Laughing Matters

From top: Comedy greats Johnny Wayne (left) and Frank Shuster at work in the 1959 Burning of Rome sketch; actors Patrick McKenna (left) and Steve Smith are a smash with their characters of Harold and Red Green on the Red Green Show; Mary Walsh struts her stuff as Marg, the Princess Warrior.

Canadians are a funny people–in both senses of the word. If you ask Canadians to define their most common national characteristic, you will likely hear words like honest, friendly, modest, brave and industrious. But strangely enough, you will almost never hear the word funny. This, despite the fact that many of the most famous humourists in the world are Canadian.

Among the famous are those who have found success south of the border. This large group includes Mary Pickford–one of Hollywood’s first comedic actresses–Michael J. Fox, Rich Little, Jim Carrey, Leslie Nielsen, Eugene Levy, John Candy, Mike Meyers, Dan Ackroyd, Martin Short and David Steinberg.

And then we have those who have pretty well remained at home. This group includes names like Wayne and Shuster, Dave Broadfoot, Rick Mercer, Luba Goy, Roger Abbott, Don Harron, Greg Malone, Cathy Jones, Mary Walsh, Nancy White, Steve Smith, Mike Bullard and Lorne Elliott.

We also have our share of print humourists and cartoonists, including Stuart McLean, Mordecai Richler, Arthur Black, Marsha Boulton, Bill Richardson, Roch Carrier, Paul Quarrington and Lynn Johnston. But even with all these names, most Canadians would still hesitate to describe themselves as funny. Is it any wonder that the Leacock Medal for Humour is named after a Canadian humourist who never gave up his day job as an economist?

The first internationally known Canadian humourist was Thomas Chandler Haliburton. Born in Windsor, N.S., in 1796, Haliburton became a prominent early 19th century judge and politician. He also wrote books and is best remembered for his fictional character Sam Slick, a sharp-tonged Yankee trader whose wry observations about colonial Nova Scotia and its inhabitants earned Haliburton a large readership in the Maritimes, the United States and Great Britain.

Slick was Haliburton’s “safety valve.” As part of Nova Scotia’s Tory establishment, Haliburton was often unable to express his own liberal views. By having Sam Slick express these opinions, Haliburton not only escaped censure by his peers, he became a celebrity. Slick appeared in three Haliburton books, including The Clockmaker; or, the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville.

Another famous 19th century Canadian humourist was Toronto-born political cartoonist John Wilson Bengough who, in 1873, launched his own satirical weekly newspaper called Grip, named after the talking raven in Charles Dickens’ novel Barnaby Rudge. Bengough’s personal dislike of Sir John A. Macdonald became his bread and butter. The Grip published for 22 years and nearly every issue featured unflattering cartoons of Macdonald, even when Sir John wasn’t prime minister.

One of Canada’s greatest comedy stage troupes was forged in World War I. A pair of brothers serving with the Canadian Army in France created a travelling show known as The Dumbells to bolster morale among the long-suffering Canadian soldiers. The founder was Captain Merton Plunkett, who was attached to the 35th Infantry Battalion. He was joined, in 1917, by his brother, Al Plunkett, an accomplished singer and comedian who had been serving with the 58th Inf. Bn. until he was wounded.

The troupe’s name was taken from the 3rd Division’s insignia, two-crossed dumbbells. A typical show included humourous songs and skits that lampooned army life. The Dumbells’ motto was Any place, Anywhere and the troupe often performed on makeshift stages with the sounds of the front in the background. During one show a German shell crossed the stage in mid-performance; fortunately it did no damage. The Dumbells were so popular, the troupe toured until 1932 and even did a stint on Broadway.

In 1910, an economics professor at McGill University in Montreal by the name of Stephen Leacock self-published a small book of humourous sketches called Literary Lapses. The book was so popular it caught the eye of John Lane, an English publisher, who immediately purchased the book’s British rights. Leacock followed this success with Nonsense Novels in 1911 and Sunshine Sketches Of A Little Town in 1912. These three books made Leacock famous in Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain.

Lane billed Leacock as The Canadian Mark Twain and according to The Canadian Encyclopedia, from 1915 to 1925, Leacock was the best-known humourist in the English-speaking world. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a Leacock fan and even admitted that two of his own stories were of the Leacock school of humour. Before he died in 1944, Leacock wrote more than 60 books on subjects as diverse as humour, economics, history and biography. In 1947, the Leacock Medal for Humour was created to honour outstanding humour books by Canadian authors.

A quirk of the alphabet spawned another comic team that went on to dominate English-Canadian comedy for four decades. While still teenagers, John Louis Wayne and Frank Shuster found themselves sitting next to each other in high school history class because their last names happened to start with letters that were close together. As members of Harbord Collegiate’s Oola Boola Club–their Toronto high school drama group–the two friends enrolled at the University of Toronto together and continued writing, producing and performing comedy shows while earning their bachelor of arts degrees in English.

