@canada.gov.ca’s accidental archivist John Batt is reshaping Canadian culture

There's something charmingly subversive about a guy who quit his job to post about forgotten corners of Canadian culture on Instagram. 

Working out of his cottage in the Laurentians where he recently relocated from Montreal, John Batt has built an unlikely career as the admin of @canada.gov.ca: Celebrating the weird and wonderful patchwork of regional oddities that form the true fabric of Canadian identity—even if he may not put it in such grandiose terms.

The strangest tour guide

"I'm interested in the quirkier side of Canadian history, arts and culture," says Batt, who’s amassed nearly 100,000 followers through an oddly compelling mix of obscure cultural ephemera, forgotten historical footnotes, and the occasional shirtless photo of Ron MacLean or David Suzuki.

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Not bad for an account that started out as workplace rebellion.

"The goal was really to waste time at work," admits the Fredericton-born, Montreal-shaped digital curator. "I had an office job that I absolutely hated from the very beginning. Sitting at my desk one day, I wondered if the handle canada.gov.ca was available."

It was—a stroke of luck that would eventually transform his life. Initially, his posts were deliberately banal: "I was making myself laugh by ironically just posting arbitrary photos, like a rowboat in a Newfoundland harbour. To me that was so dumb, the idea that there would be this national Instagram account that just posted 'Hey there bud, look at this bird in New Brunswick.'"

What started as an inside joke gradually evolved when strangers started following the account, maybe thinking they were getting updates from an actual government entity. At the urging of a friend who runs the Shivering Songs music festival in Fredericton, Batt reluctantly performed a live show in 2023. The result was surprising: "We sold it out. There were over 200 people there."

The live format gave Batt a new avenue for his particular brand of Canadian storytelling—equal parts history lecture, comedy show, and tipsy barroom conversation. "When people ask what the show is, I say it's sort of like if Stuart McLean from Vinyl Cafe had a few drinks before he went on stage, but with nonfiction topics."

These shows have taken him across the country and, as far back as November 2023, allowed him to quit his day job at McGill. They also take him across the country in surprisingly ambitious runs. "I just went out West and did Edmonton, Saskatoon, Calgary, and Winnipeg. I did seven shows in four days," he says. At the time of our interview, he was days away from heading to the Maritimes for five shows in four nights in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

"I tailor the show to the city that I'm in," he explains. "I pick a few topics that are interesting deep dives about where I am. Hopefully people have heard of what I'm talking about, but they don't know the whole story." The goal is always to find what he calls "a what the fuck factor" to make sure he's not just talking about boring stuff.

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Unlike most social media personalities with large followings, Batt isn't cashing in on sponsored content. "It's purely just the shows," he says when asked how he makes a living. "If you see me working with an artist or doing a giveaway, that's entirely unpaid—I'm doing it because I like their work."

Anti-Heritage Minutes

Unlike the sanitized nationalism of beer commercials or heritage minutes, Batt's approach to Canadian identity is deliberately complex. He avoids the easy symbols—the moose, the Mounties, the maple syrup—in favor of the mundane, the regional, the overlooked.

"As someone that sees Canada as complicit in genocide and built on this terrible version of colonialism—that whole thing is like, how can you be proud of Canada? How can you be proud of how we've gotten here?" Batt asks. "I don't—it's very difficult for me to be proud of that. But I can certainly be proud of Canadians and the things that Canadians have accomplished."

This distinction between Canada the nation-state and Canadians themselves defines Batt's philosophy. He's interested in the people and their quirks, not the official narratives.

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His Instagram posts reflect this approach—examining everything from the PEI Pie Brigade to the Shawinigan Handshake with equal parts reverence and irreverence. These explorations have earned him an unlikely collection of Canadian celebrity fans like Jan Arden, who attended his Calgary show ("a life highlight," he calls it); Greg Keelor from Blue Rodeo who regularly comments on posts; and Jonathan Torrens is now "a bud."

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Not your average, Montreal-made Canadian

Perhaps what's most surprising about Batt is that he's not the stereotypical quiet Canadian. Before his Instagram account, he was a fixture in Montreal's cultural scene, DJing at Blue Dog on Saturday nights before heading to after-hours spots on The Main. He shared an apartment with musician Rollie Pemberton (Cadence Weapon), who would later DJ his wedding.

"I'm a really obnoxious person at a party—I don't shut up," Batt says with characteristic candor. "I'm absolutely in everybody's face."

This exuberance translates well to the stage, but it's an odd contrast to the anonymous admin presence he maintained on Instagram for years.

"The whole admin persona is really funny. I'm a very outgoing person, so to be anonymous is extremely counterintuitive. It's really not the type of decision people who know me would have expected me to make."

Technically a New Brunswicker, Batt will tell you how Montreal shaped his sensibilities during his two decades in the city. Despite relocating to the Laurentians with his wife, he maintains his city-centric identity with conviction. "I remain as much of a Montrealer as anyone else, and I have no problem with how I feel about that," he insists. "I put my time in, man."

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That time includes the quintessential Montreal experience for many who were not born here, but certainly bred: finding your way to the city through unconventional means. Batt first came for the Explore French immersion program, got kicked out for missing too many classes, but stayed anyway. "I found a place to live and got a job after getting kicked out, and I've been on my feet since then and haven't looked back."

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The Canadiana hive mind

Batt's research methods are as unconventional as his career path. Rather than spending long hours in formal archives, he leverages the collective knowledge of his followers.

"The other secret sauce would be that I have almost a hundred thousand followers that work as a hive mind—I get a ton of submissions," he explains. This collaborative approach has surfaced genuinely unique content, including photos that weren't available online before his followers shared them.

"When I did that Mary Pratt post the other day, I got that photo of her from her daughter Barbara Pratt," he says with pride. "So it wasn't something you could Google, and I had some pride that I was posting a photo that wasn't already online."

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Batt doesn't claim exceptional research skills, just a good eye for what will resonate. "It's not necessarily the digging skills; it's knowing what to look for. Anybody can find anything—that part isn't difficult. It's knowing what to Google and why, and curating things in a light, fun way."

His definition of "Canadian identity" is deliberately fragmented. Rather than promoting a cohesive national narrative, he acknowledges the powerful pull of regional identities and cross-border connections.

"Growing up in New Brunswick on the border with Maine, my friends and I only had a childhood sense of New England—we felt more at home there than we might have in Vancouver," he explains. "They say trade is always north and south, and culture follows trade. That's why you see prairie people with accents similar to the Midwest creeping up into northwestern Ontario and Manitoba."

Stories of lived experience

Now with a book deal from Harper Collins for spring 2026, Batt is at a crossroads: How does an account built on irreverence and niche knowledge translate to traditional publishing? He's "learning the hard way" about the "journalistic integrity" required for print.

But whatever comes next, Batt's success reveals something important about Canadian identity these days, in a media landscape dominated by American content: Canadians are hungry for stories that reflect their lived experience—not just the marketable symbols, but the childhood snacks, the regional accents, the forgotten scandals, and yes, even those neon-colored polypropylene-and-steel Ven-Rez classroom chairs.

It's a simple formula, but one that's reshaping how Canadians understand their shared culture.

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