us big. Think how many Americans have traveled to Canada as tourists since 1917. There are probably hundreds of them.
