Stephen Leacock S Mariposa

Affectionately combining both the idyllic and ironic, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is Stephen Leacock’s most beloved book. Set in fictional Mariposa, an Ontario town on the shore of Lake Wissanotti, these sketches present a remarkable range of characters: some irritating, some exasperating, some foolhardy, but all endearing. Painted with the skilful brushstrokes of a great comic artist, the delightful inhabitants of Mariposa represent the people of small towns everywhere. As fresh, funny, and insightful today as when it was first published in 1912, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is Stephen Leacock at his best – colourful, imaginative, and thoroughly entertaining.

The year 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. In words and pictures, author Daphne Mainprize takes the reader on a walking tour of Orillia, Ontario, the inspiration for Leacock's fabled Mariposa.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a Stephen Leacock book, first published in 1912. It is generally considered to be one of the most enduring classics of Canadian humorous literature. The fictional setting for these stories is Mariposa, a small town on the shore of Lake Wissanotti. Although drawn from his experiences in Orillia, Ontario, Leacock notes: "Mariposa is not a real town. On the contrary, it is about seventy or eighty of them. You may find them all the way from Lake Superior to the sea, with the same square streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels." This work has remained popular for its universal appeal. Many of the characters, though modelled on townspeople of Orillia, are small town archetypes. Their shortcomings and weaknesses are presented in a humorous but affectionate way. Often, the narrator exaggerates the importance of the events in Mariposa compared to the rest of the world. For example, when there is a country-wide election, "the town of Mariposa, was, of course, the storm centre and focus point of the whole turmoil." The story of the steamboat Mariposa Belle sinking in Lake Wissanotti is one of the best-loved in the set. The apparent magnitude of this accident is lessened somewhat when it is revealed that the depth of the water is less than six feet. Men from the town come to the rescue in an un-seaworthy lifeboat which sinks beneath them just as they are pulled onto the steamer, and the narrator earnestly remarks that this was "one of the smartest pieces of rescue work ever seen on the lake."

Longlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour A funny and heart-warming tribute to Canada’s most famous small town, and its most celebrated humourist, Stephen Leacock. Many Canadians grew up in small towns, or at least in neighbourhoods that acted like small towns. But what if you grew up in Canada’s most famous small town—Stephen Leacock’s Mariposa? This was the world that journalist Jamie Lamb was raised in, the actual place that inspired Leacock’s Canadian classic, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town,over a century ago. The Mariposa of Lamb’s time was slightly different, yet it still embodied the heart and soul, the eccentricities and the bizarre local customs of Leacock’s sketches. Christmas in Mariposa is a celebration of that town and its people. It tells of secret gardens, special rinks, oddball hotels, remarkable foods, fast boats and sunken aircraft, Christmas Eve fireworks, and the best Christmas office party in the country. It describes a place where Christmas could be celebrated in summer with a Baby Jesus look-alike contest, Canada’s only officially sanctioned reindeer races, and the Three Wise Men arriving with gifts by parachute. It transports readers to a world where where Gordie Howe once dropped by for a skate, and Glenn Gould regularly came to eat a well-done steak and six Parker House rolls slathered in butter at a Chinese restaurant. Jamie Lamb’s Mariposa is timeless and quintessentially Canadian.

I don't know whether you know Mariposa. If not, it is of no consequence, for if you know Canada at all, you are probably well acquainted with a dozen towns just like it. There it lies in the sunlight, sloping up from the little lake that spreads out at the foot of the hillside on which the town is built. There is a wharf beside the lake, and lying alongside of it a steamer that is tied to the wharf with two ropes of about the same size as they use on the Lusitania. The steamer goes nowhere in particular, for the lake is landlocked and there is no navigation for the Mariposa Belle except to "run trips" on the first of July and the Queen's Birthday, and to take excursions of the Knights of Pythias and the Sons of Temperance to and from the Local Option Townships

Gerald Lynch offers new insights into the work of a popular Canadian humourist in Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity. He considers Leacock's satire to be the result of a combination of two traditions - toryism and humanism - and examines the relation between Leacock's theory of humour and his view of the world.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a 1912 book written by Stephen Leacock. A classic of humourous literature, it is set in the fictional town of Mariposa, Canada, and focuses on the lives of the townspeople as well as on the importance of Mariposa itself.

The year 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. In words and pictures, author Daphne Mainprize takes the reader on a walking tour of Orillia, Ontario, the inspiration for Leacock's fabled Mariposa.