Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Leacock - The Roundabout & Keswick

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

“What’s in a name? When it’s yours – a lot, apparently.”We’re talking about Canadian humour today on the podcast. We're following a thread back to Stephen Leacock and the ways in which he influenced Stuart McLean's writing. We have a Dave & Morley story for you, plus a postcard from Leacock’s hometown, which includes memories of Stuart's friend, the late CBC Radio host Peter Gzowski. Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. I told you recently that I started a new job about a year ago at the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards. The awards exist to celebrate Canadian performing artists to honor the people who shape our culture. people whose work helps us understand who we are as individuals and as a country. Being in this role has got me thinking a lot about Canadian culture and about what makes it, well, Canadian.

Is it just the people making the art? Or is there something different about the art itself? I think there is. and I think it's particularly pronounced when it comes to humor. We are, in Canada, allergic to arrogance, and our humor reflects that. We'd rather make fun of ourselves than anyone else. And you see that thread all the way from Stephen Leacock to Letterkenny. We like characters, even the ridiculous ones, especially the ridiculous ones.

We love them despite their faults, or maybe even because of their faults. And I would say that generally, Canadian humor doesn't really rely on takedowns or punchlines at someone else's expense. Instead, our humor comes from understanding people and laughing with them, not at them. I've been thinking a lot about all of this and thinking about that through line, which for me starts with Stephen Leacock. I was born in Leacock country in Arrelia, Ontario. So Stephen Leacock permeated my imagination before I was even aware that I had an imagination. His work was all around me as a child. And then it resurfaced for me later when I started working with Stewart, who was a huge fan of Leacock and was influenced by his work.

So today on the podcast, we're going to pull on that thread, the Stephen Leacock thread. And we're going to start in Leacock country. Here now, from 2008, is Stuart McLean with a piece we recorded at the Stephen Leacock Theater in Keswick, Ontario. So here we are in Leacock Country. And I was in Sutton the other afternoon walking along the hedge road, that evocatively narrow and twisty road that runs along Lake Simcoe's south shore. And I was pretending, as I always do when I walk along it, that I was walking through the British countryside,

an easy trick to play on yourself around Jackson's Point. When I happened upon Canadian broadcaster Peter Zossky's old cottage, where I spent so many happy New Year's Eve's, and which I feel compelled to report as being painted a surprising mauve since he sold it. Someone's also clear-cut the place. Well, no, that's an exaggeration. but they have cut down Zoski's favorite, and don't think the old tobacco bum wouldn't appreciate the irony, smoke tree.

I can't help but wonder if they've also replaced the infamous burnt floorboard, charred the day a log rolled out of the fireplace onto the living room floor, while Zoski continued to sit at his desk, writing like a maniac. The log smoldered, Zoski typed, and the cottage eventually filled with, with smoke. And would no doubt have burnt to the ground had Peter Sybil Brown not happened on the scene, to find Zoski whose back was to the fireplace hacking away. It had not dawned on him that anything other than his chain of cigarettes might have caused the eye-stinging smoke hanging in the air around him. His only response had been to crack open the window. I wasn't there, however, to inspect or pass judgment on Zoski's old cottage. Time marches wearily on, and so did I,

along the hedge road, past the briars, past Zoskis, and over the one lane only built in 1912 and historically designated iron bridge that spans the Black River. I was heading, coincidentally, to Peter Sybil Brown's house and studio, to visit the man who plucked the log off the floor that smoky afternoon so long ago and whose wit and charm saved the day for Zoski so many other times over the years. I was going to see PSB, as Zoski affectionately dubbed him, partly because there are few people in this world who can make me laugh quite as joyfully as he does.

And there I was in the neighborhood, and why would you miss a chance for a laugh? but only partly for the laughs. Mostly, because I had, over lunch that day, learned that Peter Sybil Brown, who's an award-winning and elegant designer and collector of books, happened to be working with six or seven handwritten original pages of Stephen Leacock's manuscript from Sunshine Sketches of a little town. Leacock, as you no doubt know, is Canada's answer to Mark Twain.

