Poo and Pee don’t sing. Nor do they joke or mine their almost unlimited pun potential.
But they are visible, James Skwarok notes, a little too eagerly.
Asked to assess B.C.’s newest sewage-related mascots, the erstwhile Mr. Floatie is trying to be positive. Number one, the pair are colourful, he says. Number two, they’re hard to ignore. But then he struggles to find a turd argument in their favour.
“I think they’re pretty funny,” he finally says. “Mascots like Pee and Poo will get people talking about what’s being flushed down the toilet.”
Well, job done, then. That’s why the costumed crusaders were just unveiled by Metro Vancouver, the regional government that is trying to keep “unflushables” out of the wastewater system.
If only they had a little more of the Floatie flair.
The truth is that Pee, who looks like a yellow lemon drop, and Poo, who resembles a brown emoji, are a little lacking, even though they cost roughly $8,000, which is roughly $7,850 more than the $150 spent to build Mr. Floatie.
Skwarok allows that yes, it would be nice if Pee and Poo had more of an ability to engage. “Mascots can be more effective if they’re interacting with the public,” he says. “I always think it’s great when mascots can talk.”
Mr. Floatie certainly talked. And talked and talked and talked, until politicians finally forced sewage treatment on Greater Victoria — a feat that made Skwarok and his allies heroes to some but not to others.
Mr. Floatie first bobbed up on April Fool’s Day 2004, a response to government inaction. Standing almost seven feet tall (Skwarok, then a UVic student, would peer out holes in the bow tie), the mascot resembled the love child of Mother Nature and Mr. Peanut.
For a few years, Mr. Floatie — fashioned from an aluminum backpack frame, plastic garden mesh, bedding foam and brown velour — and his friends from the People Opposed to Outfall Pollution were a constant presence. He was at political rallies. He was at fairs. He ran the TC10K in 2005, the same year authorities prevented him from running for mayor (a rejection that garnered international headlines). “We really put pressure on politicians to get things moving,” he says.
Mr. Floatie had a workable latex mouth that Skwarok could manipulate with his left hand from inside the costume. (Few noticed, but Mr. Floatie waved both arms when taking part in parades, but used only his right at events where he was required to speak.) Like the costume itself, his falsetto was patterned after a South Park character, Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo. “It was a voice that I could sustain,” Skwarok says.
Sometimes, he sang:
“I’m Mr. Floatie/
The ocean poo/
If you’re from Victoria/
Then I’m from you.”
Sometimes he told cheerfully cheesy jokes. His cornball toilet humour was disarming, helped turn down the temperature of the divisive debate.
Some didn’t laugh, though, arguing there was no scientific basis for an end to Victoria’s practice of pumping screened, raw sewage into Juan de Fuca Strait. Still, no one disputed that we had a political problem — Americans were so unhappy about what they saw as Victoria using an international waterway as a toilet that it damaged cross-border business.
That’s why Tourism Victoria made a big splash, as it were, over Mr. Floatie’s retirement in 2017, flying him to Seattle as construction of the Esquimalt sewage plant began. (When Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, who was also on that trip, tweeted a photo of me standing beside the mascot, someone replied: “Which one is Mr. Floatie?”)
Seattle was the last time Skwarok appeared as Mr. Floatie. After that, the costume was preserved as part of the province’s history. “Mr. Floatie is now in the Royal B.C. Museum, sleeping like a log, I’m sure,” Skwarok says.
He has left that role behind now. He’s an elementary school teacher, a job he loves.
It’s satisfying to see the sewage plant rising at McLoughlin Point, though. “Every time we walk on the breakwater, we look over and say: ‘That’s awesome.’ ”
For the record, stuff that gets flushed down the toilet but shouldn’t includes disposable wipes, dental floss, hair, tampons and applicators, paper towels, medication and condoms, Metro Vancouver says. It released a Pee and Poo video that shows workers pulling great, icky clumps out of clogged pipes by hand. If your job is worse than theirs, you should quit.
