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The Parti Rhinocéros, commonly known as the Rhinoceros Party in English, was a registered political party in Canada from the 1960s to the 1990s. Operating within the Canadian tradition of political satire, the Rhinoceros Party's basic credo, their so-called primal promise, was "a promise to keep none of our promises." They then promised outlandishly impossible schemes designed to amuse and entertain the voting public.

The Rhinos were started in 1963 by Jacques Ferron, "Éminence de la Grande Corne du parti Rhinoceros". In the 1970s, a group of artists joined the party and created a comedic political platform to contest the federal election. Ferron (1979), poet Gaston Miron (1972) and singer Michel Rivard (1980) ran against Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in his Montreal seat.

The party, which claimed to be the spiritual descendants of Cacareco, a Brazilian rhinoceros who was elected member of São Paulo's city council in the 1950s, listed Cornelius the First, a rhinoceros from the Granby Zoo, east of Montreal, as its leader. The party claimed that the rhinoceros was an appropriate symbol for a political party since politicians, by nature, are "thick-skinned, slow-moving, dim-witted, can move fast as hell when in danger, and have large, hairy horns growing out of the middle of their faces."

Rhinoceros Party platform

Bryan Gold of the Rhinoceros Party described the party platform as two feet high and made of wood. "My platform is the one I'm standing on." A candidate named Ted "not so" Sharp ran in Flora MacDonald's Ontario riding with the campaign slogan "Fauna, not flora", promising to give fauna equal representation. Sharp's platform on the controversial abortion issue was clear: "If elected, I promise to never have an abortion." Party member (and singer) Michel Rivard once went on TV (during free air time given to political parties) and stated: "I have but two things to say to you: Celery and Sidewalk. Thank you, good night."

The Rhinos have also promised to break every promise (a platform plank they claim has been copied and put into execution by the mainstream parties) and have promised, if elected, to immediately demand a recount.

Other platform promises released by the Rhinoceros Party included:

• repealing the law of gravity,
• reducing the speed of light because it's much too fast,
• paving Manitoba to create the world's largest parking lot,
• providing higher education by building taller schools,
• instituting English, French and illiteracy as Canada's three official languages,
• offering to retrain those constituents who want to become illiterate by enrolling them in a state educational institution,
• tearing down the Rocky Mountains so that Albertans could see the Pacific sunset, or moving them one metre west as a make-work project,
• legalising pot. And pans. And spatulas. And other kitchen utensils,
• building sloping roads and bicycle paths across the country so that Canadians could "coast from coast to coast",
• making all sidewalks out of rubber to prevent inebriated people from hurting themselves when they fall down
• responding to the energy crisis, reducing energy costs for transportation by moving the cities of Montréal 50km west and Toronto 50km east,
• abolishing pumping oil out of the ground as that oil is there to keep the earth moving smoothly on its axis and if you withdraw the oil, the whole thing will grind to a halt,
• abolishing the environment because it's too hard to keep clean and it takes up so much space,
• annexing the United States, which would take its place as the third territory, after the Yukon and the Northwest Territories (Nunavut did not yet exist) in Canada's backyard, in order to raise the mean temperature of Canada by one degree Celsius,
• replacing the Canadian Armed Forces with clones of Vladislav Tretiak,
• end crime by abolishing all laws
• making bubble gum the national currency, so that it could be inflated or deflated at will,
• breeding a mosquito that would only hatch in January so that "the little buggers will freeze to death",
• turning Montreal's Saint Catherine Street into the world's longest bowling alley,
• adopting the British system of driving on the left; this was to be gradually phased in over five years with large trucks first, then buses, eventually including small cars and bicycles last,
• as an energy-saving idea, putting larger wheels on the back of all cars so that they will always be going downhill,
• selling the Canadian Senate at an antique auction in California,
• putting the national debt on Visa,
• declaring war on Belgium because a Belgian cartoon character, Tintin, killed a rhinoceros in one of the cartoons,
• offering to call off the proposed Belgium-Canada war if Belgium delivered a case of mussels and a case of Belgian beer to Rhinoceros "Hindquarters" in Montréal (the Belgian Embassy in Ottawa did, in fact, do this),
• painting Canada's coastal sea limits so that Canadian fish would know where they were at all times,
• counting the Thousand Islands to make sure none were missing,
• running Penny Hoar on a safe sex platform in Toronto,
• running more than one candidate per riding as an MP's salary is certainly enough to support more than one person,
• exploiting acid rain as an electrical energy source by placing dissimilar-metal electrodes in Canadian swimming pools in order to use them as batteries,
• making Canadians stronger by putting steroids in the water,
• banning lousy Canadian winters,
• moving the Vatican to Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Quebec to promote tourism,
• putting the West Edmonton Mall on wheels and rolling it to areas of the country suffering from economic depression,
• turning the Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine tunnel in Montreal into a free carwash by poking holes in the ceiling,
• annexing Greenland and creating a cartel with other northern nations in order to sell icebergs to the Saudis; the cartel would be called "Snopec",
• digging a canal from coast to coast, by hand, to reduce unemployment; and then, leveling the Rocky Mountains and using the canal to transport the material east to fill in the Great Lakes, in order to expand Canada's landmass.

