Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (New Canadian Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

Rogers, of course, is one of the most beloved of American humorists -- he was killed in 1935 when his plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. Leacock died on March 28, 1944. Like Rogers, he had been Canada's favorite humorist for decades.

Sunshine Sketches is about Orillia, Ontario, Canada, where Leacock had his summer home on Brewery Bay (he once wrote, "I have known that name, the old Brewery Bay, to make people feel thirsty by correspondence as far away as Nevada.") His home is now maintained as a historic site by the town of Orillia.

These stories about various personalities in town were printed in the local newspaper in the 1910 - 1912 era, before being compiled into this book which established Leacock's literary fame. The people portrayed really lived, though some are composites; the events are of a kindly humorist looking at the foibles of small town life. Once they came out in book form and soared to national popularity, everyone in town figured the rest of the country was laughing at them because of Leacock's book and he was royally hated in Orillia to the end of his life.

Gradually, and this took decades, Orillians came to recognize that genius had walked amongst them for several decades. (It's hard to recognize genius when your own ego is so inflated.) Orillia now awards the annual "Leacock Medal for Humor" -- Canada's top literary prize for the best book of humour for the preceding year.

Leacock died when I was six, but I did know his son, who still lived in town. I delivered papers to the editor of the "Newspacket," Leacock's name for the Orillia Packet and Times (where I worked) and the rival Newsletter. The Packet had the same editor in the 1940's as when Leacock wrote about him in 1910.

But the book is more than Orillia; it is a wonderfully kind and humorous description of life in many small towns. The American artist Norman Rockwell painted the same kinds of scenes; it is the type of idyllic urban life so many of us keep longing to find again in our hectic urban world.

Leacock realized the book was universal in its description of small towns, and in the preface he wrote "Mariposa is not a real town. 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."

True enough, which gives this book continuing appeal nearly a century after it was written. All great writing is about topics you know, and as a longtime resident Leacock knew Orillia well. As for Leacock himself, he wrote, "I was born at Swanmoor, Hants., England, on Dec. 30, 1869. I am not aware that there was any particular conjunction of the planets at the time, but should think it extremely likely."

He says of his education, "I survived until I took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1903. The meaning of this degree is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last time in his life, and is pronounced completely full. After this, no new ideas can be imparted to him."

In reviewing Charles Dickens' works in 1934, Leacock wrote what could well be his own epitaph: "Transitory popularity is not proof of genius. But permanent popularity is." The fact his writings are still current illustrates the nature of his writing.

In contrast to the sometimes sardonic humor of modern times, Sunshine Sketches reflects Leacock's idea that "the essence of humor is human kindness." Or, in the same vein, "Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof."

Granted, this book is not what he recognized to have widespread appeal to modern readers. In his own words, "There are only two subjects that appeal nowadays to the general public, murder and sex; and, for people of culture, sex-murder." Yet, anyone reading this will remember scenes from it for much longer than anything from a murder mystery.

In today's world, where newspapers almost daily track Prime Minister Tony Blair's dash to the political right, Leacock wrote, "Socialism won't work except in Heaven where they don't need it and in Hell where they already have it."

He described his own home as follows, "I have a large country house -- a sort of farm which I carry on as a hobby . . . . Ten years ago the deficit on my farm was about a hundred dollars; but by well-designed capital expenditure and by greater attention to details, I have got it into the thousands." Sounds familiar to today's farm policies ?

It's what I mean by this being a timeless work.

Leacock himself noted, when talking about good literature, "Personally, I would sooner have written 'Alice in Wonderland' than the whole of the 'Encyclopedia Britannica'." This is his 'Alice' and it well deserves to be favorably compared to Lewis Carroll's work.

By all measures, it is still the finest Canadian book ever written.