Stephen Colbert praises Kevin Vickers: 'To hell with Bruce Willis'
Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert featured Kevin Vickers's role in ending the Ottawa shooting
House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers has earned praise from across Canada for his dramatic takedown of the Parliament Hill shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. Now he’s caught the attention of American comedian Stephen Colbert.
Colbert hosts a satirical news program on Comedy Central and used a four-minute and 32-second segment to praise Vickers — well, in the comedian’s own style.
Colbert showed several clips of the CBC’s Evan Solomon describing how Vickers discovered Zehaf-Bibeau on Parliament Hill and then shot him with his sidearm.
“To hell with Bruce Willis. This Canadian just put, this guy, our neighbour to the north just put the ‘eh in Yippee-Ki-Yay,'” Colbert said on Thursday night on his Comedy Central television program, a reference to Willis’s famous line from his 1988 movie Die Hard.
The U.S. comedian then showed footage from the lengthy ovation that Vickers received from MPs the day after the shooting.
Colbert quipped, “Look at that magnificent bastard; stoic, humble. Folks I have not been this moved by something this Canadian since the return of Degrassi.”
He then apologized for all the “terrible” things he has said about Canada in the past such as “maple-sucking moose humpers.”
Colbert didn’t, however, apologize for his 2012 description of Windsor, Ont., as the “Earth’s rectum” or suggesting in April that the United States could invade Saskatchewan.
The reaction to Vickers’s actions has spurred praise far beyond Parliament Hill and the Colbert Report.
He has been hailed as a hero on social media and been celebrated in his hometown of Miramichi, N.B.
Vickers became the sergeant-at-arms in the House of Commons eight years ago after a varied career in security that included protecting foreign dignitaries and members of the Royal Family.