He was the most famous humorist in the world in the early days of the last century. Leacock, that is, not Twain. Twain was dead by 1910. In fact, it has been famously said that in his prime, more people had heard of Leacock than had heard of Canada. Sunshine sketches is Leacock's enduring Canadian masterpiece. It was published in 1912, almost a hundred years. years ago, and it still sells several thousand copies a year in the new Canadian Library edition.

So I made my way over the bridge and passed the little church where Leacock is buried, for this is Leacock Country. He grew up and summered here on the shores of Lake Simcoe, and he knew all the little towns around and about. When I finally got to PSB's house, I found the manuscript on his work table. an unlined piece of brown paper which I reached out to touch in awe as far as Canadian letters are concerned the piece of paper that was lying in front of me was just about the fountain head

Leacock it turns out wrote with a straight pan you can see where the ink is faint to the exact places where he had run out you can tell when it darkens where he paused and dipped although it didn't look like there was a lot of pausing going on. Yes, said PSB smiling at me, it looks like he was really galloping along, doesn't it?

PSP has studied the entire manuscript. There are very few revisions anywhere, he said. We stood there marveling over the single page for a good 30 minutes, trying our best to wring some meaning out of it, And then I went back to my hotel room in some sort of dreamy state, feeling both connected to the past and wistful about it. What would I ask Leacock, I wonder, if he was alive today? What would I want to tell him? When I finally got back to my room, I pulled out the copy of sunshine sketches that I brought with me, and I spent the rest of that evening dipping into the elegance of Leacock's probe.

Listen to this from chapter 3, the marine excursion of the Knights of Pithias, a story from sunshine sketches that recounts the sinking of the paddlewheeler, the mariposa bell. And I place sinking in quotations because, well, I'm not going to recount the whole episode wherein the sinking ship ends up floating and then rescuing the sinking rescue boats. But consider this lovely moment. From the start, when the townsfolk from Mariposa are climbing aboard for the excursion that Leacock has explained will be totally dry, except, of course, for the two kegs of beer, which don't count. Dry because the Knights of Pythias are, of course, by their very constitution, dedicated to temperance. And there's Henry Mullins. I'm quoting Leacock now, the manager of the exchange bank, carrying a small flask in his hip, pocket as a sort of, and here is Lecox's brilliant flourish, carrying a small flask in his hip pocket as a sort of amendment to the Constitution. That is why people still want to read Leacock.

Mind you, many of the citizens of Eurelia who felt that they were being lampooned when the book arrived, didn't. But they just didn't get it. Didn't understand that affection and kindness were the cornerstones of Leacock's House of Humor. His eye was focused through the sardonic lens of irony, not sarcasm or satire. And when he wrote of the town of Sutton, where I am staying this week, that it was an orderly little place,

dull as ditch water, but quite unaware of the fact. When he wrote that, you have to remember he chose to be buried in Sutton. And you have to appreciate that the telling phrase isn't that it was dull, but that it had the redeeming quality of being unaware of the fact. Leacock, who could sound disparaging, believed deeply that humor should be more than anything kind, that one should laugh with and not at others.

The provincial and me would like to think that this was his Canadian upbringing, revealing itself. But if I was honest, I would have to acknowledge it's what you see in the best of Twain, who Leacock admired so much. And if you're so inclined, you can follow the threat of kindness as it weaves together all the great American and Canadian humorists who have written since, or the ones I think are great anyway. My hero, E.B. White, for one, who as well as Charlotte's Web wrote many humorous pieces for the New Yorker magazine and then achingly warned that you should avoid humor if you're concerned for your reputation as a writer. The world likes humor, wrote White, but treats it patronizingly,

decorating its serious artists with Laurel and its wags with Brussels sprouts. writers who take their literary selves with great seriousness, says White in his essay about humor, are at considerable pains never to associate their names with anything funny. And yet, and yet, no less a serious person than that cagey old constitutional expert, Eugene Forsey, said of Stephen Leacock, who held a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. that he could have been anything he wanted, including Prime Minister of Canada. And Leacock? Leacock, who had an abiding interest in politics, said he would rather have written Alice in Wonderland than the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.

