> Zed Book Club / Marilyn Lightstone Reads ‘Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town’
Photos: The Stephen Leacock Museum in Orillia, Ontario (Don Denton/Canadian Press); Marilyn Lightstone (Courtesy of Marilyn Lightstone); 'Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town' by Stephen B. Leacock
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Marilyn Lightstone Reads ‘Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town’
Stephen Leacock’s gentle satire on small-town life cemented his reputation as a master of literary humour / BY Athena McKenzie / August 10th, 2023
“I don’t know whether you know Mariposa. If not, it is of no consequence, for if you know Canada at all, you are probably well acquainted with a dozen towns just like it.” — from Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock
Canadians have a reputation for being funny. Mike Myers, Martin Short, Jim Carrey and Russell Peters have long carried the flag as some of the country’s top comedic exports. This national identity as a humorous people is nothing new: more than a century ago Canadian teacher, political scientist and writer Stephen Leacock was the best-known English-speaking humorist in the world.
His most famous title, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town — first published in 1912 — lampoons the residents of Mariposa, a fictional community in Ontario.
“Mariposa is not a real town,” Leacock writes in the introduction. “On the contrary, it is about seventy or eighty of them. You may find them all the way from Lake Superior to the sea, with the same square streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels, and everywhere the sunshine of the land of hope.”
Many readers believe Mariposa and its quirky inhabitants were based on the very real lakeside town of Orillia, Ont. Leacock, a professor of political science at McGill University in Montreal, spent every summer at his grand home from 1908 until his death in 1944.
The town is home to the annual award ceremony for the $25,000 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, which recently announced its 2023 shortlist. Many past winners have cited a debt to Sunshine Sketches, including the late, beloved storyteller Stuart McLean and Giller Prize-winning novelist, Will Ferguson.
Inspired by the works of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain — Leacock published biographies of both writers — Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town stands as a nostalgic tribute to a place lost to time.
Hear Marilyn Lightstone bring this classic to life on her podcast Marilyn Reads.