Since today is the day of the 2019 federal election in Canada let’s take a look back and appreciate the legendary, satirical Rhinoceros Party. Founded in 1963 by a group of humorists led by Jacques Ferron, the Rhinos have been poking fun and injecting a dose of satire into the, usually staid, machinations of Canadian politics.

A repeal of the Law of Gravity was one of the original planks of the Rhinoceros Party. Other promises over the year include:

• drop the gold standard and implement a Snow Standard, which would improve the economy until the summer
• promote higher learning by building tall schools
• eliminate small businesses with very small businesses – defined as having less than one employee
• reward lottery winners with a seat in the Senate instead of money
• ending crime by abolishing all laws
• to pay off Canada’s public debt with an American Express card
• and to make the switch to driving on the left, but phase it in over a period of 5 years, starting with large trucks first, then buses and the cars and bikes… wheelchairs last.

The list above was drawn primarily from a longer list found on Wikipedia.

In a signature move, in today’s 2019 federal election the Rhinos have run a candidate by the name of Maxime Bernier, in the home riding of the Maxime Bernier, the leader of the new far-right People’s Party of Canada. In response to concern over possible confusion, Bernier said “If you’re not sure, then vote for both!”. I’ll let you guess which Bernier to which I’m referring.

There have actually been two Rhino parties in Canadian history. The first Rhinoceros Party was founded in 1963 and remained active until 1993. A resurgent “Neorhino” party was formed in 2007, again beginning to field candidates in national elections under the original Rhinoceros Party moniker. In 2019 the Rhinos are fielding 43 candidates across the country.

The first leader of the Rhinoceros Party was Cornelius the First. He lived at a zoo near Montreal.

You may think that the most important TV ad of 1984 was Apple’s big brother Macintosh ad, but it wasn’t. This one is. Enjoy!

The hilarious thing about the ad above is that it seems that the publicly-funded CBC was federally mandated to give equal time to all political parties to share their platform. This is what you get when you make rules like that.