Ernie Coombs would have been 85 today. And to celebrate the birthday of the man behind CBC’s Mr. Dressup, Google.ca ran a very special doodle on its homepage.

Mr. Dressup, along with his puppets Casey and Finnegan, were Canadian institutions for nearly 30 years. And for Google Doodler Ryan Germick, taking on an illustration to honour an icon of Canadian childhood was not something he took lightly. Listen to CBC Radio’s Carol Off interview Ryan on As It Happens about today’s doodle and what it’s like to be a Google Doodler.

We hope you enjoyed today’s Doodle as much as we did ... and we’ll leave you with some sage advice from Mr. Dressup himself: “Keep your crayons sharp, your sticky tape untangled and always put the tops back on your marker.”

Posted by Aaron Brindle, Google Canada