And even poor old E.B. White, who mostly wrote kind and funny, and never thought of himself as a success because of it, knew that there is a fine line between laughing and crying, and when it's done right, that a piece of humor writing can bring a person to the point where his or her emotional responses are untrustworthy, to that place where tears and laughter meet. Humor can do that, wrote White,

because it plays close to the big hot fire, which is truth. Sometimes the reader feels the heat. I stayed up much later than I expected that night, looking for the heat in Leacock and finding plenty. In thinking of E.B. White, who I admire so much, and Mordecai Richler, who allowed me to audit his class at Sir George Williams University one winter long ago, and W. O. Mitchell, who graced me with friendship when I was beginning to write, and showed me by his own joyful example that it's permissible to rejoice in one's own work when you read it out loud. Leacock, I'm told, didn't work out when they put him on CBC radio, because of his habit of chuckling at his own jokes before delivering them.

Mitchell, White, and Richler were all lovely. Lecox children in a way, and all of them are gone now. Finally, I went to sleep with a sort of melancholy sadness that only comes with a really funny story. PSB woke me the next morning. I forgot to tell you the most astonishing thing, he said over the telephone. When Henry Fox Talbot was inventing photography, he didn't call it photography, and he didn't call pictures photographs. You know what he called them? They were using the natural light of the sun to take them. He called them sunshine sketches. Isn't that astonishing? So that was what Leacock was up to. And Twain before him and Richler and Mitchell and the rest who have come and gone since,

taking pictures. I throw ink at the wolf to keep it from the door, said Leacock. once, trying to explain his job as a writer. The thing about it is, he kept hitting the wolf, but softly, and with such affectionate and kind contemplation on the incongruities of life. God bless him. We were lucky he passed our way. Lucky still, because mercifully, whenever we want, we can still, with a flip of a page and God's good grace, feel his heat. Thank you. That was Stuart McClain talking about humor. We recorded that story in 2008 at the Stephen Leacock Theater in Keswick, Ontario.

I love that piece. It's always hit deep for me. But it does that even more now, because we lost Peter's. Sybil Brown, PSB. We lost PSB about a year ago now. Stuart, PSB, Petersosky, Leacock. They're all gone now, but their work lives on, not only in their own work, but in the work of others. It's not hard to see that line from Leacock to McLean. Both were humor writers, both loved small towns, both saw the ridiculousness in everyday life. But more than that, both wrote with kindness. Their humor didn't come from cynicism or cruelty. It came from curiosity, from affection,

from the deep belief that people are fundamentally lovable, even when they're bumbling or bragging or a little bit bananas. It was observational, rooted in personality, in imperfection, in empathy. Characters full of heart in imperfection. But the humor didn't come at their expense. It came from understanding them, from caring about them. If you haven't read Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches, give it a try. Or if you haven't read it for a while, go back to it. I did that writing this podcast. And I am so glad I did. It is so funny. We're going to take a short break now. But we'll be back in a couple of minutes with a Dave and Morley story. So stick around.

Welcome back. We've been talking about Stephen Leacock today on the podcast, and I thought it might be fun to play a Dave and Morley story that, to me, feels like it could have been written by Leacock. Or a story that, at the very least, is Leacock-esque. So in order to do that, I created some criteria. Here's what I came up with. Number one, gentle satire. Leacock poaks fun at small town life and politics and human vanity, but always with a wink, not a sneer. His satire feels affectionate, as if he's teasing a beloved friend rather than, I don't know, mocking a stranger. Number two, absurdity in the ordinary. Leacock had a gift for inflating the tiniest of situations into full-blown chaos. Again, pretty easy to see that through line from Lickok. Leacock to Stewart. All right. Number three. Small town Canada as microcosm.

