The Funniest Country I Know
And that’s no joke
And that’s no joke
IT WAS A SO-SO PARTY in a chi-chi Brooklyn loft with limp nibblies and a severely limited open bar. Nursing a tepid Diet Coke, I scanned the crowd, planning an early getaway. To kill some time, I tracked strangers’ faces around the room, skittered past a set of bemused grey eyes, paused, went back to the bemused grey eyes. They resided in the face of a decidedly voluptuous woman. And she was smiling. At me. Which was ... uncustomary. I have never been mistaken for Ryan Gosling, plus I am ... of mature vintage. Comely young women don’t go out of their way to come-hither me with their lips. Or with anything else. “You local?” she purred. How to explain in a few urbane, well-chosen words that you come from Salt Spring, an island she’s never heard of located approximately 4,000 kilometres west of the guacamole dip? “I’m Canadian.” I countered. She clapped her lovely hands and let out a squeal. “So make me laugh,” she said.
To my credit, I didn’t say “Eh?” I said something like “Why would my being Canadian make you laugh?”
“Come-hither” instantly morphed into something more like “get lost.”
“CANADIAN???” she yelped. “I thought you said ‘COMEDIAN’!” She was already looking over my shoulder for someone more interesting to come-hither at.
Couldn’t blame her. When it comes to common stereotypes, “Canadian” and “comedian” are practically antonyms. Which is ironic because when you get down to it, “funny” is as Canadian as pou- tine and Green Gables.
And why not? This is a decidedly funny country we live in. Think of it! Our national sport involves players dressed in shorts and armed with sticks chasing a rubber pellet around a sheet of ice with knives soldered to their boots.
Our national police force dresses in costumes out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to ride horses in circles.
Our national symbol is a bucktoothed rodent with a tail that appears to have been flattened by a Zamboni.
And place names! A stand-up comedian-Canadian could launch a career on place names alone. We actually live in towns and cities called Mushaboom and Moose Jaw; Punkeydoodles Corners and Medicine Hat. A CAA map of Saskatchewan reads like a crib
sheet from a biology exam – Elbow, Eyebrow and, of course, Climax.
Which brings us to Newfoundland. Who named the towns in that province – Masters and Johnson? Never mind Come By Chance and Blow Me Down. Ignore the rather obvious Dildo – how about places like Bare Bum Pond? Naked Man Hill? Leading Tickle? And – my favourite – Pinchgut Tickle.
I’m not sure if that’s an S&M option or an illegal wrestling hold, but it sounds way more intriguing than Lloydminster or Newmarket.
And Canadian politics? There’s a fecund comic motherlode for you. We once elected William Lion Mackenzie King, a prime minister who talked to – and took advice from – his shaving mug as well as his three Irish Terriers named Pat, Pat and, umm, Pat. Mind you, for crucial decisions King reached farther up the mammalian chain. He asked his mother for advice.
Which was a little spooky, her be- ing dead and buried at the time.
Plenty of political grist for the humour mill in this country. Back in the 1870s, British Columbians chose as their premier a gent with the grandiose name of Amor de Cosmos, meaning (approximately) Lover of the Universe. Premier de Cosmos punctuated his time in office with periodic episodes of fist fights, public weeping and cowering in mortal fear of ... electricity.
Canadian history is studded with provincial premiers as improbable as something out of a sketch by Dickens. Joey Smallwood in Newfoundland, Maurice Duplessis in Quebec, Ralph Klein in Alberta, and don’t forget Wacky Bennett in B.C. They were colourful; they were also low-hanging pinatas for the satirists of their day.
Canadian mayors? Two words: Rob and Ford.
Canada has such an excess of comedic ore we export the stuff wholesale – alongside raw logs and real beer. Just look at the funny folks we’ve shipped south of the border: Samantha Bee, Jim Carrey, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Catherine O’Hara. America’s longest running comedy show, Saturday Night Live, was created and produced by a Toronto lad, Lorne Michaels, who’s still at the post after fourand-a-bit decades. Canucks have been tickling America’s funny bone for ages–Rich Little Tommy C hong Eugene Levy Mike Myers Dave Thomas – aw, it’s a mug’s game trying to name all the merrymakers we’ve shipped south. Half the funny people in Hollywood have a maple leaf tattooed on their butts.
And there’s plenty more where they came from: Mary Walsh, Cathy Jones and Rick Mercer ply their trade right here at home, so do Brent Butt, Scott Thompson and Red pass-the-duct-tape Green, a.k.a. Steve Smith.
Canada’s been pumping out bumper crops of funny folks at
least as long as I’ve been around. Some of them – Dave Broadfoot, Eric Nicol, Roger Abbot, Leslie Nielsen, Stuart McLean – are no longer with us, but memories of them still kindle smiles.
And we don’t just smile in English. If America is a melting pot, Canada, as someone once said, is more like a tossed salad. That diversity shows up in our humorists, too. Meet Shaun Majumder, Newfoundland-raised actor and stand-up comedian with Anglo-Bengali-Hindu roots. Say hello to Russell Peters, a Toronto-bred comedy star whose dad hailed from Mumbai.
And did you miss the Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour? Too bad for you. It was a serial that ran weekly on CBC radio for four seasons around the turn of the last century and was set in a make-believe First Nations cafe in the fantasy town of Blossom, Alta. It featured a cast of aboriginal actors and was conceived and written by a Cherokee-Greek-American genius named Thomas King.
Dead Dog wasn’t for everyone. It percolated with that super-sly, deadpan-sardonic wit at which First Nations people excel. Some Whiteys couldn’t see the humour but, once you got it, you knew you were listening to one of the funniest shows on Canadian radio.
Not only was Dead Dog funny, it was ... kind. The humour was gentle and good-natured – no Rodney Dangerfield/Don Rickles/Phyllis Diller scorpion sting.
Nova Scotian Ron James would be on board with that. He’s a comedian who crisscrosses this country regularly, entertaining crowds from Victoria to St. John’s. He’s pure Canadiana and – on stage at least – doesn’t appear to have a waspish bone in his body. He told a reporter for Victoria’s Times-Colonist that he thinks Canadians – unlike many Americans – dislike mean-spirited humour. And so does he.
“I want people leaving the theatre lighter than when they came in,” he told the reporter. “I think it’s the comedian’s job to carry the knapsack for a while on the journey.”
It can be a pretty heavy knapsack. Stephen Leacock, the dean of Canadian humorists, once opined that Huckleberry Finn was a greater work than Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
“... and Charles Dickens’ creation of Mr. Pickwick,” said Leacock, “did more for the elevation of the human race ... than Cardinal Newman’s Lead, Kindly Light ... Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.”
Know what Leacock did when he wasn’t writing funny stuff? He was a McGill University professor. Of economics. Now that’s funny.