The Rhinoceros Party (Canada)

The Parti Rhinocéros, commonly known as the Rhino Party in English, was a registered political party in Canada from the 1960s to the 1990s. Operating within the Canadian tradition of political satire, the Rhinoceros Party's basic credo, their so-called primal promise, was "a promise to keep none of our promises" (at least they were honest about their lies). They then promised outlandishly impossible schemes designed to amuse and entertain the voting public.

The Rhinos were started in 1963 by Jacques Ferron, "Éminence de la Grande Corne du parti Rhinoceros". In the 1970s, a group of artists joined the party and created a comedic political platform to contest the federal election. Ferron (1979), poet Gaston Miron (1972) and singer Michel Rivard (1980) ran against Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in his Montreal seat.

The party, which claimed to be the spiritual descendants of Cacareco, a Brazilian rhinoceros who was elected member of São Paulo's city council in the 1950s, listed Cornelius the First, a rhinoceros from the Granby Zoo, east of Montreal, as its leader. It declared that the rhinoceros was an appropriate symbol for a political party since politicians, by nature, are "thick-skinned, slow-moving, dim-witted, can move fast as hell when in danger, and have large, hairy horns growing out of the middle of their faces."

Some members of the Rhino party would call themselves Marxist-Lennonist (a parody of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada), in reference to Groucho Marx and John Lennon.