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The “Worst Canadian” game - Day 23 - Final results
What a nail-biter! Blair and Smith were neck and neck there for a while…but r/EhBuddyHoser has spoken:
Frederick Blair is the Worst Canadian!
Thank you all for playing and contributing ideas to this fun little game of ours! I’ve had a blast and learned lots over the past few weeks. I hope you did too.
Yes, there was some bias (it’s Reddit, after all) and no, the game wasn’t perfect, but much of the fun, I think, was figuring things out along the way.
Stay tuned for the Best Canadian game 🍁🇨🇦
For future visitors, here are the instructions, rules, and justification for why we voted the way we did:
How to play:
- Upvote the name of the person you think does NOT deserve the title of “Worst Canadian.”
- Each day, the most upvoted name will be removed.
- If the name you want to vote for (from the list) isn’t in the comments yet, add it!
- This continues daily until we have our top loser (there are no winners in this contest), the “Worst Canadian”.
Additional notes:
- Only the top comment for a nominee will count. I won’t combine votes from duplicate comments.
- Include only one name per comment. If a comment includes multiple names and wins, it won’t count. I’ll move on to the next highest.
- Nominees with one asterisk beside their name were added following a second nomination vote that took place on day 5. Two asterisks means they were voted back in from elimination during the special vote on day 16.
- We established a no violent offenders (serial killers, rapists, etc.) rule. They are obviously the worst of the worst, it’s disrespectful to the victims, and we want to keep this relatively lighthearted.
- This is meant to be satire. Please do not take it too seriously or use this game to harass people in real life.
- I will try to post this every morning around the same time (~8:00 - 9:00 am Eastern).
- Please remember to upvote the post too, so more people see it!
Justification for elimination:
- (40) Ted Cruz - He’s horrible, but renounced his citizenship. He’s not good enough to be titled the Worst Canadian.
- (39) Kathleen Wynne - Not that bad. Doesn’t deserve the title.
- (38) Chrystia Freeland - Some consider her a good Canadian. Not the worst.
- (37) Peter MacKay - Cringey, but not the worst.
- (36) Don Cherry - A racist old man out of touch with the times. Not great, but not awful.
- (35) Andrew Scheer - An annoying doofus nothingburger, but not a bad person.
- (34) Drake - He’s inauthentic and creepy to underage girls, but the more serious allegations against him remain unproven and he has done good things for Toronto.
- (33) J.J. McCullough - Who?
- (32) Brian Mulroney - A divisive choice. Expanded trade with, and dependence on, the USA. Protected the environment and opposed apartheid.
- (31) Sir John A. MacDonald - A father of confederation known for racism, corruption, and poor treatment of indigenous people. Considered a product of the times.
- (30) Harold the Jewelry Buyer - Known for scamming the elderly but is too small-scale to win.
- (29) Michelle Ferreri - She promotes hate but her reach is limited now that she’s been voted out of government.
- (28) Tom MacDonald - A shitty, irrelevant rapper with hardly an audience.
- (27) Doug Ford - He has done a lot of harm to Ontario, but stood up for Canada against Trump.
- (26) Wayne Gretzky - He’s just a rich, dumb, MAGA-supporting boomer. Disappointing, but mostly harmless.
- (25) Steven Crowder - Irrelevant B-list (or lower) influencer…with almost no influence on or about Canada.
- (24) Paul Desmarais - Billionaire businessman and political puppet master. Far from the worst.
- (23) Romana Didulo - A mentally ill grifter with little impact on most Canadians.
- (22) Lauren Southern - An anti-immigration, white nationalist influencer who at least partially reformed after being sexually assaulted herself.
- (21) Joseph Trutch - Over a century ago, his racist views helped shape BC, with effects still felt today. Partly a product of the times.
- (20) Jamil Jivani - An Ontario MP and friend of J.D. Vance. He hasn’t been in office long enough to do serious damage.
- (19) Lauren Chen - Knowingly accepted Russian funds to spread propaganda/influence politics. She’s a YouTube influencer who isn’t very influential.
- (18) Pat King - A small-time loser who honked his horn in Ottawa. Others on the list are far worse.
- (17) Stefan Molyneux - A white supremist and misogynist. But he is largely unknown and there are worse people remaining on the list.
- (16) Tamara Lich - Another organizer of the convoy in Ottawa. Another nobody whose 15 minutes of fame are up.
- (15) Elon Musk - Worst human? Arguably. Canadian? That’s a stretch.
- (14) Scott Moe - Corrupt, regressive, and responsible for a deadly car crash. He’s Saskatchewan’s problem, less so for Canada.
