"It never ceases to amaze me the bizarre items one can find on YouTube, particularly the clips someone has saved for decades.
A Winnipeg Sun reader sent me the link to a 1960s gem of singer, violinist and TV personality Gisele MacKenzie performing a song about Winnipeg with Perry Como.
The story goes that MacKenzie, born Gisele LaFleche in Winnipeg in 1927, lamented there were no songs about her hometown, so Como put Ray Charles and Mitchell Ayres to work on this production. The cheesy performance hits all the Canadian winter stereotypes including dancing Mounties, reminiscent of one of my favourite Monty Python skits.
Long before Russian goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov gave our city a poor review, this little ditty provided TV viewers across North America with the impression we all live in igloos and travel by dogsled.
Here are some samples of the lyrics: Winnipeg is where “you grow up to be big and strong, eating whale blubber all night long ... in Winnipeg where the eskimos shake your leg just to keep you from freezin’ ... when the wind is frisky, Mother Nature cools your whisky.”
MacKenzie was a regular on TV specials with Jack Benny and Sid Caesar in the 1950s and ‘60s. She made a television comeback in the 1980s, making guest appearances on MacGyver and Murder She Wrote. She was diagnosed with cancer in the late 1990s and died in 2003."