Is it too early to call Grand Prix Montreal Vegas 2.0? The Grand Prix is still five months away, but there is already a plan in place to replicate the Vegas experience as closely as possible, and it should be a veritable “Who’s Who?” of podcast personalities and North American pros. A lot of our best road stories are from Grands Prix in Toronto and Montreal. The only time I’ve experienced Magic players singing Karaoke was at a Canadian Grand Prix; we have stories of being accosted by border-crossing guards, of searching for the best poutine in the Brazilian district of Toronto, and of ending up at the Drake hotel—Canadian Grands Prix are the best value. So, even though 2013 isn’t quite ended yet and March 2014 is still far off, I’ve already decided to call it: Grand Prix Montreal is going to be the must-attend North American GP of 2014.

My projected enjoyment of this event is due in no small part to the cast of loveable Canadian degenerates I’ve assembled for you. Almost pathologically polite, and not so arrogant as to refer to Boros-colored decks as “Canadian” the way their less polite neighbors to the south can’t resist when presented with a R/W/U deck, Canadians have contributed a lot to the game and the community at large. So, grab a pew, buckle up, and let’s explore a group from the country Robin Williams described as a “really nice apartment above a meth lab”. This is “Who to Follow – Great White North.”

Kar Yung Tom

Where You Know Him From: Canada

Current Title: Owner of ManaDeprived.com

Social Media:

Twitter

Facebook

ManaDeprived

A very popular podcast

Google+

I don’t know if being-super nice to everyone is how KYT made it to where he is, but it can’t have hurt. He’s so nice and polite that Canadian people say, “That guy is really nice and polite,” which is saying something given their baseline. If you listen to his appearance on The Deck Tease, he tells about the very humble beginnings of ManaDeprived and how it became the cultural juggernaut it is today.

Speaking of juggernauts, how about that The Eh Team podcast? Routinely ranked as the first- or second-best Magic podcast, The Eh Team has managed to emerge from the chaos of losing a core member and coming out stronger on the other side. KYT keeps the other casters on task and helps establish the flow and seems to be, at least until recently, clearly the best player on the cast, and his experience is very valuable. But you probably know all that. I’m sure you’ve heard of KYT. But are you following him on Twitter? I feel that, if nothing else, you should give him a pity follow because he’s a Montreal Canadians fan, and no one deserves to be disappointed that often and thoroughly.

Ryan Abcede

Where You Know Him From: QuietSpeculation

Current Title: The train kind of engineer, not the math kind

Social Media:

Twitter

Facebook

QS Archive

Google +

YouTube

It’s harder than it should be to find a picture of Ryan not “Hulking out.” Despite his rage face, a one-hundred-year-old Stan Lee doesn’t look afraid for his life, and you shouldn’t be either. Ryan was part of what seemed like a gang of polite Canadian people who descended on the house we’d rented in Vegas and proceeded to be nice to everyone and pick up after themselves. It was horrible. The Americans at the house didn’t know how to react, so we distracted them with a hockey game until everyone had enough to drink that we were properly acclimated to deal with all the compliments they kept paying everyone.

I guess it’s my turn to pay some compliments because I’m not sure why Ryan stopped writing for QS. I felt that his writing style was very easy to read yet not impersonal, and his opinions on de-pimping Cubes reflected a very function-over-form mentality that I find refreshing.

There is a Grand Prix coming up in Toronto. It's dangerous to go alone, take this. There you go. That’s Toronto figgered out. Now you can worry about more important things like why their money is made of plastic and smells like maple syrup.

If you can’t access his articles about Cube, that’s unfortunate because I feel that they’re great reads, and if you pester me in the comments section, I can see about unlocking one of them for people to read. I feel that Ryan is a great writer and could use a home. He’s a great follow on Twitter as well.

Follow him on Twitter, and say “hi” to him at Grand Prix Toronto because I think by now you must have learned that not going to Canadian Grands Prix is not the play. Still not convinced? I’ll take one last hack at it.

Matthew Beverly a.k.a Matty Studios

Where You Know Him From: Heavy Meta?

Current Title: Creative Director, Podcaster, Canucklehead

Social Media:

Twitter

Heavy Meta

Matty Studios

Mana Deprived Archive

I sure am linking to ManaDeprived a lot tonight. If it feels like that, it’s because KYT and ManaDeprived have done a lot to put modern Canadian Magic back on the map in a big way. The second podcaster on a very short list, Matty Studios—as potential design clients and frightened card thieves call him—helped create one of the best up-and-coming (or totally established?) Magic podcasts around: Heavy Meta. Though the two casts aren’t all that alike, Heavy Meta is like Brainstorm Brewery’s brother, and for all the moaning about finance, their listeners do whenever a finance guest is booked on their cast, Matty and Ferret talk about Magic Online finance a great deal, and I’ve begun forwarding as many Magic Online finance questions their way, as they refer to me for paper finance queries. Even if you’re not interested in Magic Online finance, Matty’s analysis is solid.

Follow him on Twitter or don’t—Matty doesn’t need your pity. With a very lucrative job doing something he loves and no small degree of podcast success, it’s all gravy for Matty. Delicious, dirty gravy, smothered on French fries and cheese curbs and sweet, savory beef, and . . . wait, can you believe people eat that routinely? And then they call Americans fat? No wonder they have such good healthcare.

If you like decent finance tips from someone who really doesn’t consider himself a financier but should probably reconsider, you must add Matty to your Twitter feed. If not, check the #MTGOFinance hashtag, and he’s all over it like gravy all over some poutine. Seriously, I can just not get past that as a concept. KFC made their famous bowls, and they became the laughing stock of the standup comedy world (joke’s on you, Patton Oswalt—Famous Bowls are their number-one seller), but Canada gets away with lazily dumping all of their fat and carbs onto a plate and pretending it’s a delicacy. The worst part? It’s delicious. Poutine may be the number-three reason to go to a Canadian Grand Prix.

Here, receive some tweets.

That’s all for me this week. Join me next time for more tenuous at best connections, quality Twitter contributions, and more value than you can shake a stick at when Who to Follow comes to town once again and tries to tell you how to live your life. Until next time, I’m your guide Jason Alt, and this has been Who to Follow.