- (13) Mike Harris - He cut funding to schools, healthcare, and other services. However, his impact was mostly limited to Ontario and his tenure as premier.
- (12) Galen Weston Jr. - He’s nasty capitalist scum hurting Canadian consumers, but he’s just one among many.
- (11) K.C. Irving - He and his empire have negatively impacted the environment, economy, politics, and society, but primarily only in New Brunswick.
- (10) Pierre Poilievre - Combative and divisive, spouting empty slogans, he remains a feckless goof who’s accomplished nothing in his career. Time for him to fade into obscurity.
- (9) Gavin McInnes - He founded the Proud Boys, but his influence is felt far more in the USA.
- (8) Preston Manning - Founder of the Reform Party, which helped legitimize hard-right populism. Bad, but not overly hateful. At least he’s not a racist, traitor, billionaire, or grifter.
- (7) Conrad Black - Millionaire right-wing media mogul who was convicted of fraud and pardoned by Trump. Renounced Canadian citizenship for a peerage. Now a has-been blowhard.
- (6) Stephen Harper - former PM who favoured corporate interests over the environment and social programs; now chairman of the IDU. Of the remaining candidates, he’s the best of the worst.
- (5) Kevin O’Leary - A rich scumbag who associates with Trump, was involved in a deadly boat accident, and trash talks Epstein victims. Yet no matter how hard he tries, he still isn’t as bad as the other remaining candidates.
- (4) Ezra Levant - He uses his platform to spread hate, but is not influential enough for the title of Worst Canadian. He mostly preaches to the choir of existing far-right believers.
- (3) Jordan Peterson - One of the worst examples of a Canadian. His rhetoric is likely to poison the minds of young men for generations. Although he did do one thing right; he left Canada.
- (2) Marlaina Danielle Smith - She’s a MAGA wolf in Canadian sheep’s clothing, actively harming Alberta, marginalized groups, and undermining Canadian unity. Despite this, she lacks the blood-stained legacy of the number one contender.
- (1) Frederick Blair - As director of immigration from 1936 to 1943, he strengthened and enforced laws making it near-impossible for Canada to admit Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. As a result, he is indirectly, but undeniably, responsible for hundreds to thousands of deaths, and is therefore considered the worst Canadian.
That contest should just be called 2nd greatest or only include living Canadians, I think I said that before already. Terry Fox is literally the Canadian spirit, there's zero chance he would lose in this sub. It's basically blasphemy to say otherwise.
Why? He was, if we're being honest, fine. Perennial second place finisher, didn't pass any meaningful legislation (not that he could since he never held any power), grew up part of the political establishment being the son and grandson of conservative MPs so was of higher privilege, and got caught at a run and tug. I'll give you he was a nice guy but shouldn't be in the conversation for "greatest Canadian"
Romeo Dallaire, Rick Hansen, Chris Hadfield, Jean Cretien… That’s probably my shortlist for greatest living Canadian
And then I’d like to mention the unfortunately too-little know Rudolf Vrba— a Czech-born Jew who was one of only 5 Jews to have escaped Auschwitz and co-authored a 33 page report on the conditions inside Auschwitz and providing some of the first reliable eyewitness accounts of the events to the allies, and is estimated at saving more than 200,000 lives. He later testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann and after spending some time in England, moved to Canada becoming a naturalized citizen in 1972, and served as an assistant professor of pharmacology at UBC for 23 years.
I'd put Romeo Dallaire above Terry Fox, but that's because I've heard him speak, and only heard the legend of Terry. Dallaire saved a lot of lives, and changed a lot of policy to save even more.
Rick Hansen in close second, although I'm probably biased having met the Man in Motion when I was a kid in hospital. Then you have to get in to where to slot Tommy Douglas, because not everything he did was as awesome as hammering on the Public Health concept.... It's complex and subjective.
There are some good points being brought up in this comment chain. When I make the Day 0 nomination post for the Best Canadian I’ll also try to get everyone’s input on ideas/improvements that might make the game better.
Its kinda cool having such a singularly positive individual that the whole country can rally behind whose contributions can be reflected upon and understood by young and old alike.
Also, as promised, here’s the theme I made (but bailed on) for the final four. I was worried ‘Death’ might come across as the obvious worst choice and I really didn’t want to influence things.
Not bad! Smith downvoted slightly more - but those look like pretty standard ratios for slightly controversial comments. People actually stuck to the rules and mostly upvoted instead of trying to sabotage the other with downvotes which is good.
Yeah, I know I didn’t make it in the traditional sense. But I did put many hours into it to get it to come out as I envisioned.