Sunshine sketches of a little town isn't really about Mariposa or Orerilla. It's about all of us. Leacock used one sleepy town to explore universal flaws. Pride, ambition, drama. Mariposa might be the backdrop, but human nature is the subject. Number four. Elegance and language. Leekock was an economical writer, clear, clean, and rhythmic. And number five, this one might be the most important one. Number five, kindness. Leacock liked people, it seems that way, because even when he was making fun of them, his humor was rooted in understanding, not superiority. So those were the criteria, and you won't. be surprised to hear that the list I came up with was long. So many of Stuart's stories fit that

bill. But here's the story that I thought was the most Leacock-esque, a story rooted in a small town that finds humor in ordinary life, and that feels light and lyrical, but that is deceptively deep. This is Stuart McLean with The Roundabout. It began without a whole lot of warning. There was a letter and a phone call, maybe two. And the next thing, anyone knew, a couple of fellows from the ministry were standing in front of the Big Narrows Town Council laying it all out. It was a matter of efficiency. It was a matter of tax saving.

It was a matter of being able to do more with less. Angus McLeod heard that leaned forward and thumped the council table with both fists. Amalgamation? Bellowed Angus? Well, that shut everyone up. Counsel room was suddenly, if you will excuse the pun, motionless. But if you were going to call a spade a spade, Angus had done it. Amalgamation.

Big Narrows, Little Narrows, Upper Contrition, and Big Fish Cove would be merged into the regional municipality of, well, there'd be a plebiscite. They could choose their name themselves. Angus summed that up after the meeting. That's like the hangman offering the convicted a selection of rope. The plebiscite was a non-starter. Sure, they could choose anything, but the only anything, anyone from any of the four towns had put up with were the names they already had. What is in a name? When it's yours, a lot, apparently.

So in the end, there was no plavocyte. The name came down from above, just like everything else. The greater municipality of Glencoe. for crying out loud, snorted Angus, what does Glencoe have to do with anything? In a way, the four neighboring towns had brought it upon themselves. All those years spent trying to outdo each other, and I'm not talking about in the hockey arenas or on the curling rinks. Take boundary road, for example.

The border between big and little narrows runs right down the center of boundary road, which means to follow the letter of the law, each town had responsibility for one side of the road. Now, you might think that sensible heads would prevail, and the two towns would come together to work out ways of sharing those responsibilities. There were, after all, plenty to go around, grading, oiling, snow removal, to mention a few. But you'd be wrong. Instead of a route to reconciliation, Boundary Road became just another path to prove that the one town was better than the other. This reached its zenith in the summer of 1964, when, without a nod to their neighbors, the Little Narrows town council secretly paid a Halifax contractor to pave their half

a boundary road. Suddenly, driving east into Little Narrows meant you drove in smooth, modern luxury. While driving west into Big Narrows, you bounced through teeth gritting clouds of dust. Little Narrows had to levy a special tax to pay for the extravagance, but not a soul in town complained. For two years, the folks in Little Narrows danced on the undisputed sunny side of the street. The incident of the asphalt, as it came to be known, was not taken lightly and was no doubt the cause of the Great Snow War of 1968, which it is worth mentioning like the War of 1812 lasted well beyond the year it was named for. The snow war was launched the autumn night, the Big Narrows Council, still stinging from the humiliation of the paving, voted to buy a snowblower. Exactly. The first shot was fired in January. When the snowblower finally arrived and in a twitchy moment of ill-considered excitement, the driver, well, the entire council was there that night, so it's unfair to single out whoever was driving. In any case, it doesn't matter. The fact is someone, everyone, whoever was at the controls, decided that it would be funny to blow the snow from their side of boundary road.

