Dismal ‘Ehmoji’ keyboard perfectly epitomizes Canadian content: 
This Tim Hortons “Ehmoji” keyboard inadvertently epitomizes everything wrong with Canadian content. Image: Mashable, Mile Goscha 
By Pete Pachal2015-07-01 21:58:25 UTC
If you’re Canadian, you’re probably intimately familiar with “Canadian content,” laws created by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that specify a significant portion of shows broadcast on TV and radio must be made in Canada.
The controversial set of laws — which has been around for the better part of a century — have led to, arguably, both an at-times-thriving regional creative industry and a nonstop pipeline of substandard schlock created solely to fill time. For every breakout like Degrassi, there’s a Littlest Hobo that makes you wonder how it ever got made. The answer, invariably: Can-con.
Although this “Ehmoji” keyboard, created by Canada’s coffee-and-doughnut empire Tim Hortons, isn’t regulated by Can-con per se, it perfectly reflects the spirit of the concept in its execution: Packaging Canadian symbols and imagery into a popular medium (in this case, third-party iPhone keyboards) to fulfill an imagined demand. And although the idea of adding maple leafs, beavers and hockey pucks to texts has some appeal, the result has all the frustrations of an episode of The Starlost.
For starters, it’s not a real keyboard. Although you install and enable it just like you would any third-party keyboard, the symbols aren’t true emoji. Tapping one will only copy the image to your clipboard, letting you paste it as an image.
That’s not unexpected, since true emoji characters need to be enabled through the Unicode standard, and although Tim Hortons holds an ironclad grip over Canadian pastry consumption, its power doesn’t translate well to the digital realm. Still, it’s a poor experience for the user.
Also, the symbols are far too large to be taken seriously as emoji. Texting a giant maple leaf to someone has the effect of shouting ultra-patriotism rather than the more rational sprinkling of some Canuck flavor over a conversation.
Finally, there just aren’t that many symbols. After flags, toques and maple syrup, Tim Hortons just punted. Predictably, there’s coffee and Timbits, but where are the provincial flags, the local landmarks, the beer? It’s no surprise the reviews in both the iOS and Android app stores are brutal.
That’s why this sad app epitomizes the spirit of Can-con: Its heart is in the right place, but the result is so sad, you wish someone would have said to the creators early in the process, “Maybe we should just… not.”
There’s a better reason for Canadians to celebrate this Canada Day, though: It’s the first year there’s an official Canadian flag in the real-deal Unicode emoji that every iPhone can access. Beauty, eh?
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