By Jerad Gallinger

Between exuberant public improv and hip-hop brimming with civic pride, we’ve had some pretty good luck with locally flavoured YouTube videos as of late. Case in point: the above clip from comedy legend Steve Martin‘s The Funnier Side of Eastern Canada, a travelogue-style jaunt through the exotic northern locales of Toronto and Montreal.
The 1974 TV special, Martin’s first, features the emerging comedian making some cringe-worthy zingers about the not-quite-finished CN Tower (Q: Why was the tower built? A: To attract more girls from the Empire State Building), shopping in Kensington Market (a “Portuguese-Jewish-Italian-Greek-Spanish-Chinese-West Indian grocery store bazaar”), doing magic at Ed’s Warehouse, and playing the banjo for bus fare at the corner of Yonge and Charles. There’s also a guy dressed up as a moose for no apparent reason, but let’s just ignore that part.
Alright, so early Steve Martin doesn’t necessarily hold up thirty-five years on. But think of it this way: you’ve just witnessed the world’s best—and probably only—Viljo Revell joke. That’s got to be worth something, eh?