onto the side belonging to little narrows. Now, had the guy who was driving the little narrows plow that night turned the other cheek and not plowed the blowing snow plus the snow that rightfully belonged to little narrows right back again, nothing might have happened. But once indignation raises itself righteous head, things tend to escalate. And that is how snow clearance in big and little narrows became such a costly line item on each year's budget and how it changed from a civic service to a competitive sport. Even today, half a century later, both towns own more equipment than either needs,

and both scrambled to be the first to get their half a boundary road cleared. Now, for the most part, this works out in everyone's favor. The thing is, all four towns grew up fiercely independent and remain resolvedly sole. But when the fish plant closed a few years back and people started moving to the city, the tax base could no longer support the way things used to be. In some ways they knew this was coming. Little Narrows kids already went to the elementary school in Big Fish Cove. All the kids go to the regional high school out by the dump.

There were the obligatory editorials in the paper, but most folks tried to ignore the impending amalgamation, figured it was just another one of those government schemes that would never come to being. And then the elections landed on them like an anvil. Like anvil, said Angus? More like a ton of bracts. They had to choose the new amalgamated council. A woman from Big Fish Cove was elected mayor.

The meetings of that new amalgamated council were uncomfortable. A sort and everything out was like brokering peace in the Middle East. Should they have one Christmas parade or four? Two fishing derbies or none. And then one day in September, just like those fellas from the ministry, the diggers and front end loaders showed up out of nowhere and built a roundabout. Out by the highway. No one had asked for it and no one much liked the idea.

But everyone was pretty keen to try it out. problem was no one knew the rules no one had told any of them that you weren't supposed to pass anyone in a roundabout you have to understand there are people in those towns who don't get out all that often Earl the cloak for instance has never been to the city

and now almost overnight if Earl wanted to get from the narrows to Big Fish Pond a trip that had never asked any more Earl in one left-hand turn meant he'd have to execute the new roundabout, enter at 6 o'clock, and get off at 9. It opened on a Saturday morning at 9 a.m. The minister was there to cut a ribbon, and as soon as that was done, everything pretty much fell apart.

Just about everyone with a car had shown up. And once they got into the roundabout, they all headed for the same place, the inside lane. because it felt safer there. Plus it gave them a chance to make a few laps. Try the thing out. Get their money's worth. So almost immediately the whole thing was filled up. You had your people on the inside happy to be there,

and the people on the outside trying to work their way in, which means pretty much this roundabout was working backwards to the way a roundabout is supposed to work. It was like watching water being sucked down in rain. which was fine until you added the third variable, the people who had been inside long enough, who wanted to get out. And they have never done this before,

and the only way they could think of getting out was to build up momentum. And when they did that, everyone else had to. So now you have a roundabout full of terrified people all driving faster and faster and faster and suddenly one of them sees a space and he makes his move. And now everyone has to make a move. And everyone is going so fast that no one can tell the head of the fish from the tail.

And to make matters worse, every sign on every exit is pointing to the same place. The greater municipality of Glencold. Some people didn't get out of there for hours. At four o'clock, some desperate soul began to wade. a white t-shirt out there passing your side window. And everyone slowed down and eventually stopped. And they cleared it all out slowly, like a parking lot after a baseball game. Even then, over half the folks headed off in the wrong direction.

And that was Saturday. Sunday. Oh, Sunday was a whole other thing. On Sunday morning, all the folks would be there Saturday, gathered up on the ridge, all of them with binoculars around their necks, all of them waiting to say what would happen when the church crowd hit the roundabout. The first to arrive was Robin Townsend,

92 years old. He appeared on the quiet Sunday morning at 20 to 10, coming down boundary road, heading towards church at 20 kilometers an hour, which is fast for Robin. When he came to the, roundabout entrance, he stopped dead. Even though there wasn't a car in sight, it took him five minutes to ease in. He then made five complete rotations before he exited the way he had

entered and headed home. Faced with nearly empty pews three Sundays in a row, the church of the Redeemer established a roundabout prayer group. The new mayor petitioned. the ministry. If we could just put the old town's names up, she said. The man from the ministry explained they couldn't do that. Those towns don't exist anymore, he said. Though there was one thing they could do, they could add the name of their main street to their respective exit. Unfortunately, all four towns' main streets had the same name. Main Street. Main Street. Angus McLeod had a bright idea. We changed the name of Main Street to Big Narrows, said Angus.

