Bob & Doug McKenzie
Bob and Doug McKenzie are a pair of fictional Canadian brothers from the SCTV sketch "The Great White North", airing on the CBC from the late-1970s to mid-1980s. Bob is played by Rick Moranis. Doug is played by Dave Thomas. Their visual signature is that they typically wear heavy winter clothing and tuques at all times.
When SCTV was broadcast on the CBC TV network, the network heads insisted on at least two minutes of identifiably Canadian content. Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas thought that this was a senseless demand for a Canadian TV show with a Canadian cast and crew. However, they thought they would send it up in a parody that would fill up the two minutes extra content time available on the show since CBC ran fewer commercials in its broadcast than the show's U.S. network, NBC. What Moranis and Thomas created was "The Great White North", a parody panel show that played upon every conceivable Canadian stereotype. Two dumb beer-swilling brothers, Bob and Doug, would give their comments about various elements of Canada as they saw it.
To their shock, the comedians learned that this filler material had become the most popular part of the show, and they rode the crest of a bizarre fad of popularity that produced two comedy albums and a movie, Strange Brew. The popularity soon faded, but the act is still fondly remembered by Canadians and still readily recognizable there as a beloved affectionate parody of themselves. The duo revived the act for television commercials for the Molson Brewing Company and played a variant of the act for the Walt Disney Pictures animated feature film, Brother Bear, with their characters being a pair of goofy moose named Tuke and Rutt.
See also: Eh, Culture of Canada, Canadian slang, List of comedians, Twelve Days of Christmas
