HGTV's Scott McGillivray named 'Greatest Living Canadian'

OTTAWA- Scott McGillivray, host of HGTV's marginally popular home renovation show “Income Property” was voted 2011's Greatest Living Canadian by members of the prestigious Canadian Media Guild. McGillivray, a first-time recipient of the award, ended the 31 year run at the CMGs by hockey player and demi-God Wayne Gretzky. Musicians Gordon Lightfoot and Alex Lifeson, wrestler-singer-dancer-game show host Chris Jericho and current Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper rounded out the top six.

[RIGHT- Scott McGillivray has made Canada proud by turning real estate into real income.]

Representatives from the CMG said that the organ-i-zaytion was proud to bestow the honor on McGillivray, who has raised the profile of Canada with his useful tips and tricks around the house. In a press release following the announcement of the award, the CMG cited McGillivray's dedication to open-concept living/dining areas, as well as his creative work in difficult crawl spaces as two accomplishments that separated him from the rest of the field. Furthermore, the CMG pointed out that McGillivray's 1998 sense of style and the fact that he tirelessly stretches out vowel sounds in words like “progress” and “about” both contributed positively to Canadian culture at home and abroad over the last year.

Terry Miller, a newspaper columnist for McGillivray's hometown Brampton Guardian,championed the host's candidacy with the CMG. “I can only speak for myself, but McGillivray and the CMGs seem to go together like french fries and poutine, like maple syrup and sex, or like peanut butter and something else that Canadians stereotypically love,” Miller said in a speech to the assembled CMG. “It is hard to estimate how many times he has directly impacted my life, such as the time when I was preparing to install new tile in my den and hadn't even considered a sealant layer to prevent moisture from seeping between my wood floor boards and the tile until Scott explained it on 'Income Property.' It was the kind of advice that would make any Canadian want to salute him. Plus, I would go gay for him.”

Impressive as McGillivray's accomplishments on “Income Property” are, his resume does not end there. McGillivray earned an honors degree from the University of Guelph in marketing management, and is now the fourth most popular search term on Google that begins with “Scott Mc.” Additionally, McGillivray runs an online consulting business named the Lifetime Wealth Academy that may or may not be a pyramid scheme where poor saps fork over cash in exchange for promises of secret real estate strategies that are really just common sense that anyone could execute if they started with enough capital. Perhaps most impressively, McGillivray has an achieved an exact duplicate of the haircut sported by Creed's Scott Stapp in the video for “Arms Wide Open.”

[LEFT- Scott Stapp tries to convince those last few holdouts that he is a huge douche.]

Despite McGillivray's heroic status in Canadian pop culture, some dissenters remain. Actor and comedian Dan Aykroyd accused McGillivray of being a bad role model and an even worse patriot. “If you watch McGillivray's show, he never mentions that he is in Canada. He never says the name of a single city because he doesn't want to alienate viewers down in Buffalo or Syracuse. What does he have to hide? I think McGillivray is a fraud and a disgrace and a fraud,” Britney Spears's co-star from Crossroads told newspaper reporters. “He also makes Canada look even more low-class than it really is. When he does a virtual preview of his remodeling jobs, the graphics are so poor that he looks like a character from Tron. Not the new Tron, the one from 1982, which, I believe, is also the year when he bought his cutoff t-shirts.”

[RIGHT- Dan Aykroyd hasn't been this sure of anything since he wrapped the pilot for Soul Man.]

McGillivray accepted the honor gracefully, explaining to reporters that, “some people will obviously say that homeimprovement is not as important as helping the poor and needy, or keeping Canada peaceful. But the reason that I dedicate myself to my work every day is that I think of home improvement as the greatest humanitarian cause. I'm in the trenches every day, fighting battles against enemies like bad insulation. You know what happens when insulation goes bad? Houses start to lose heat, and the owners have to burn more oil to keep themselves warm. When we waste heating oil, we're creating a demand for more foreign oil, which everyone knows funds terrorism. I'm not saying that I have done as much to fight terrorism as Seal Team 6, but I'm definitely in the conversation. I deserve this award. Oh, and I've got a great Canadian joke for Dan Aykroyd. Knock knock. Who's there. Go fuck yourself, Dan Aykroyd.”