Canadian humour: Encyclopedia

Canadian humour is an integral part of the Canadian Identity. Canadians have excelled at comedy and humour in many domains. There are several traditions in Canadian humour in both English and French. While these traditions are distinct and at times very different, there are common themes that relate to Canadians' shared history and geopolitical situation in North America and the world.

Various trends can be noted in Canadian comedy. One thread is the portrayal of a "typical" Canadian family in an on-going radio or television series. Examples include La famille Plouffe, with its mix of drama, humour, politics and religion and sitcoms such as King of Kensington and La Petite Vie. Another major thread tends to be political and cultural satire: television shows such as CODCO, Royal Canadian Air Farce, and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, monologuists such as Yvon Deschamps and Rick Mercer and writers, including Michel Tremblay, Will Ferguson and Eric Nicol draw their inspiration from Canadian and Québécois society and politics. Another trend revels in absurdity, demonstrated by television series like The Kids in the Hall and The Frantics, and musician-comedians such as The Arrogant Worms, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie and Bowser and Blue. Satire is arguably the primary characteristic of Canadian humour, evident in each of these threads, and uniting various genres and regional cultural differences.

Humber College in Toronto has the world's only post-secondary programme in comedy (writing and performance). Montréal is home to the bilingual (English and French) Just For Laughs festival and to the Just For Laughs Museum, a bilingual, international museum of comedy. Canada's major native form of ethnic joke has been the Newfie joke, poking fun at the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Canadian humour - Literature

From the first major work of Canadian humour, Thomas McCulloch’s Letters of Mephibosheth Stepsure (1821-23) in the Halifax weekly Acadian Recorder, Canadian humourous writing has tended more towards prose than poetry. McCulloch's satirical letters have been described by Northrop Frye as "quiet, observant, deeply conservative in a human sense…” McCulloch's satirical persona, the "conventional, old-fashioned, homespun" farmer, is part of a tradition that originates with Addison and Swift. Compared to McCulloch’s dry, and understated style, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, showed the same conservative social values in the brash, overstated character of Sam Slick, the Yankee Clockmaker. Haliburton’s Sam Slick persona in The Clockmaker (1836), as Arthur Scobie notes in The Canadian Encyclopedia, "proved immensely popular and, ironically, has influenced American humour as much as Canadian." [1]

Folk humour and satire were responses to the domination of 19th-century French Canadian culture by the Catholic Church. Napoléon Aubin satirized Québec public life in his journals Le Fantasque (1837-45) and Le Castor (1843), and through his theatre troupe, Les Amateurs typographiques, established in 1839. He was imprisoned during that same year for his views. This cosmopolitan tradition is also seen in the journalism of Arthur Buies, editor of La Lanterne canadienne (1868-69), a highly satirical journal of that era.

Light comedy that mocked local customs, was typical of 19th-century theatre in Québec. Examples include Joseph Quesnel's L'Anglomanie, ou le dîner à l'angloise (1803), which criticized the imitation of English customs, and Pierre Petitclair's Une partie de campagne (1865). More serious dramas attacked specific targets: the anonymous Les Comédies du status quo (1834) ridiculed local politics, and Le Défricheteur de langue (1859) by Isodore Mesplats, (pseudonym of Joseph LaRue and Joseph-Charles Taché), mocked Parisian manners. Other examples of theatrical satire were Félix-Gabriel Marchand's comedy, Les faux brillants (1885) and Louvigny de Montigny's Les Boules de neige (1903), which took aim at Montréal's bourgeoisie.

By the early 20th century, the satirical tradition was well developed in English Canada as exemplified in the writing of Stephen Leacock. In Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), Leacock, renown for his satirical wit, used tragic irony and astute insight in examining day-to-day, small-town life. The book remains a classic of Canadian literature. An annual Canadian literary award, the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, is named in his memory. The award is presented to the year's best work of humourous literature by a Canadian.

Following the Révolution tranquille in Québec, theatrical satire reappeared in 1968 with Michel Tremblay's play Les Belles sœurs, written in Québécois joual. The controversial play picked apart the myth of a stable bourgeois Québec society with a mix of realistic comedy and allegorical satire. Following Tremblay’s lead, Jean Barbeau exposed Québec popular culture in La Coupe stainless (1974). Tremblay and Barbeau set the stage for reviews such as Broue (1979), a collective production, which toured English-speaking Canada as Brew (1982).

Humorous fiction in French Canada draws from the oral tradition of folk songs and folktales which were the common coin of humour in the 19th century. Only a few of these folk tales surfaced in writing prior to the 20th century. However, contemporary writers such as Jacques Ferron in Québec (Contes du pays incertain, 1962) and Antonine Maillet in Acadian New Brunswick (La Sagouine, 1974, and Pélagie-la-Charette, 1979), rely extensively on folk humour and popular culture.

