Moving into the first round of the NBA playoffs preforming artist and newly announced Global Ambassador of the Toronto Raptors, Drake, led an ad campaign called #WeTheNorth. The video ad was ran on numerous channels for the weeks leading up to the playoffs and during the first round. It was incredibly effective in its goal to bring a nation together to support Canada's lone representation in the NBA playoffs by generalizing and distancing Canadians from Americans through various language and brought out a patriotic excitement that is rarely seen for the sport. The video is narrated by Drake himself and starts off with clips of the city from various points of view. It flashes a few clips from NBA games and follows with a focus on the civilians playing basketball on the streets and on various courts found in local neighborhoods. It starts showing images of neighborhoods and courts covered in snow as well as wild animals such as wolves and ends with more actual team highlights.

This advertisement shows to be very essentialistic by grouping all of Canada as one group of people that support the Raptors. This idea is already problematic because most cities majority fan base, if not connected directly by having a local team, is often dominated by which ever team plays in the closest proximity. Dittmer defines essentialism as “treatment of an individual as primarily a member of a category”¹ The slogan “We the North” right away suggests that “we” as a whole are separate because we are north of the United States. This slogan is trying to touch on the patriotic nationalism that is at least a little present in everyone and attempting to persuade fans into believing that they should be supporters of the Canadian Raptors team as opposed to supporting more proximal American teams such as the Portland Trailblazers who could reach out to Canadians living on the west coast more easily. This is supported by an advertisement from the Portland Trailblazers organization that says “We the Farther North” which is pointing out that Portland is actually geographically more northern than Toronto, however, the point is not to make this playoff run only about Toronto but rather to gather the support of the entire nation and group all of Canada together.

In the ad there are also a few scenes of snowy Canada and a few wolves shown on the courts. Although there is plenty of snow in the United States and wolves are not usually seen in the streets of any urban areas, this ad is attempting to exaggerate the wild aspect of Canada. These shots are combined at the end with the narrator saying we have “a territory all our own”² This plays on the stereotype of Canada being a wild landscape and uses this connection to try to separate all Canadians from the other teams they support by suggesting that we are “outsiders” The writers presumably took this angle of portrayal because there is only one team in the NBA that is located in Canada and it is a natural connection across the nation and a simple way of distancing fans from American teams. The concept of an entire nation supporting one sole team is very interesting because they try to portray all of Canada as one unity that is behind the Raptors. This is obviously false because many people have different reasons for supporting other teams and it is generalizing to assume that because ones passport that they even like the Raptors at all. It also suggests that the United States is a divided nation due to different regions supporting different teams across the country. Once again this is in contrast with Canada which is being portrayed as a united nation.

There is a popular stereotype that Americans view Canadians as very different people and the narrator enforces this stereotype with saying “we are in a league of our own, one step removed, just beyond the boundaries” This seems to be an effort to once again distance Canadians with the primordial theory³ that we have always been different from Americans since the birth of human society. The narrator goes on to use distancing language saying that we are “far from the east side, miles from the west side and no where near the south side”, emphasizing, “we are the north side” This is ignoring the fact that the Raptors are apart of the Atlantic Division which is made up of some of the most eastern teams and like previously noted the Raptors are not even the most northern team. I saw this as another attempt at to try to remove Canadians from any connection to the United States as it completely disregards any geography to bring together the nation.

Although invented by a Canadian, basketball has never really been adopted by Canada as a nationalistic symbol of our country and generally such excitement and patriotism is reserved in sports for ice hockey and more specifically Olympic ice hockey. Regardless I found this ad to be very effective in its attempt to bring out such patriotic nationalism in Canadians. In hindsight it worked rather well considering most residence in British Columbia usually root for teams based in Washington or Oregon if there is no local representation but during this playoff run it seemed that the entire nation from coast to coast hung up their other jerseys in favor of supporting our Toronto Raptors.

1. Dittmer, Jason. 2010. Chapter 4: “Narration of Nation in the Post WWII US”, in Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 73.

2. Spoken by the narrator in the video advertisement

3. Dittmer pg 75.