Today, the word hoser evokes - sometimes sympathetically, with gentle ribbing, and sometimes negatively - a stereotypical Canadian male, typically
lower to
middle class,
white and
English Canadian. He is especially concerned with drinking
beer and watching
hockey. The hoser is understood as a product of a poor and white upbringing, whether urban or rural, but never from a more
cosmopolitan lifestyle. He is generally assumed to be
unemployed, although he may also work in primary industry (
manufacturing,
mining,
forestry, etc.) or as a
tradesman or a manual labourer. He is typically not
university-educated: if he has any education past high school, it's a college trade program. If he does go on to university, or moves to a city, he will still have preferences for "hoser" food, clothing, music, and sports, and will retain the language inflections of his upbringing.
He's often imagined wearing heavy winter clothing, usually a
flannel lumberjack shirt, Kodiak boots and a
tuque. He is generally a young adult to middle age, and may be somewhat aggressive given the beer and hockey, but may conversely be passive and amiable, given the beer. In musical culture, he is correlated with
classic and mainstream
rock music, particularly with
Rush,
Nickelback and the earlier, rowdier works of
The Tragically Hip. If he goes out socially, it's usually to a
donut shop.
A hoser's flannel shirt may also be referred to as a "
Kenora dinner jacket". (Some regional variations of this term also exist, usually substituting a hoser-stereotyped local community's name in place of Kenora.)
[2]Perhaps the iconic representations of this definition of hoser in
Canadian culture are
Bob & Doug McKenzie of
SCTV and
Strange Brew. This model also profoundly informs
The Red Green Show, and some sketch characters on
Royal Canadian Air Farce (e.g. "
Mike, from Canmore", "A Canadian Moment") and
This Hour Has 22 Minutes (e.g. Connie Bloor, the Quinlan Quints). Although set in the
United States,
Wayne's World — which was created by a Canadian,
Mike Myers — also shares some common elements with the hoser archetype.
Hoser may also refer more generically to a rude and unkempt person, similar to the more universal terms boor, slob, and lout. However, like other such terms (e.g. jerk) it can also be used in a much more general sense as an all-purpose mild
insult. The term is also sometimes used outside of Canada as a mocking term for any Canadian, although this usage may be perceived as offensive because of the word's more particular meaning within Canada. (See
Anti-Canadianism)
Bob & Doug McKenzie defined the term as "What you call your little brother when your mother isn't in the room."
HoserMobile 2- The Engine Donor