The plain talking alter-ego as an instrument of satire continued with Robertson Davies' series of Samuel Marchbanks books (1947-67) and John Metcalf's James Wells in General Ludd (1980). Davies is one of many Canadian writers of "serious" literature who were also renowned for humour in their work. Margaret Atwood, Farley Mowat, Paul Quarrington, Mordecai Richler, Carol Shields, W. O. Mitchell, Pierre Berton and Miriam Toews are all acclaimed writers of mainstream literature who have also been acknowledged for using humour and wit in their writing.

Many other writers of Canadian humour have been published as newspaper or magazine commentators, including Gary Lautens, Richard J. Needham, Eric Nicol, Joey Slinger, Will Ferguson and Linwood Barclay.

Humour is also central to the work of Canadian children's writers such as Gordon Korman, Dennis Lee and Robert Munsch.

Canadian humour - Music

Particularly in recent years, Canada has produced a number of famous musical groups who have been described as "comedy rock". Bands such as Barenaked Ladies, Moxy Früvous and Rheostatics are sometimes misunderstood as being strictly novelty bands, but in fact many of their songs use humour to illuminate more serious themes.

A number of other acts, such as Corky and the Juice Pigs, Arrogant Worms and Bowser and Blue write specifically comedic songs. Nancy White is a noted Canadian musical satirist, whose comedic folk songs about Canadian culture and politics have regularly appeared on CBC Radio programs.

Jann Arden, a singer-songwriter renowned for writing sad love songs, is also paradoxically known as one of Canada's funniest live performers, whose witty, unpretentious stage patter about herself and her family is as much a part of her relationship with her audience as her music is.

Canadian humour - Radio

Many of Canada's comedy acts and performers have started out on radio, primarily on the national Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) network.

While individual comedy show and segments have been around almost as long as the network, the focus has tended be more on specific shows featuring particular groups of comedians. The real beginnings of Canadian radio comedy began in the late 1930s with the debut of The Happy Gang, a long-running weekly variety show that was regularly sprinkled with corny jokes in between tunes. It debuted in 1938 and ran until 1959. The Wayne & Shuster show debuted on CBC radio in 1946, their more literate and classy humour regularly appearing on the airwaves well into the early 1960s.

The Royal Canadian Air Farce started as a radio show debuting in 1973 featuring mainly political and some character-based comedy sketches. It ran for 24 years before making a permanent transition to television. It started a tradition of topical and politically satirical radio shows that inspired such programs as Double Exposure, The Muckraker and What A Week.

A zanier, more surreal brand of radio comedy was unveiled in the early 1980s with the debut of The Frantics' Frantic Times radio show, which ran from 1981 to 1986. Its smart and surreal style fostered a new take on Canadian radio comedy that was followed by the likes of successor shows as The Norm and Radio Free Vestibule.

By the 1990s the satirical and zany elements merged into two of the more notable CBC radio comedy shows of the 1990s: The Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour, a show that offered bitingly satirical pieces from a First Nations perspective mixed in with general silliness; and Great Eastern, a show set in a fictitious Newfoundland "national" radio station featuring improbable news stories, fictitious archival recordings and unlikely archeological findings played straight.

CBC Radio continues to play an important part in developing comedy performers on radio. The weekly Madly Off In All Directions, hosted by comedian Lorne Elliot, continues to provide regional stand-up comics and musical comedy acts with a weekly national forum.

Canadian humour - Television

Many of Canada's most popular and enduring comedy shows are in the sketch comedy genre. Paradoxically, Canadian television has fared poorly with conventional, American-style sitcoms, but has often fared better with dramedies and other types of programming that break the sitcom form.

Canadian television comedy begins with Wayne and Shuster, a sketch comedy duo who began on radio in 1946 before moving to television. They became one of Canada's most enduring comedy teams, not just on Canadian television, but in the United States as well: they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show 67 times, a record for any performer. They were particularly famous for their Julius Caesar sketch, Rinse the Blood off My Toga, with its legendary catch phrase, "I told him, Julie, don't go!"

Wayne and Shuster continued to appear on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) until the late 1980s, with specials that mixed new sketches with their classic material.

La famille Plouffe, the first regularly scheduled television drama in Canada, was produced in 1953 by Radio-Canada, in French. The program was broadcast on both English and French networks of CBC TV from 1954 to 1959, (in English as The Plouffe Family). It was a mix of drama, humour and social commentary about a working-class Québec family in the post-World War II era.

Another pioneer in Canadian television comedy was, oddly, a news series. This Hour Has Seven Days, which debuted in 1964, was primarily meant as a newsmagazine, but its segments included political satire as well as serious news reports. Later series such as Royal Canadian Air Farce, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Rick Mercer Report have all drawn on the tradition of political satire established by Seven Days, and have been among Canadian television's most popular comedy series in recent years.

