Toronto Apologizes for Belly's Canada Day Performance Because Old People

Canada is often held up as a beacon of tolerance in comparison to other nations, especially America (Happy 4th of July, guys!), but the truth is that much of this country is composed of easily-upset, WASP-ish conservatives who distrust immigrants. They're just more polite about it, is all. That underbelly of contempt emerged during Toronto's Canada Day weekend celebrations, which saw performances from artists like dvsn, Roy Woods, and Belly. Belly, if you recall, makes rap, which means he's gonna swear. In one of the worst cases of "not reading the goddamn memo," not only were parents shocked, but their complaints pressured the city to apologize for the "inappropriate content" during Belly's set on Monday.

As CP24 reports, the comments from concerned concertgoers are a gallery of peak NIMBY aphorisms like "I have an 11-year-old who I'm trying to mentor to be an upstanding citizen and I was just outraged." We get it, you were told by AppleCare that this would be a family event.

According to his own tweets, Belly apparently told city organizers beforehand that he would be using profanity during the show. He also took the time to offer a few choice words for the offended parties:

This whole debacle, in a nutshell, is a peek into why even the idea of a Toronto rap scene is at odds with a certain concept of Canadian identity (this tweet pithily sums it up). It's also why we will never have nice things. At least the people loved Drake when he showed up, right?

Phil is tired on Twitter.

UPDATE: A previous version of this piece said that Belly performed on Sunday. He actually performed on a Monday.