Who is sexiest Canuck?

Twain, Bublé top list in Atlantic Canadian poll asking about fantasy dates

By Brent Mazerolle
Times & Transcript Staff


Crooner Shania Twain was the choice of 34 per cent
of male respondents.

If you could spend a romantic evening with a famous Canadian, who would you pick?

That was one question in an October survey of 1,800 Atlantic Canadians conducted for InsideThink, a quarterly journal published by Bristol Omnifacts Research, but it's the one that might get the most attention.

Now that you've had time to think about your fantasy date, here's a look at how you compare with your friends and neighbours.

First of all, if you're a man who picked Shania Twain, you're in good company. She was men's main choice by far, capturing 34 per cent of the votes.

Michael Bublé was women's choice, at nine per cent, with an especially strong showing among women old enough to be his mother, yielding 28 per cent of the votes in the over-65 demographic.

Perhaps more encouraging, though, or maybe an echo of how we Atlantic Canadians tend to be conservative even in our romantic fantasies, we seem generally content with what we have. A full 17 per cent of men and 15 per cent of women cheated on the survey question by refusing to even contemplate cheating on their spouses.

These brownie point-loving folks named their spouses as the famous Canadians they wanted to spend the night with.

"Spouses did fare pretty well when you consider that we asked people about spending a romantic evening with a 'famous" Canadian. Most spouses aren't famous, obviously," said Bristol Omnifacts vice-president Craig Wight.

The most famous Atlantic Canadian of this or perhaps any time is Sidney Crosby, who as you know does not have a spouse to take the survey.

And while Sid the Kid didn't manage to score as high as crooner Michael Bublé, music icon Bryan Adams (6 per cent), or even two prime ministers -- one of them dead -- he did manage bragging rights.

He's the only person who got two per cent of the votes from both men and women.

Are two per cent of the men who took the survey openly gay, or at least open enough to admit that in an anonymous phone survey? Or do two per cent of Atlantic Canadian men sincerely think talking hockey with Sid Crosby is a romantic evening? For women's sake, let's hope it's the former.

"We didn't ask why people answered as they did," pollster Wight said with a laugh.

"This was strictly an open-ended question," he added, explaining it was the one whimsical question in an otherwise serious poll of Atlantic Canadian attitudes to sexuality, covering everything from people's feelings about homosexuality to teaching sex education in the schools.

Meanwhile, how's this for charisma? Though he's been dead for almost a decade, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the choice of six per cent of the women respondents.

Sure, PET inspired women to think beyond living Canadians -- since we're all fantasizing here, anyway -- but we have to give props to living Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who managed to score half as many votes, without ever rocking the rose in the lapel look or the insouciant shrug.

Prime Minister Harper, or as he will henceforth be known, Prime Beef, scored much higher with women over 65, taking 14 per cent of their vote.

But lest you draw a stereotype about people getting increasingly conservative as they get older, know that NDP leader Jack Layton scored 18 per cent among women over 65. Maybe there is indeed something to this recent fashion return to the moustache that Layton's known all along.

It was singers, not politicians, who dominated. Overall, when both genders and all age demographics' numbers were crunched, Twain, Céline Dion and Bublé finished 1-2-3 in the survey.

Apparently there's also something about state television that stirs Atlantic Canadians. Rick Mercer, George Stroumboulopoulos, Wendy Mesley and Peter Mansbridge all made the list, while no TV personalities from CTV or Global were named by respondents.

Mercer, meanwhile, had appeal among younger Atlantic Canadians as well.

The youngest respondents (18--24) named Avril Lavigne (39 per cent), Rick Mercer (22 per cent) and the Ryans -- Gosling and Reynolds -- both at about 10 per cent.

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