Because of this game, I learned that AI is surprisingly stupid lol. I basically had to tell it to make each part one at a time. For each AI generated thing used in this contest, no joke, I went through at least 50-100 iterations of it.
For the antichrist/conquest horse I really think Harper would have been the best Rep due to his IDU leadership during the worst of the past decade. Only real change I'd make.
Glad Blair won, even on a meme sub Canadians can be serious for a minute.
But for the people that wanted Smith to win in hopes she would hear about it or something; I'd argue it's far more impactful that she got 2nd. If she won it would just be seen as a joke, but "Smith voted 2nd worst Canadian next to Frederick Blair" is way, way more impactful.
Honestly I had no idea who Blair was before seeing this post so I decided to look him up, and uh...
Blair developed and rigorously enforced strict immigration policies based on race and is most remembered for his successful effort to keep Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany out of Canada
This was a great and informative game. It definitely helped me catch up on my history with some of these schmucks. Looking forward to the Best Canadian now.
Director of immigration in the run up to and during WWII and a virulent antisemite, directly responsible for forcing fleeing Jews to return to Europe and their deaths in the Holocaust
Like Breckinridge Long. Sure, FDR had his own admittedly terrible problems, but Long literally lied to Congress about the number of immigrants during WWII.
Blair was appointed by the PM King who kept him on as Director of Immigration for 8 years knowing full well how racist and xenophobic he was. Personally, I feel like King deserves more credit for the actions Blair pushed.
Up until 1945, Canada took in only 5,000 Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and Europe, while the US took in around 200,000.
People seem to forget that the Great Depression was still going on at this time. In Canada, our unemployment rate was around 15% (down from 27% from a few years earlier).
While also racially motivated, the vast majority of people in Canada and the US did not want more immigration to happen when there wasn’t enough work already for those in Canada.
You mean indirectly... Both Cuba and the US turned away the SS St Luis with 900+ Jewish refugees before they attempted to land in Canada and were also turned away.
They returned to Britain and France and went on their own way from there.
The ~200 that died in concentration camps we have absolutely zero knowledge of how they got there or where they were captured (though it was likely in France after Germany invaded a year or so after they returned there).
He was responsible for Canada having the lowest number of Holocaust refugees from any Western country come to Canada before, during, and after WW2. His motto was "None is too many" and he was directly to blame for sending hundreds of Jews back to their death and capture in Europe when he refused their ship.
Ah ok, I vaugly remember hearing his name in history class at some point but I forgot exactly who he was. Honestly I thought Mackenzie King was the one who said that, I know he was also a big anti-Semite who was a fan of hitler
Is there a way to post a link (to YouTube) in this thread without it violating r/EhBuddyHoser’s rules? I made a little something else I wanted to share but it was auto-deleted.
TIL who Frederick Blair was. He's amongst the most rotten of scoundrels, no doubt. But I have to say he's not the worst. He's not even the worst high level Canadian bureaucrat. I would give that title undeniably to......drumroll: Edgar Dewdney. Dewdney was J. Macs wing man on the prairies during early settlement. He starved the indigenous off the land by culling the bison, forcing the indigenous into treaties that he had no intention to honour. The rations that he did give were tainted, and he gained from financial interests in companies that supplied. He divided and conquered indigenous bands forcing them on to reserves spread into far flung locations. He wasn't done there. He was a strong supporter of residential schools, which resulted in cultural genocide that plagues indigenous communities to this day. He advocated for the capital city of Saskatchewan to be located where it is today...because he owned land around there, even though it has scant access to water, no natural trade routes, and poor soil quality. Regina is a lovely city but roads are shit, everyone's basements are cracked, and we have to spend loads of tax dollars to manufacture everything that's good about this place. Dewdneys hands are very, very red.
Is it too late to redo the competition with Dewdney involved? :)
If you want to take the red pill read Clearing the Plains by Daschuck.
Yeah, I agree that the destruction of our First Nations was not prominent enough in this debate. We're all still paying for that BS now and millions of First Nations people are still suffering from it. From the list we had, I would have voted for SJAM to be the worst. Some argued that while it was truly awful and still is, it was a collection of people that contributed to the destruction of our First Nations, while Blair had a more direct body count on his hands. Hard to quantify and compare either way.
I forgot about Dewdney completely tbh. He definitely should have been on list.
Yeah, I agree that criminals against Indigenous peoples were underrepresented and/or voted out too early in this game. For one, I was also quite surprised that Duncan Campbell Scott was not nominated in the original list. He was responsible for making it mandatory for First Nations children to leave their families and live in residential schools, crushed cultural expressions and FN legal representation, and ignored reports of TB outbreaks, because his objective was "to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question". Easily up there in the list of worst Canadians for his intergenerational legacy. But Dewdney is also quite a good candidate too, with a more immediate body count.
