Friday, December 17, 1999

Mike Zegil’s average and proud of it

LU student wins most average Canadian title

By Michael Whitehouse/NORTHERN LIFE

   It it’s true that everybody gets 15 minutes of fame in their lifetime, then Mike Zegil’s started yesterday.
   It was then that Zegil, a Laurentian University student, realized he was the centre of a bizarre social experiment stemming from a national radio contest that named him the most average Canadian alive.
   The contest, sponsored by Definitely Not the Opera (DNTO), a Saturday afternoon CBC Radio One program broadcast out of Winnipeg, pronounced him an average Joe or “Joe Canada.”
   All Zegil did was visit DNTO’s website and write a short note on why he thought he was typically Canadian.  Later he was asked to record a phone message outlining his qualifications, which was later played on the air.
   “And that was it,” he says.  “That’s all I did, and I haven’t heard anything since.”
   Well that was in October – and Zegil maintains he’s still waiting for an unnamed prize for his troubles – and the contest has since spun out of control.
   The radio show’s producers contacted a Winnipeg publicity group, Hey! Communications, who have taken it upon themselves to make sure every Canadian knows who Joe Canada is.
   For Hey! Communications, this is an exercise in raising Joe Canada’s profile, and perhaps their own.
   “It’s an experiment in public relations,” says Candice Knol of Hey! Communications.  “Is it possible to make a celebrity out of a common Canadian?  We think it is, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
   Hey! Communications is orchestrating a national media blitz for Joe Canada. (It can be followed on the Internet at www.geocities.com/mikezegil)
   For Zegil, it’s a case of life imitating art.  The theme of a very average person being thrown in the public spotlight for no reason at all has been explored in a series of recent motion pictures and novels.
  In last year’s EdTV, a man earns a living my allowing cameras to follow him around 24 hours a day broadcasting his very normal life on live television.  The public fascination for his life, which became less ordinary with the onslaught of fame, was boundless.
   Zegil says Hey! Communications briefly floated the idea of putting a couple of Web cams in his apartment and broadcasting his life live on the Internet.
   “I said no pretty quickly,” he says.  “The world doesn’t need to see me eating Cheerios in my boxer shorts every morning.”
   He says he really does lead a normal life, which is quite deliberate, and he’s not looking for any arbitrary disruptions to it.
   While he’s flattered by the attention the Hey! Communications experiment promises to bring – perhaps appearances on some national television shows, perhaps even some endorsement opportunities – he says he remains skeptical about the whole thing.
   “I’d like to think the world rewards accomplishment and not this kind of thing,” he says.  “But I could be wrong.”

Who’s the average Canadian?

= He’s 27 years old, born in the Northwest Territories, raised in Ottawa and now attends Laurentian.  His ancestry is English, Scottish, Irish, Ukrainian, and Polish, which adds up to 100 per cent Canadian.
= He has always achieved average grades, and has no particular career aspirations.  But he is “Thankful to have the world’s most wonderful girlfriend.”
= He drives a 1991 Nissan Centra, works in the retail industry to pay the bills – at least until he figures out what to do when he leaves school – and prefers Molson Canadian beer.
= He says he rarely leaves a lasting impression on people, with many he’s known his whole life often telling him he looks vaguely familiar.

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