The Rhino Party also declared that, should they somehow actually win an election, they would immediately dissolve and force a second election.

A British Columbia splinter group proposed running a professional dominatrix for the position of party whip, breaking with the province's colonial heritage by renaming "British Columbia" to "La La Land", moving the provincial capital, and merging with the Progressive Conservative Party so as not to split the silly vote.

Despite the obvious appeal of banning winter, the Rhinoceros Party never succeeded in winning a seat in Parliament. In the 1984 federal election, however, the party won the fourth-largest number of votes, after the three main political parties, but ahead of several well-established minor parties. Rhino candidates sometimes came in second in certain ridings, humiliating traditional Canadian parties in the process. In the 1980 federal election, for instance, the Rhinoceros party nominated a professional clown/comedian named Sonia "Chatouille" Côté ('chatouille' means tickles in French) in the Laurier riding in Montréal. Côté came in second place, after the successful Liberal candidate, but ahead of both other major parties: the third place New Democrat, and the fourth-place Progressive Conservative candidate. Chatouille received almost twice as many votes as the PC candidate.

Early in the party's history, when it was mainly composed of French-speaking Québécois, they chose as their official translator a party member who was the only unilingual anglophone party member at the time.

Although not recognized in the United States, former baseball pitcher Bill Lee ran for President of the United States in 1988 on the Rhinoceros Party ticket.

Political successors

The party abstained from the 1993 federal election while they questioned the constitutionality of new rules that required the party to run candidates in at least 50 ridings at a cost of $1,000 per candidature. On September 23, 1993, Canada's Chief Electoral Officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, refused to accept the party's abstention and ordered the removal of the Rhinoceros Party from the Registry of Canadian Political Parties, effectively eliminating them from the Canadian political system.

Kingsley also directed the party's official agent, Charlie (le Concierge) McKenzie, to liquidate all party assets and return any revenues to the Receiver General of Canada. On instructions from the party, McKenzie refused. After two years of threatening letters, Ottawa refused to prosecute McKenzie, who now claims to hold the distinction of being Canada's "least-wanted fugitive".

François Gourd, a prominent Rhino, later started another political movement, the entartistes. The entartistes attracted attention in the 1990s by planting cream pies in the faces of various Canadian politicians.

Other Rhinoceros Party members founded the Parti citron (Lemon Party), which attempted to bring a similar perspective to provincial politics in Quebec, with much less success. Recently however, the Parti Citron became a federal party, and has enjoyed widespread support from silly people nationwide.

In 2001, Brian "Godzilla" Salmi, who received his nickname because of the Godzilla suit he wore while campaigning, tried to revive the Rhinoceros Party to contest the British Columbia provincial election. While they pulled some pranks that earned some media coverage, only two of their candidates (Liar Liar - Vancouver Mt. Pleasant and Helvis - Vancouver Burrard) appeared on the ballots, as the party claimed the $100 candidate registration fee was a financial hardship. The party disbanded shortly thereafter.

More recently, the Absolutely Absurd Party has attempted to revive the traditions of political satire that the Rhinoceros Party originated. This new group, however, was related to the Rhinos only in spirit.

Electoral results

Note:

(1) The Rhinoceros Party ran 12 candidates in the 1972 election, but was not recognized as a registered party by Elections Canada, and therefore its candidates were listed as independents. (Source: Toronto Star, October 31, 1972.)

External links

• Yukon Rhino taking election rejection to court
• WaybackMachine:BC Rhino Party

See also

• List of frivolous political parties

• Federal political parties in Canada
• Practical jokes