Drake’s Breaker High Hoodie Is The Canadian Heritage Minute Of Our Millennial Dreams

The Toronto Raptors defeated the Philadelphia 76ers in a decisive 26-point victory that put the Raps up 3-2 in the NBA conference semi-finals, but who cares because DRAKE WORE A BREAKER HIGH HOODIE. No disrespect to #sports — I’ve been a Raps fan basically my whole life — but this nostalgic “Canadian heritage moment” is more important that Kawhi Leonard’s double-double or Pascal Siakam draining threes “from Sudbury.”

The logo Drake chose to rock on his hoodie Tuesday night might not mean much to anyone who wasn’t an adolescent in Canada in 1997, when the teen cruise-ship dramedy Breaker High aired on YTV, but to me and my fellow millennials on Twitter last night, this was a Very Big Deal. I tuned into the game specifically to see Drake pay homage to one of the defining shows of my childhood after tweets like this one:

If you’re not one of the kids who grew up in the ’90s watching lanky Ryan Gosling as a comedic sidekick instead of the hunky leading man, you may be confused. Join me on a trip down memory lane… Breaker High starred a young Gosling as Sean, Tyler Labine (who’s now on New Amsterdam) played Jimmy, Persia White (of Girlfriends fame — put some respect on her name) as Denise, and actors who didn’t go on to notable success in Hollywood like Terri Conn (Ashley Dupree), Kyle Alisharan (Alex Pineda), Wendi Kenya (Cassidy Cartwright), Rachel Wilson (Tamira Goldstein), and Scott Vickaryous (Max Ballard). These eight teens went to high school on a cruise ship, which was seemed like the coolest way to learn to 10-year-old me. Breaker High was filmed in Burnaby, British Columbia and only lasted for one season, 1997–1998, which does not seem accurate because of how much of an indelible impact it left on my soul, but that one season did include 44 episodes. (lol what? Canadian TV was wild.)

Drake’s Breaker High hoodie also included a picture of the entire Breaker High cast on his back:

When I learned of the back of the sweatshirt in question, I made a noise no human should make and vowed not to rest until this hoodie was in my possession. So far, the closest equivalent to Drake’s masterpiece that I can find on the entire Internet (I searched the whole thing I swear) is this one from Etsy.

Alas, it does not have a smiling Sean, Jimmy, Denise, Kyle, Cassidy, Tamira, Ashley, or Max on its back.

Ryan Gosling has not yet responded to the fact that Drake is clearly a Gosling stan who walks around with his face emblazoned between his shoulders, but Jimmy himself weighed in:

If you watched Breaker High, you know that it would be classic Jimmy to make the most obvious and worst “Started from the Bottom” joke. Breaker High Jimmy is not to be confused with Wheelchair Jimmy, the character Drake played on that other seminal Canadian teen series. This Inception-worthy, only-slightly confusing but highly entertaining Canadian Heritage Minute was brought to you by ’90s nostalgia, teen TV, and our official King in the North, Aubrey Drake Graham.