"Syrup suckers" are we? It turns out Comedian Stephen Colbert can find himself a maple tree and join the party. His roots are Canadian.

The satyrical American right-wing pundit of the Colbert Report, who recently ramped up his ribbing of Canadians leading up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, has been called out as one of us by Ancestry.ca.

The defender of "truthiness" and the "Colbert Nation" has not one, but two paternal relatives that lived, worked and died in Canada, the family history website revealed yesterday.

James Quinn, Stephen's great-great-grandfather set sail from Ireland for a better life in Canada sometime in the mid-19th century, Ancestry.ca said.

According to his 1851 census record, James Quinn lived and worked as a labourer in Frontenac County, near Kingston, Ont..

James‚ daughter Angeline Quinn, married George William Colbert, Stephen's great-grandfather.

On another side of his family, Stephen's great-great-grandmother Mary Skelton (nee Mary Ann Gurry) immigrated from Ireland to the United States before moving north of the border, where she would live out the last of her days.

According to her Ontario death certificate, Mary Skelton passed away on June 29, 1880 in Haldimand County, near the shores of Lake Erie.

"As Stephen himself admits, he has little time for facts, logic or information — he prefers to feel the truth rather than look it up in historical records," said Karen Peterson, marketing director of Ancestry.ca. "However, we are confident that if he searches his soul deep down, the truthiness of his Canadian heritage will be too powerful to deny."