HUMOUR IN CANADA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 792, 24 September 1954, Page 21

HUMOUR IN CANADA

Lise who turn te knob of radi o -to listen to a talk on humour afe. sometimes disappointed when they fifd that ‘in itself it isn’t humorous. Examples apart, there’s no reason why it should be, for as Professor Roy Daniells, of the Department of English in the . University of British Columbia, points out in a talk to be broadcast from 4YC in Review. at 7.15 pm. on Thursday, September . 30,

humour is a_ serious. matter. "Ht revolves," he says, "about such fundamentals as religion, morals, manners, the sexes, government, the law, women’s fashions, household pets, and (above all) money." And to expect someone talking about humour to be humorous is about as reasonable as to expect a bishop talk- | ing about sin to be sinful. Professor Daniells recorded his talk on Canadian humour as well as one on the Canadian short story while he was on a brief visit to New Zealand a few months ago to give the De Carle Bequest Lectures at the University of Otago. One of the difficulties about discussing Canadian humour, he says, is that no one has a visual image of the Canadian in the first place, but he assures us that the Canadian is a very absurd fellow and has been aware of that fact for a long time. Most of us if asked about Canadian humour might find it hard to put any other names alongside Stephen Leacock’s. Professor Daniells does not range widely among individual humorists, but besides describing some of the qualities of Canadian humour in a general way he does introduce us to a few namesto Thomas Chandler Haliburton, for instance, who is "still very much alive, though he has been dead for 90 years," and to Paul Herbert, who created a poetess of the prairies, composed all her poems, and wrote her biography and a criticism. Both the general and the particular are again discussed by Professor Daniells in his talk on the Canadian short story, and he looks at both its "strength and its weakness. He touches on the work of such writers as Morley Callaghan, but examines at greater length the stories of Sinclair Ross, the author of a mere handful of stories, whom he considers the best short story writer in Canada,