Derek McCormack did not win the 2016 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and its accompanying $15,000 cash prize. Susan Juby did, for Republic of Dirt, a sequel to The Woefield Poultry Collective, which introduced readers to Prudence, a Brooklynite fish-out-of-water who chances into running a derelict farm in interior British Columbia. The novel’s cast of characters includes a septuagenarian named Earl who plays the banjo and cracks wise (refusing Prudence’s hot sauce: “I just got over my heartburn from our trip to Ron’s Pizza Parlor”), and its scenes rollick along with the joke-per-minute efficiency of a network sitcom.
While the comedy in Republic of Dirt may be a matter of taste, the Leacock medal, as Canada’s only major award for literary humour, canonizes its victors alongside Important Writers such as Mordecai Richler (the 1998 winner), Farley Mowat (1970), and Robertson Davies (1955). But before we accept the Leacock medallists as a...
Pasha Malla is the author of six books, most recently Fugue States, a novel. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
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