The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Whose Line Is It Anyway? is an improvisational television show where performers must often say the first funny thing that comes to mind. And for Canadian-raised cast member Colin Mochrie, the name of our oddly-named community became one such thought. During an episode of the popular American program, Mochrie, appearing in an infomercial parody, made a nonsensical remark about his supposed childhood in Flin Flon. "You know, when I was a young black child growing up in Flin Flon..." he said to a fellow actor, drawing laughter from the audience. The comment, like much of Mochrie's humour, was meant to induce laughter through sheer bizarreness. Other Mochrie quotes from the Emmy-nominated show, now seen in syndicated reruns, include "Salami is the breadth of life" and "Give me liberty or a bran muffin!" Mochrie made the Flin Flon reference as he and castmate Ryan Stiles promoted a fictitious CD compilation called Greatest Hits: Songs of Hockey. The episode was rerun on Winnipeg-based CKY on Wednesday night. It first aired on the American Broadcasting Corporation. Whose Line Is It Anyway? was broadcast on ABC from 1998 until its cancellation last year. Mochrie, 47, was born in Scotland but moved to Canada at a young age. Had he stayed in Scotland, he may never have heard of Flin Flon, which is well known throughout Canada because... well, let's face it, it's a funny name. While it's unlikely that many American viewers understood Mochrie's mention, many Canadians Ð and Flin Flonners themselves Ð must have thought it was a hoot. "I was watching the show and I was surprised to hear Colin Mochrie mention Flin Flon on an American show," said The Reminder sports reporter Tim Babcock, who caught Wednesday's rerun. "It's funny how Flin Flon's name seems to get dropped in different contexts around the world." This wasn't the first time Flin Flon's name was used in a commercial production. Canadian comedian Mike Myers portrayed a sports correspondent from Flin Flon in the Hollywood Pictures film Mystery, Alaska, released in 1999. A year earlier, in 1998, independent American filmmaker David Fulk released The Road to Flin Flon, a direct-to-video comedy about a man hoping to escape his hectic life in Los Angeles and move to our community to do social work with Inuit people. Other mentions came in the CBC television movies Net Worth (1995) and Conspiracy of Silence (1991). Slated for release this year is the American horror-comedy film Santa's Slay, whose lead character will appear on camera wearing a Flin Flon Bombers jersey. Footage from an intense Bombers game is featured in an episode of Sports Disasters, which occasionally airs on the cable network TLC. The footage shows the verbal and physical fights that broke out during a 1999 game in which the Bombers hosted the Estevan Bruins. Interestingly, when the episode is viewed with closed captioning for the hearing-impaired, the narrator's reference to the home team appears as "Flim Flam Bombers."