In 1941, the two signed a contract with CBC radio for a one-year comedy show. However, WW II intervened. In 1942, both men put their promising careers on hold to join the Canadian Army. Although they had signed up for infantry, their comedic skills soon had them writing and performing The Army Show, a variety show reminiscent of the Dumbells. Wayne and Shuster performed before military audiences in Canada, Great Britain and even hit the beaches of Normandy just weeks after D-Day in June 1944. Their show was aptly titled the Invasion Review.

When the war ended, the demobbed sergeants resumed their civilian careers. The Wayne and Shuster Show aired on CBC radio every Thursday at 9:30 p.m. One of their more memorable programs was a 1946 mock match between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the imaginary Mimico Mice. Wayne and Shuster supplied the voices of the hockey players of both teams while the legendary Foster Hewett did the play-by-play.

Through the late 1940s and early ’50s, Wayne and Shuster appeared on many Canadian and American television programs but their breakthrough came in 1958 when they debuted on the highly popular Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan was so impressed with the two Canadians that he invited them back 66 more times, a Sullivan show record.

Wayne and Shuster became known for their heavily produced send-ups of classic literature. With full sets and elaborate costumes they would parody everything from Shakespeare to Dashiell Hammett. In Canada, CBC television offered them their own weekly comedy show but they opted instead for a yearly series of specials so they could control their output and exposure.

For the next two decades Wayne and Shuster had a deadlock–some would say even a death grip–on English-Canadian television comedy. The extremely high cost of television production encouraged CBC executives to stick with their known stars, which caused many aspiring Canadian humourists to seek their living south of the border. David Steinberg, a comedian from Winnipeg, became one of the best-known stand-up comics in the U.S. during the late 1960s. Stand-up comic/writer Lorne Michaels left the CBC to write jokes for Rowan and Martin, Phyllis Diller and Flip Wilson before becoming the executive producer of the groundbreaking comedy program Saturday Night Live.

One notable exception was SCTV, a television show launched by Global Television in 1976. Based on the writing and performing talents of Toronto’s Second City improvisational comedy troupe, the show was one of the first Canadian programs to successfully blur its nationality so well that it became a hit in both Canada and the U.S. SCTV ran seven seasons, won two Emmys and spawned 185 half-hour shows that are still in syndication around the world. All the cast members, namely Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas and later, Martin Short, successfully used SCTV as a springboard into American television and films.

The success of SCTV and the retirement of Wayne and Shuster in the 1980s finally opened English Canadian television to new voices of humour. Codco, Kids In The Hall, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Red Green and The Royal Canadian Air Farce were some of the more successful ventures launched in the 1980s and ’90s. Like SCTV, Kids In The Hall and Red Green were somewhat ambiguous about their nationality, which helped gain them a large U.S. audience. But there is no mistaking the Canadianism in Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes while Codco–which stood for Cod Company–made no attempt to appear American or even mainland Canadian.

But Canadians have been so successful at penetrating the American market, the question often arises, “Do Canadians have their own unique style of humour or are they merely echoing their American counterparts?”

Comedian/writer/director Lorne Elliott believes Canadians definitely have their own humour style. For the past several years Elliott has been the host of the hit CBC radio comedy program, Madly Off In All Directions, a program that showcases the talent of Canadian humourists from across the country. “Humour is human, not a national trait, but I think there are some differences between Canadians and Americans,” he says. “Canadians are outside the American power structure but we get a lot of information about it. Having a lot of information but not sharing the reverence for the institutions is a good place to come from if you are a comedian.

“We’re funnier when we are gentler. We’re not laughing at the guy who is worse off than us. Instead, we are laughing at the authority figures which are a much more appropriate target. Humour is looked at as a harmless business but it can be quite corrosive to authority. That’s what people lose when they get absorbed into the mainstream entertainment industry. Those things that aren’t considered funny by the power structure get filtered out. If you are at the grassroots–and it is very easy to be at the grassroots in Canada–you can remain true to your craft.”

Each Madly Off radio program is recorded in a different location and Elliott makes a point of featuring local comedians. “I do like using local talent and there is enough around if you look.”

Fellow humourist Dave Broadfoot has spent nearly 50 years making Canadians laugh. He first discovered he had a talent for humour in 1947 when, having just got out of the Merchant Navy, he impulsively signed up for an amateur one-act play in Vancouver. To his surprise, he was a hit–and he loved it. “I never felt I belonged anywhere until I heard an audience laugh,” he says.

Broadfoot has made a career out of lampooning authority figures. His satirical character The Member for Kicking Horse Pass is loosely based on Earnest Manning, former premier of Alberta and father of Preston Manning. Corporal Renfrew of the RCMP is another much beloved Broadfoot character. Both the politicians and the Mounties take their kidding well. The RCMP officially promoted Renfrew to Sergeant and his dog, Cuddles, to corporal.

