In this debut episode of Canada Is Boring Presents: The Tinfoil Touque, Rhys and Jesse dig into one of Canada’s most famous “evidence of time travel” photos: a 1941 crowd scene at a bridge reopening in British Columbia featuring a mysterious man in wraparound shades, a logo sweater, and what looks like a modern camera.

Was he really a time traveler… or just a fashion-forward hockey fan with a new Kodak? The pair break down how this single image went viral in the 2010s, why people are so eager to see the fantastical instead of the obvious, and how gravity makes “unsexy” time travel (a.k.a. time dilation) very real.

Along the way, they riff on aging and fashion, internet conspiracy culture, superhero flame wars on Reddit, and Rhys’s new favourite church-parking-lot ice cream stand, Holy Cones.

Stay to the end for a tease of next week’s story: the Falcon Lake incident, a classic Canadian close encounter of the second kind.

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In this premium “special friends” episode of Canada Is Boring, Rhys shares a surprisingly heartwarming Disney-level story from his own Nova Scotia neighborhood: a mother black bear and her two cubs, one of which, soon christened Kelly the Bear, ends up roaming alone through suburbia and ultimately being “relocated” to a wildlife park.

Rhys also announces their upcoming summer mini-series, “Tin Foil Touque” a run of conspiracy- and paranormal-themed episodes featuring UFOs, frogmen in lakes, radiation burns from glowing aircraft, and even a real-life legal battle involving Bigfoot.

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Picture this: it’s too hot to think, the news is depressing, and your brain wants something fun and strange that still feels entertianing. That’s Tin Foil Touque.

This summer series is Rhys and Jesse taking a detour from “respectable” Canadian history into all the stuff your high school textbook pretended didn’t exist.

It’s not the usual “9/11 was an inside job” sludge or hour-long Illuminati diagrams. It’s the fun side of paranoia, a weird Canadian summer of conspiracies, cryptids, and campfire stories you probably shouldn’t believe… but definitely should hear.

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In this episode of Canada Is Boring, Rhys and Jesse dive into the life of David Thompson, the Welsh-born orphan who became one of the most important mapmakers in North American history. Along the way, they detour through tales of the Lake Louise Tea House, roast the bizarre social-media energy of Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry, and debate whether Thompson was more cat or rat on the Katy-cat/Katy-rat spectrum.

You’ll hear how Thompson:

• Went from a charity school in Westminster to an apprentice with the Hudson’s Bay Company
• Broke his leg, wrecked his eyesight, and still became a master surveyor
• Quit HBC when they tried to pull him off mapping and walked 130 km through a snowstorm to join the North West Company
• Helped define key sections of the Canada–US border and mapped huge swaths of the West, including the Saskatchewan River system, the Rockies, and the Columbia River
• Built a long, complicated life with his Cree-Métis wife Charlotte, traveling and mapping as a team

Plus: a small-talk detour featuring awkward chats with other people’s kids, Kenny vs. Spenny live, and aging sketch comics still acting like teenagers.

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When 33-year-old Christopher Hiscox ran out of money halfway across Canada, he didn’t rob a bank—he stole a truck, found a ranch, fed the cats and horses, did some laundry, made coffee, and settled in like he lived there. Rhys and Jesse dive into the viral “gentle crime” that captured headlines, what it says about desperation, comfort, and mental health, and why the weirdest part might just be the toothbrush.

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In this episode of Canada Is Boring, Rhys and Jesse wade back into Canadian politics to unpack Pierre Poilievre’s slow slide from “inevitable” prime minister-in-waiting to a guy desperately trying to stay relevant against Prime Minister Mark Carney. Through a series of clips, they look at PP’s shifting persona, from attack dog to awkwardly “human” and back again, his bromance moment with Joe Rogan, and his current strategy of going after Carney’s biggest strength: his economic reputation. Along the way, they talk centrist politics, privatization, why Carney is hard for Conservatives to hate, and how much of this is really about policy versus pure political identity. Plus: bike-safety video confessions, dad bods, and a detour into capoeira, cold McCafé, and pressure-washing as a personality type.

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In this episode of Canada Is Boring, Rhys and Jesse dive into the bizarre, lucrative world of psychic mail-order scams led by one of Canada’s most successful fraudsters, Patrice Runner.

Starting with his obsession with old-school magazine ads and get-rich-quick schemes, we follow Runner’s journey to partnering with celebrity psychic Maria Duval, licensing her name for North American “psychic predictions,” lucky talismans, and vibratory crystals. Over two decades, his company Infogest Direct Marketing raked in more than $175 million USD from mostly older, vulnerable believers across Canada and the US—selling false hope, fake artifacts, and rigged “personal” letters.

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In this special friends–only episode of Canada Is Boring, Rhys and Jesse dig into the story of how CSIS, Canada’s spy agency, allegedly spied on Indigenous and environmental activists protesting the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, and then shared that information with oil companies and the National Energy Board.

They walk through the BCCLA’s decade‑long legal battle, heavily redacted court documents, and the cozy hospitality events between petroleum companies and Canada’s intelligence service. Along the way, they wrestle with the line between “national security” and corporate protection, and, of course, veer off into compost toilets, subway etiquette, and renting excavators.

Made possible by our wonderful special friends who support the show.

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Rhys and Jesse dive into the legendary Canadian documentary Project Grizzly and the life of its unforgettable star, Troy Hurtubise—the man who spent years and thousands of dollars building bear-proof armor so he could safely get face-to-face with grizzlies. They cover: Troy’s near-fatal first encounter with a grizzly and how it sparked a lifelong obsession The evolution of his absurdly overbuilt Ursus bear suits, tested with trucks, swinging logs, and baseball bats His later inventions, from fire-resistant paste to the dubious Angel Light x-ray beam The Trojan ballistic armor suit that looked like Halo meets RoboCop—and still failed to sell His tragic, cinematic death and why Quentin Tarantino calls Project Grizzly one of his favorite films Plus: cinema verité rants, powdered wigs and blues dancing in Montreal.

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Rhys and Jesse dive into the wild life of Red Ryan, a Toronto-born hooligan who grew into one of Canada’s most notorious early 20th‑century criminals. From leading street gangs at 10, to hard labor in Kingston Penitentiary, to a wartime desertion and a “most daring” prison break that even inspired Ernest Hemingway, Ryan’s story is packed with chaos.

They unpack how Ryan pulled off a decade‑long scam as a “reformed” model prisoner—writing a book, sculpting Virgin Mary statues, charming a prison chaplain, and emerging as a media darling with his own radio show—while secretly robbing banks on the side. It all ends in a bloody liquor store shootout in Sarnia that shocks a country that thought it had found its redemption poster boy.

Plus, in the STD (Small Talk Dimension) zone, Jesse recounts a ridiculously elaborate 1745 powdered‑wig dinner party, complete with questionable Scottish accents, Jacobite plotting, and a near “diplomatic incident” over a misunderstood signature.

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