Author of ‘What’s So Funny?’ hopes readers will hone their own humorous take on the world

By Louise Rachlis

During the day, Dick Bourgeois-Doyle, 62, is Secretary General at the National Research Council.

Evenings and weekends, he’s the thoughtful writer and illustrator who created What’s So Funny?, a personal review of the 67 books that have won the Leacock Memorial Award for humour.

What’s So Funny? was initiated “for fun, and learning something new, past the age of 60,” said Bourgeois-Doyle.

The book chronicles Canadian humour from the “old days” to the present. “Because humour is so contextual, it is really hard to compare the funniness of material from one era to another,” he said.

“Certainly, some stuff that was funny to 1940s Canadians would fall flat now. This is not too surprising, but I am struck how some books, like the 1948 winner Sarah Binks still stand up, still resonate particularly with Canadians, and still make us smile.”

When writing his book, he tried to set aside a minimum of an hour a day to “stare at the keyboard.” “Setting goals of quantity or quality of words never seems to work for me.  But I can always find or make an hour - and this drip, drip, drip approach eventually turns into progress.”

He has written other books - “for the most part, biographies, history of science and technology, and serious stuff” - so he found the latest book a diversion and “an effort to break into a more creative format.” “Even finding the old books was a treasure hunt and enjoyable … so part of it is discipline and another part lies in mysterious way we can always find time for things that we really want to do.”

He hopes readers of his book will whet their appetite and be encouraged to read the Leacock Medal books and other Canadian humour - “and to do it through that lens of personal references for that insight that comes from looking in the mirror and realizing that what we laugh at is a reflection of ourselves.  It also frees you to judge for yourself what is funny and what is not.”

The Canadian award began in 1947 with Ojibway Melody by Harry Symons and the winner in 2014 was Bill Conall, with The Promised Land: a Novel of Cape Breton.

He figures most readers would agree that some books are more deserving than others, and he does have his own particular favourites.  “But I think the Leacock Medal is a peculiar beast that does not lend itself to easy judgements.  It is awarded by human beings with their own set of references, memories, and biases and work within a framework that is far from clinical.”

The award clearly values “funniness”, he said, “but literary merit counts too, as well as that magical capacity to resonate with the subset of Canada that honours Stephen Leacock’s memory.”

The result is a collection of accomplished authors like Richler, Davies, and Mitchell “whom the medal tries to encourage to access their funny side, as well as developing naturally funny authors whom the medal tries to encourage toward a career in literature.”  “It also honours the poignant, but mildly funny.  I see a pattern and design to it all, but others might not.”

In the fall of 2012, Bourgeois-Doyle set out to collect and read all of the Leacock Medal books. “I wanted to steal techniques, study different writing styles, and laugh,” he says in the book. “But when you spend hours asking yourself, ‘What’s so funny?’ or why one thing strikes you as funny and something else falls flat, you find the answers not in writing tricks and topics but in the memories, biases, and cares that induce reaction and define who you are.”

He learned a lot in the process, such as: “I now see sad thoughts as the seeds of funny ones, and I get up every morning looking differently at the place where I live.”  He said that “comes those hours of thinking about this and realizing that my laughter was induced by memories linked to something sad like a lost loved one - and also to realizing that Ottawa is my anchor reference and has, after 30 years, evolved into my home town.”

Aside from content and shared experiences that change with time, he feels “the tightness and quality of the writing has improved over the years.” “This could be a function of the tools, like computers, that we have at our disposal today or the editing resources that professional writers have to draw on, or, perhaps, the arena is more competitive.”

He is more struck by how some things have not changed.

“The most recent Leacock Medal winners, Dance, Gladys, Dance in 2013 and The Promised Land in 2014 pursue themes like the value and nature of community and respect for others and their differences that you would find in the very early books like Ojibway Melody and even Leacock’s work.”

More than anything else, he hopes readers of his book will whet their appetite and be encouraged to read the Leacock Medal books and other Canadian humour - “and to do it through that lens of personal references for that insight that comes from looking in the mirror and realizing that what we laugh at is a reflection of ourselves.  It also frees you to judge for yourself what is funny and what is not.”

He himself would like to write like Donald Jack, a three-time Leacock Medal winner whose books took the form of mock memoirs of a character who started out as a World War I pilot.  “Jack uses all the tools of a solid writer, elegantly, intelligently, and to great effect, particularly a satire of war.  But I would recommend many of the books - certainly, the very creative hockey story King Leary, Sarah Binks, Gregory Clark’s War Stories, Saturday Night at the Bagel Factory,  and the books by Robert Thomas Allen, and the surprisingly profound and influential Ojibway Melody.”

He thinks the best single book might be Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version.  “For me, it was a modern, edgier, Canadian Don Quixote story that explores the interface between the real and the imagined around a solid story and out-of-the-box techniques.  “And my favorite book - non-Leacock Medal, non-Canadian book - by far is - Don Quixote.”

He has put a lot of thought into the writing exercises at the end of each chapter. “I did a lot of them in a serious attempt to ingrain the lessons.  But my real expectation is that the exercises will merely echo the lessons to be learned from the Leacock Medal book in question and help people, particularly writers and students, to remember them.  For example, one exercise invites readers to write a first person account of his or her own birth - to point out the interesting way Ian Ferguson launched his own memoir Village of the Small Houses.”
One of his aims with the book was to capture humour writing techniques and writing styles that might provide writers of any kind, speech writers, people giving presentations, or writing a blog, with some practical tools and tricks.

He also hopes people will think about the things that make them smile and why, “and leave the book with more confidence in the merits of their own, personal sense of humour and developing their own humorous take on the world. To try to be a little less serious.” 

What’s So Funny? Lessons from Canada’s Leacock Medal for Humour Writing is published by General Store Publishing House Inc. for $22.95. It’s available on Kobo, Amazon Kindle, and other e-book formats, as well as Books on Beechwood, or anyone wanting a copy of the book can contact the author at bourgeoisdoyle@gmail.com .