Canadian born Lorne Michaels, who had moved from Toronto to Los Angeles in 1968 to work on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, launched the NBC comedy show Saturday Night Live in 1975. Over the years, several Canadians came to fame as part of the SNL cast, including Dan Aykroyd, Martin Short, and Mike Myers. Michaels also produced The Kids in the Hall for Canadian TV in the 1980s.

Many Canadian comedy shows, while not directly about politics per se, have made profound political statements by satirizing society and pop culture. This includes shows such as SCTV, Buzz and CODCO. CODCO, in particular, was intensely controversial at times for its use of comedy in tackling sensitive subjects; the show ended when Andy Jones quit in protest after the CBC refused to air a sketch that made a very explicit political statement about the Mount Cashel child abuse scandal.

Other shows, such as The Kids in the Hall, The Frantics, Bizarre and Puppets Who Kill, revelled in absurdist humour, making household names out of characters such as Chicken Lady, Mr. Canoehead and Super Dave Osborne.

Other notable sketch series have included Zut!, The Gavin Crawford Show and The Holmes Show. Canadian television also frequently showcases stand-up comedians. The popular series Comics, based around one comedian each week, has been the first national television exposure for many of Canada's current comedy stars. Another series, Just for Laughs, has for many years presented comedians appearing at the Montreal International Comedy Festival. That series has also spawned the more recent Just For Laughs Gags, a practical joke show similar to Candid Camera.

Although several notable Canadian sitcoms have been produced, such as King of Kensington, Hangin' In and Corner Gas, Canadian TV has also produced what is widely regarded as one of the worst sitcoms in television history, The Trouble with Tracy. Other sitcoms, including Material World, Mosquito Lake, Snow Job, Check it Out!, Rideau Hall, Excuse My French and Not My Department, have generally fared poorly with critics and audiences as well. Critic Geoff Pevere has pointed out, however, that American television has produced a lot of bad sitcoms as well. The difference, according to Pevere, is that the economics of television production in Canada mean that a Canadian television network can't always cancel a bad homegrown sitcom as easily as an American network can.

On the other hand, Canadian television comedy fares much better when it breaks the sitcom form, especially with dramedy. Unconventional comedy series such as The Beachcombers, Due South, Made in Canada, Chilly Beach, The Newsroom, Primetime Glick, The Red Green Show, Seeing Things, Trailer Park Boys, Supertown Challenge and Twitch City have been much more successful than most of Canada's conventional sitcoms, both in Canada and as international exports.

Canada has a national television channel, The Comedy Network, devoted to comedy. Its programming includes some of the classic Canadian comedy series noted above, repeats of several hit American and British series such as The Simpsons, South Park and Absolutely Fabulous, and original series such as Kevin Spencer, Odd Job Jack, The Devil's Advocates, Improv Heaven and Hell and Puppets Who Kill.

One of the most famous figures in Canadian television comedy in the 1990s and 2000s has been Rick Mercer. Mercer began his career in 1990 with a touring one-man show, Show Me the Button, I'll Push It, about Canadian life in the immediate aftermath of the failed Meech Lake Accord. That show was a sellout success; in 1993, he made his television debut as one of the writers and performers on This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Mercer's "rants", short op-ed pieces on Canadian politics and culture, quickly became the show's signature segment. When he published a collection of rants in 1998 as Streeters, the book quickly became a bestseller. Mercer left 22 Minutes in 2000 to devote more time to his other series, Made in Canada. When that series ended its run, he launched the new Rick Mercer Report.

Another famous comedic export in the same era was Tom Green, whose surreal and sometimes grotesque humour on The Tom Green Show began as a community cable show in Ottawa before becoming a momentary hit on MTV.

As with many other genres, Canadian television comedy also frequently plays with the topic of Canada's relationship with the United States. Mercer turned another 22 Minutes segment, Talking to Americans, into a 2001 television special, which was a ratings smash. In Talking to Americans, Mercer, in his 22 Minutes guise as reporter "J.B. Dixon", visited American cities to ask people on the street for their opinion on a Canadian news story -- the joke for Canadians was that the news story was always fabricated, and either inherently ridiculous (e.g. a border dispute between Québec and Chechnya or an annual Toronto polar bear hunt) or blatantly out of context (e.g. wishing Canadians a "Happy Stockwell Day".)

Another notable show, the sitcom An American in Canada, reversed that formula, finding comedy in the culture shock of an American television reporter taking a job with a Canadian TV station. Tom Green once played with this staple of Canadian comedy as well, during a controversial segment in which he burned a Canadian flag.

Canadian humour - Personalities

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Canadian humour

Canadian humour: Encyclopedia - Canadian humour

Including:

Canadian humour: Encyclopedia - Canadian humour

Canadian humour

Canadian humour - Literature

Canadian humour - Music

Canadian humour - Radio

Canadian humour - Television

Canadian humour - Personalities

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