Brian Spencer grew up in remote Fort St. James, pushed toward the NHL by a hard working, hyper-intense sports dad who saw hockey as a path to opportunity. On the night of Brian’s first nationally televised NHL game, his father drove to a CBC station armed and took staff hostage after the Leafs game wasn’t aired, a standoff that ended with his father shot dead as Brian was being interviewed on Hockey Night in Canada.

Brian went on to play 10 NHL seasons, only see a tragic end of his own, proving once again that Canada’s relationship with hockey has always been… complicated.

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After 499 episodes proving that Canada is anything but boring, we’ve reached Episode 500, and we’re handing the microphone to the people who made it possible.

This special milestone episode of Canada Is Boring is a chaotic, heartfelt, occasionally abusive celebration featuring listener voice notes and a best-of clip reel pulled from hundreds of episodes.

This episode isn’t a victory lap. It’s a noisy thank-you card to everyone who listened, shared an episode, yelled at us online, or sent a voicemail that forced us to double-check the facts.

Onwards to the next strange Canadian story.

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In 1886, Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, finally set out to see the country he had helped stitch together by rail. The Canadian Pacific Railway had just been completed, and a grand cross-country tour was planned, complete with speeches, pomp, and a private rail car.

What no one planned for was his wife.

Lady Agnes Macdonald was bored.

So bored, in fact, that she abandoned the Prime Minister’s private car, climbed into the locomotive cab, blasted the whistle at crossings, ignored orders from her husband, and eventually talked her way into riding on the cowcatcher at the very front of the train, from the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Yes. The outside of the train.

Sitting on a candle box.

At speed.

Through mountain descents, landslides, near derailments, forest fires, and even a full-on pig collision in the Fraser Valley.

Joined reluctantly by a deeply stressed government superintendent whose job description rapidly shifted to “human seatbelt.”

Along the way, Lady Agnes waved to crowds, dared her husband to join her (he did, briefly), and redefined Victorian ideas of decorum, safety, and common sense—while Sir John A. retreated back to the bar car.

Based on “Fur and Gold” by John Pearson (Black Press Media)

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