Parliament Hill has appreciated Broadfoot’s humour enough to make him an Officer of the Order of Canada. The comedian can only remember one time when he offended politicians. “I was playing the Royal York Hotel in Toronto and doing some political jokes and someone told me that two MPs walked out. Maybe it was me or maybe they were just trying to skip paying their bill.”

Like Lorne Elliott, Broadfoot has performed in the U.S. but has remained north of the border. “Most American comedy is empty of subject matter,” he says, “and these days 95 per cent of the jokes revolve around sex.”

Broadfoot is proud of the fact that he did manage to make his living as a humourist in his native country. “A lot of young comedians have told me that I was an inspiration for them. Because I’ve done it, they know they do not have to leave Canada to be a success.”

Cartoonist Lynn Johnston has also helped to define Canadian humour. Her syndicated comic strip, For Better Or For Worse, appears daily in more than 2,000 newspapers in 25 countries. Her biggest market, by far, is the U.S. and yet she still writes and draws her strip from a small town lakeside studio in northern Ontario. Johnston believes that, by comparison to the U.S., Canada is a nation of small town communities, but that is precisely what gives Canadian humourists their unique voices. “In a small town you know everyone and everyone knows you so there is a need to get along. This prevents the stridency you see in some American humour, especially the political cartoons. Canadians can poke fun at their leaders because we’re not afraid of them.

“Making fun of the prime minister is not regarded as an act of treason. At the same time, Canadian humour tends to be self-deprecating and self-analysing. We’re not a world power and therefore we can take the world a little less seriously because we are not afraid of being attacked or having our children sent off to war.”

One of the times Johnston felt the difference between Canadian and American tastes in humour was when she decided to create a character who was struggling with the issues of being gay. “Many American newspapers (plus one in Halifax) cancelled my strip and I was getting so much mail, the local post office had to send a special delivery truck,” she laughs. “I was surprised by the reaction because the issue of being gay was no longer a big deal where I lived. But apparently it still was an issue in the U.S.–especially in Texas, Illinois and Ohio, judging by the hate mail I received.”

Ultimately, Johnston emerged from the storm victorious. For one thing, her strip was picked up by so many other newspapers she eventually came ahead in the final count. For another, when the mail was tallied, she found that 70 per cent of the letters supported her decision to tackle this controversial issue. Finally, although she was initially shocked and upset by the negative responses, when countered by the positive letters she came to realize how much her comic strip was appreciated.

Although great humourists hail from all parts of Canada, for the past two decades there has been a noticeable surge of comedians from the nation’s East Coast. Shaun Majumder, a native of Newfoundland, believes East Coast weather, economics and a strong storytelling tradition are responsible for launching so many comedians. “Down East, people use humour as a way to communicate. The weather is so bad and the job situation even worse but if you just complained all the time, people would stop listening. But if you can make them laugh, people will always listen.”

Majumder believes Canadian humour is influenced by both American and British humour. “The British are great at satire and you can see that influence in Canadian programs like Kids In The Hall. The Americans prefer stand-up comedy, which is more in your face straight joke telling. Canadians have benefited because we have become good at both. Canadian humour is like Canadian identity. It is not American and it is not British but you can see influences from both sources.”

When it comes to Canadian audiences, Majumder finds that they like subtle, teasing humour. “Canadians enjoy a laugh at anything if you do it in a non-cruel way. Canadians also enjoy jokes that work at different levels. American humour is much more direct and while that’s great it often prevents stand-up comedians from covering sensitive topics because that direct style is too abrasive. But, if you do it in a subtle, teasing way you can often get away with it.”

One of the best-kept secrets in the country is the success of French Canadian humour. English Canadians rarely get the chance to enjoy the humour of impressionist André-Philippe Gagnon who is only vaguely familiar to English Canadians. Manic mime Michel Courtemanche, meanwhile, is starting to make inroads into English Canada, but dozens of other French Canadian humourists remain relatively unknown to people in the rest of the country.

Few non-francophones would recognize the highly acclaimed Yvon Deschamps although he has been a comic actor, humourist and recording artist since 1959. There is also Jean-René Dufort, a.k.a. Info-Man, who is the terror of Quebec politicians to the delight of his fans. Rock et Belles Oreilles (Rock and Roll and Beautiful Ears) was a hugely popular Quebec comedy troupe that rivalled Codco and Kids In The Hall for irreverent buffoonery. When the troupe broke up, Guy A. Lepage went on to create another hugely popular comedy series called Un Gars, une fille (A Guy, a girl). This program not only captured an average home viewing audience of 1.4 million in Canada, but has a large following in France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Greece.

Home versions are currently being produced in Israel, Italy, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria and Great Britain and so it is entirely possible that someday English Canada will enjoy Un Gars, une fille subtitled with the “original” Hebrew or Bulgarian or speaking English with a British accent. Indeed, Canadians are a funny people.

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