The Trailer Park Boys on their Montreal smoked meat heist and what they're up to at Comiccon

Ricky, Julian and Bubbles are still going strong a near quarter century after Trailer Park Boys first aired, and continue to sit atop their thrones as the kings of Sunnyvale Trailer Park.

Beyond their beloved mockumentary sitcom, the Trailer Park Boys brand has spawned movies, live specials and a whole lot of merch — building an empire far greater than the parameters of Sunnyvale.

Now, the most famous trio to emerge from any trailer park (let alone one in Nova Scotia) are coming back to Montreal for an appearance at the upcoming Montreal Comiccon, taking place at Palais des Congrès from July 5 to 7, where the three will be signing autographs and doing photo ops each day.

The boys, aka John Paul Tremblay, Robb Wells and Mike Smith — who each spoke to Cult MTL in character over the phone — love Montreal, and are excited to come back to town after a lengthy absence… and especially after a particularly hilarious incident involving Dunn’s smoked meat.

Here’s how our chat went down.

Dave MacIntyre: When were you last in Montreal?

Ricky: That’s a good question.

Julian: I drove up and watched a couple Habs games. That’s the last time I visited Montreal. As a group, it’s been many years.

DM: Which memories of Montreal trips stick out most to you?

Bubbles: That’s a great question, because a lot of those trips are very blurry.

J: Ricky ended up in the drunk tank one time. He’s not really good with French, so there was a police officer who’s talking away, and Ricky thought… He didn’t understand what he was saying, anyways, so it turned into a bit of a nightmare.

B: Ricky also stole an entire side of smoked meat out of Dunn’s one night, wasted.

DM: Oh my God! Please tell me all about that.

B: We just went in to order. Ricky was hungry, the lineup was long. When the guy went down to go into the kitchen to get some stuff, Ricky just went behind the thing and put a whole side of it under his arm and ran.

DM: That sounds like pretty typical Ricky.

B: Then Julian stole some bags of bread, and I stole the condiments. We went over to the park there, across the street, and we just drove about 19 Dunn’s sandwiches into us.

DM: I hope those were some good sandwiches. It sounds like you went through quite the ordeal to procure them!

J: You guys have good smoked meat there, that’s for sure.

R: And bagels. Good bagels. Another time, we went to the F1 race and almost died. We got sunstroke. That was a weird one… It was 50 degrees at the track, man. It was crazy. That was quite a few years ago now.

J: We weren’t hydrating ourselves. We just kept drinking liquor.

DM: You’re coming here for Montreal Comiccon soon. What do you think of comic-cons in general? How do you feel whenever you’re at one?

B: Comic-cons are fantastic, because normally when we’re doing a show, the fans are right out of ‘er. They’re high and drunk, and half of them don’t know where they are. But at the comic-cons, everybody comes in, they might be a little baked or whatever, but they’re not falling down drunk. It’s a lot easier to talk to people.

DM: It’s not like you’re at a convention full of Mr. Laheys.

J: No!

R: That’s a good point. People seem really happy to see us — all the fans have been fantastic.

B: And people are constantly slipping drugs to Ricky, so he enjoys that.

DM: What can fans expect from your Montreal Comiccon appearance this year?

B: We’ll be there, we’ll be at the table signing stuff, whatever people want signed. Getting pictures. Chatting, hanging out.

J: Probably be some drinks flying around.

B: There’ll be some drinking, and there’ll be some things ingested that make you high, probably.

J: We’ll usually get up and do a Q&A for about 20 minutes, half an hour or so.

B: If people are in town, they should come down and see us! Come hang out and say hi. It’s a good time, especially if you’ve got kids. Or even if you don’t, and you just want to take some gummies and come down and look at all the people dressed up. I wouldn’t suggest coming to it on mushrooms, I’ll say that.

DM: *laughs* Sounds a little overwhelming.

B: Well just, you know, all of a sudden you’re talking to Pikachu, and you can’t tell if it’s real or not.

DM: Pretty much! I’m sure you guys probably come across people dressed up as you at comic-cons too, right?

J: There is a little bit of that going on, yeah. It’s cool.

B: We’ve probably seen 50 Mr. Laheys in the last couple years. A bunch of Randys. Lots of Green Bastards show up.

DM: You guys recently performed with Snoop Dogg, whom you’ve had quite a history with. What is it about Snoop that makes you want to keep working with him again and again?

J: He’s just so cool, man. He’s the man. Everybody loves Snoop Dogg. He’s a great businessman, great performer. People just love him.

R: He’s got Olympic lungs.

DM: What’s smoking with him like? I’ve heard rumours he’s a bit of a joint hog.

B: He’s not! He’s not a hog. If you’re standing in a circle with six people, he lights six gigantic joints. He’s definitely not a joint hog.

DM: I’ve heard of some people accusing him of being that!

B: Not any time we’ve been with him! It’s like, “Snoop, could you stop passing me joints? I’ve barely even exhaled this one, now I’ve got two more in my hand!”

R: I can keep up with him, no problem. A lot of people have trouble.

DM: Paint a picture for me of what life in Sunnyvale is like in 2024. What has changed in the park, and what has stayed the same?

J: Since Lahey [actor John Dunsworth] passed away, things are a lot quieter. Randy was chilled out for a bit, but he’s starting to think that he’s the boss around there. We’re constantly getting into bullshit arguments and fights with him.

R: People moved into the park from all over the world. It’s definitely different.

DM: All over the world? Like where?

J: Housing’s a bit of a problem here. People must’ve watched our show and thought it was cool to live in Sunnyvale. There’s a lot of people we don’t know there.

R: People from India. Ukraine.

J: Sweden. Germany.

R: Some of them are hard to understand, but they’re nice people.

B: I don’t like that Russian bastard down at the end of the park. Viktor. Something shady about him. He’s funnelling secrets back to the motherland. ■

Montreal Comiccon runs from July 5–7 at Palais des Congrès (1001 Place Jean-Paul Riopelle). For more, please visit the Comiccon website. This article was originally published in the July 2024 issue of Cult MTL.

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