Rhinoceros Party

The Rhinoceros Party () was a registered political party in Canada from the 1960s to the 1990s. Operating within the 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 Rhinocéros". 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 claimed to be the spiritual descendants of Cacareco, a Brazilian rhinoceros who was "elected" member of São Paulo's city council in 1958, and listed Cornelius the First, a rhinoceros from the Granby Zoo, east of Montreal, as its leader. It declared 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". Some members of the Rhino party would call themselves Marxist-Lennonist, a parody of the factional split between the Communist Party of Canada and the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), although the Rhinoceros Party meant the term in reference to Groucho Marx and John Lennon. The party used as its logo a woodcut of a rhinoceros by Albrecht Dürer, with the words ''D'une mare à l'autre'' (a French translation of Canada's Latin motto a mari usque ad mare (from sea to sea), playing on the word mare, which means pond in French) at the top. Policies and politics In addition to the national platform promises released by the party leadership, individual candidates also had considerable freedom to campaign on their own ideas and slogans. 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 Too" Sharp ran in Flora MacDonald's Kingston and the Islands riding. He also took a stand on abortion (promising, if elected, never to have an abortion) and capital punishment: "If it was good enough for my grandfather, then it's good enough for me". To strengthen Canada's military, Sharp planned to tow Antarctica north to the Arctic Circle: "Once we have Antarctica, we'll control all of the world's cold. If another Cold War starts, we'll be unbeatable". In the 1988 election, the Rhinoceros Party ran a candidate named John Turner in the same riding as Liberal leader John Turner; the party received 760 votes. Penny Hoar, a safe sex activist, distributed condoms in Toronto while running under the slogan: "Politicians screw you—protect yourself". 1979 campaign • Government: • The Queen of Canada would be seated in Buckingham, Quebec. • Rather than awarding money as prizes in the lottery, the winners would be appointed to the Senate of Canada. • Energy: • Building one nuclear power plant per household, including monthly distributions of lead underwear to Canadians. Indoor lighting would then be provided by radioactive citizens. • Burning all the standing barns in Canada to provide energy, under the slogan Burn a barn for Britain. • Candidate Graham Ashley, standing in Ottawa-Vanier, pledged to take Canada off the gold standard, and implement a Snow Standard, which would improve the economy until the summer. • Public works • Candidate Stardust the Magician promised to put a roof on the Olympic Stadium, using only a $25-million handkerchief. Other campaigns Other platform promises of the Rhinoceros Party included: • Repealing the law of gravity • Making Montreal the Venice of North America by damming the St. Lawrence River • Abolishing the environment because it's too hard to keep clean and it takes up so much space • To provide more parking in the Maritimes by paving the Bay of Fundy, and to create the world's largest parking by paving the province of Manitoba • Turning Montreal's Saint Catherine Street into the world's longest bowling alley • Making the Canadian climate more temperate by tapping into the natural resource of hot air in Ottawa. • 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 Montreal (the Belgian Embassy in Ottawa did, in fact, do this) • Making the Trans-Canada Highway one way only. • Donating a free rhinoceros to every aspiring artist in Canada The Rhino Party also declared that, should they somehow actually win an election, they would immediately dissolve and force a second election: "We Rhinos think that elections are so much fun, we want to hold them all the time". They also declared victory after one election, claiming all candidates were Rhinoceroses, whether they knew or acknowledged it: thick-skinned, short-sighted, mean-tempered, etc. Notable candidates Michel Rivard once went on television (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". A British Columbia splinter group proposed running a professional dominatrix for the position of party whip, 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". 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. In the 2019 Canadian federal election, the Rhinoceros Party ran a candidate named Maxime Bernier in the riding of Beauce against the incumbent, Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada. Neither candidate won, with both being defeated by Conservative Party candidate Richard Lehoux. Rhino candidate Bernier managed 1,084 votes. Even if all of these had gone to incumbent Bernier, who managed 16,796 votes, it still would not have been enough to change the result. Lehoux received 22,860 votes. Electoral record The Rhinoceros Party never succeeded in winning a seat in the House of Commons. 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 their only unilingual anglophone party member as their official translator. 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; therefore, its candidates were listed as independents. (Source: Toronto Star, October 31, 1972.) 1993 abstention and subsequent dissolution 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 (1943–2025), 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 then claimed to hold the distinction of being Canada's "least-wanted fugitive". 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 its candidates (Liar Liar in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant and Helvis in Vancouver-Burrard) appeared on the ballots, as the party claimed the $1,000 candidate registration fee was a financial hardship. Unregistered candidates included Geoff Berner, who received national wire service coverage for promising "cocaine and whores to potential investors". The party disbanded shortly thereafter. ==Successors==