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From the archives

A Tragedy of Our Own

The Air India bombing and how we live with the past

Playing the Rights Card

A history of Canadian foreign policy as domestic theatre

Two Other Solitudes

The India-Canada relationship has taken a long time to develop

Joseph Kertes

Joseph Kertes is a winner of the Stephen Leacock Award and founder of the first-ever full-time college program in comedy writing and performance. He is currently dean of creative and performing arts at Humber College in Toronto.

Articles by
Joseph Kertes

Trying for Funny

A teenager thinks magic will solve all his problems September 2013
“Dying is easy; comedy is hard,” according to the early 19th-century actor Edmund Kean. I would append to that statement: “Not feeling very well is easy; reviewing comedy is hard.” The primary problem with penetrating the comic mind is that comedy is used as a shield, a defence mechanism, really, against all foes. Comedy comes from a dark place rather than the light place it seems to…

Middle Men

Two fathers repair the past by fixing the future. July–August 2011
When I was writing my most recent novel, my father asked me what I was working on, and before I could answer, he said, “I hope it’s not another book about me.” It did not strike me until that moment that all stories—at least all my stories—have his presence looming over them. My father was an easy…