The ministry didn't fall for that. It has to have an appellation, said the man from the ministry. It has to be a street or an avenue or a lane. It's a narrow, said Angus. The name of the street is big. The new mayor called Arnie. She had an idea. They would take the amalgamated budget, divide it the way they used to,

and let the old councils run things in their own towns, and they wouldn't tell the province. She would continue to front the whole operation to the ministry. Sort of like the governor general, she said. There wouldn't be as much money as there used to be, but if they agreed on certain economies of scale, the money they saved would be more than enough. What economies of scale, said Angus McLeod, leaning over his coffee mug in the Maple Leaf Cafe,

staring at Arnie. Snow removal, said Arnie. As so often happens, that which had torn them apart brought them together. Maybe a month passed, maybe two, a number of weeks in any case. And one afternoon, the four old mayors got together. and hatched a plan. On a moonless night, a week or so later, they all met at Arnie's store. Combined their ages, you had over 300 years. They met out back and climbed into Arnie's truck, a ladder and a box in the back, five kilometers out to the highway and then three

to the roundabout. When they got there, they parked on the shoulder and set the ladder up against the first sign. Pass me the screwdriver, said Donnie Morrison, the ex-mare a little narrows as he started up the ladder. The signs they were holding had been painted by an artist in Big Fish Cove, and they looked every bit as real as the official ones they were about to take down. Each mayor had a turn on the ladder attaching their own town sign, and when they finished, they stood around. while Donnie had a smoke. They're going to come and they'll take them down, said Hugh McKinnon, ex-Mera upper contrition. They look too good, said Arnie, admiring what they had done.

It'll take a while before anyone spots them, and by then they'll look even better, all weathered up. Now, we can tell whoever shows up that someone else approved it, and they'll have to investigate that, and you know what? they'll find better things to do. While they stood there, a solitary car came down boundary road, entered the roundabout, and started circling. Why, I think that's Earl the clue, said Donald. What's he doing out here this time of the night? said Hugh. I do believe he's practicing, said Arnie.

And they stood there. on the side of the road, and they watched him quietly for a moment. For the time, it took Donnie to finish his smoke. And then Arnie said, should we show him the way, or should we let him figure it out himself? Now, that is a very good question, said Hugh. I do believe we should go back to the shop and have a beverage and consider that for a while.

And he turned, and he crunched along the shoulder toward the truck. and Donnie shrugged and bent down and picked up the ladder, and the other two followed him. The longer I live, said Arnie, the less things seem to change. You're talking like an old man, said Hugh. I am an old man, said Arnie. Good thing then, said Donnie, that they're building the new regional hospital. Hope they get it done in time for you. and they got into Arnie's pickup, and they headed back to town.

Their red taillights disappearing down boundary road, as the lights on the back of Earl Shev continued to describe a slow, never-ending circle out where they had left him, neither coming nor going, neither arriving nor departing. like time itself, like waves on rock beach, around and around and around, he went. That was the story we called The Roundabout.

We recorded that story at the CN Center in Prince George, British Columbia in 2015. All right, that's it for today. But we'll be back here next week with another Dave and Morley story. And Dave, who was holding the phone in his hand, waving it in front of him like a microphone, said to Morley, who was unloading the groceries at the counter, Mary Turlington's invited us to a dinner party, and he dragged the words out derisively as if Mary had invited him over to deworm the dog. But he didn't stop there.

Dave said, I'd rather have my legs waxed than go to another party at the Turlington's. And that is when the phone beeped. Dave looked down at the phone in terror, realizing what he had just done. He had just left Mary Turlington a message. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the apostrophe podcast network. The recording engineer is someone who, like Leakock and Stewart, is a master of spotting the incongruities of life.

Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle. and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeClute, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.