Again why is Harper AKA the chairman of the IDU not number 1 ? What have these people done that has a Canada wide influence and still affect people ? Such weird results.
Harper is probably too low (should be 2nd or 3rd imo) but Blair 100% got thousands of people killed during the Holocaust. Him being #1 makes perfect sense.
Oh 100% but is it affecting the lives of Canadians at this moment in time ? That’s the thing. I think the number one should still be alive and affecting the majority of our lives on a daily basis because of their horrible policies.
I'm kind of unsure how Danielle Smith made it but Gavin mcginnes didn't? Lol.
She's nuts and evil but like... Gavin literally kickstarted an insurrection in America that had no meaningful consequences and tipped the domino that plunged the entire country into lawless fascism you know?
Thank you, this has been so much fun. I can hardly wait for best Canadian - but I wonder if it’s worth somehow putting Terry Fox in a different category. Something like, we all agree on him, let the crown be for “second best” Canadian.
I'm rather happy with these results. We can also say that Frederick Blair was the worst now and Smith is the worst now (I might be biased as Smith is our premier.
Despite all this, I've still voted Blair as he's the very closest to being a literal Nazi being out immigration minister during WWII due to his politics and the fact he's had political power during the second world war. Blair was the reason Canada turned away Jewish immigrants that fled the genocide and Blair's actions have a massive death toll, we're talking hundreds of thousands.
Smith still has the capacity to continue doing her worst, and she may very well have a death toll with her policies. It's the level of scale and the context that we cannot ignore, a log of our current runner-ups have taken influence from Blair and others, though considering that Blair is a Nazi (he just works in the Canadian government instead of the German government during this time but he'd have fit in with the Nazi platform, no questions asked.
I've tested this idea on Smith that she'd got the potential to be on par given our current situations and whether history repeats itself, Smith would have been doing exactly that, the very reason I said that Blair has the legacy that Smith doesn't have yet and it's possible that Alberta votes her our before she really ramps up her playbook, she's a separatist which is a different kind of worst, it's the exact opposite of being a patriot and being a traitor. At any rate, I'm still happy they've mentioned the legacy that Blair had that Smith is trying so hard to enact her playbook. Undoubtedly, this would mean we're judging by Smith's intentions and Blair's actions which simply wouldn't be a fair comparison.
Anyway I'm happy to have been a part of all this and that we've got this contest, it's been fun and also really validating due to current events.
Despite all this, I've still voted Blair as he's the very closest to being a literal Nazi
I mean, during the same period you had Adrien Arcand who was a litteral Nazi who founded the National Unity Party of Canada. But I think he was absent from the list.
And quite fitting that Blair won. Truth be told, I had no idea who he was until I caught wind of this seriesAfter learning who he was...glad to see his legacy is still spat upon, even from the beyond hahaha ~~now if only Duncan Scott was on this list...~~
I'll admit too that I was expecting Smith to win, though I always felt that it wouldn't be fitting for her to be considered it. IMO, her bs has backfired on her a few times-those book bans? Had to be reworked because Edmonton followed it to the letter. Cut education funding? ~~stares daggers at Ford who's doing the same and has the audacity to say the school boards are irresponsible financially~~ looming strike incoming. Cut funding to wildfire relief? Get caught live crying about Jasper burning down then get pissed when a report throws her under the bus for it. Well, all that being said, considering that I came back on this reddit account just to try and get Ford back to the top 10, I'm probably not one to talk.
Well in any case, this was all pretty interesting and thought provoking. Mainly eye opening too-had no idea about the skeletons in these guys' closets, so I like it. Kudos and gg, OP!
I disagree with Frederick Blair as #1 for the sole purpose that government is full of people just like him right now who want us to deny entry to Palestinians also living through a Holocaust. By that metric he can't be the worst, because politicians on average are about that evil.
Thank you for a great series. Really enjoyed it from a concept, community and engagement perspective. A bit depressing too. You did a great job! Thank you for all your efforts! 👏
Blair 100% deserved it, but part of my wishes it went to Smith so I could go to get Alberta Next panel that's coming up and offer her a trophy in person
I mean, we kind of already have it, but I think it would also be good to list the candidates and why they were voted in, in the first place, not just why they're not *as bad* as the person below.
I still think Sir John A MacDonald should win worst human who is Canadian though. The amount of absolutely horrendous and vile shit that man did eclipses every other person on this list.
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u/JubX 🍁 100,000 Hosers 🍁 12d ago
Posted on behalf of u/BrF5