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Canada cannot be that frequent a subject of underground computer art, despite its strong historical representation in terms of groups and membership: Mistigris, Integrity and the rest of the 604 area code provided a bounty of activity, but we were just the tip of the iceberg; southern Ontario was home to the masterful Dark Illustrated and even perennial number two iCE had strong Eastern Canada roots.  And then, as you saw in the last post, there was also a thriving Quebec scene going on, exemplified by Irato and eg. the different incarnations of GRiP.

But with the separatist zeitgeist of the ‘90s, we couldn’t count on les artistes Quebequois to celebrate our national holiday [Editor’s note: that is, today: July 1st is the national holiday of Canada Day, eh].  The typical artscene subjects left the field somewhat barren as well – though you would see plenty of red-white-and-blue ANSI scrollers of Captain America, U.S. Agent, and Superpatriot, I don’t know if any of us would have even recognized an ANSI of Captain Canuck.  Maybe there are one or two pics of Guardian / Vindicator out there, and perhaps some of their Alpha Flight cohorts, but from there on things get pretty thin on the ground.  Could indie comics phenomenon Cerebus the Aardvark represent the pinnacle of Canadian comics’ success in the niche of underground computer art?  Very possibly.

We didn’t go to great lengths to demonstrate our Canadianness so as to better fit in and uphold the uneasy status quo of our digital frontier town, but on this occasion we found a way to let our maple leaf shine: on Wednesday, July 30, 1997, Warpus of Lazarus, a Canadian immigrant from Communist Poland, ran instalment #39 of the Blender IRC competition, where computer artists strove to, under a time limit, fashion new works making use of a mixture of three topics – in this case, “midgets / wrestling / in Canada”.

We take what we can get.  14 artists competed, including a whopping 9 entries from Mistigris members (including a picture by Grinch and a story by Skrubly, neither of whom were even Canadian!)  In the full sequence of time, Mistigris won the Blender series – and on this occasion, we also won, with a stylized joint by Quip and Tincat.  There was also a song by Cthulu (how do you represent midgets musically?) and visual pieces by Grinch, Geekboy, Happyfish, Dead Soul, and Haquisaq (who submitted two entries!)

If you like, you can cruise Sixteencolors for maple leaves (ah, I see that Blender #16 also featured “goats / bowling” at Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, and I believe another [ah, Blender #5] elapsed at the Ontarian amusement park “Canada’s Wonderland”), but this is how we at Mistigris will be celebrating Canada Day!  So hold up a poutine and proudly say “Sorry!”, and welcome to longtime Australian Mist satellite member Maeve Wolf, who finds herself travelling through Canada (and indeed Vancouver itself) on this most Canadian of days today.  Cheers!