A television campaign for the Children’s Miracle Network has had U of T students playing “spot the student council president” since mid-December and created a new catchphrase on campus: “I was one.”

Yes, it is SAC President Ashley Morton you might have seen on your television screen over the holidays, and yes, he was one of the millions of Canadian kids treated in children’s hospitals.

And yes, he’s getting a little tired of explaining it to everyone.

“Large numbers of people come up to me and say ‘I was one,'” he sighed on Monday morning. But he understands the fascination. “It is a little bit surreal when you see someone you know from a completely different context on TV.”

People also tell him he looks different. “Because, of course, it was filmed over the summer when I had a lot less hair.”

It’s all second-hand information for him anyway.

“I still haven’t seen it, because I don’t have a TV.”

The ad is for the Children’s Miracle Network, which supports children’s hospitals, and features people saying “I was one,” meaning that they were once treated in a children’s hospital.

Morton’s two seconds of screen time were filmed at “a little place near Barrie,” though he can’t remember its exact name.

“They took me out on a boat to a little island and filmed me on a dock in the middle of Muskoka.” So the green coastal backdrop to his three words is, sadly, not Vancouver, or even in British Columbia.

Friends have also pointed out that he’s not actually from Vancouver, which is what it says on the screen. As a child, Morton lived in Bella Coola, which is about 350 km northwest of Vancouver.

“When I was three I had a double hernia operation at the Vancouver Children’s Hospital,” he says. “They flew me down for it.”

The reward for all of this?

“I’m now an apprentice member of ACTRA,” he says, referring to the Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists. As a newly minted member of the union, he was paid $400 for the gig.

“Wal-Mart paid for the commercial, which meant that I didn’t feel any moral compunction for getting paid for it.” Wal-Mart is a supporter of the Children’s Miracle Network through its Good Works program, and paid for the commercial and airtime. Morton will continue to receive a trickle of cash as royalties every time the commercial airs.

But the glamourous life of a television actor doesn’t hold much appeal for him.

“I’ve always liked acting,” he says, but “at the same time I hardly think of it as a career for myself.”