Come Smile with Me: Ottawa Valley Yarns

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Exaggerations, feeble jokes, accounts of pranks, and not-very-witty
witticisms fill this rather weak effort to capture the color of Ottawa
Valley “old timers.”

The best of the short items that make up the collection suggest the
tall tales for which the turn-of-the-century logging camps were famous.
These ones, however, lack the stature of classic tall tales or folklore,
and become little more than crude snippets, pointless and not funny
enough to merit a smile. The “yarns” rely heavily on rural dialect
as a source of humor.

The accompanying cartoon-style illustrations are competent but
uninspired. Although they are undoubtedly the book’s strong point they
do not compensate for the poor-quality text.

The book is a mixture of retold local tales and items fabricated by the
authors. As local history, it is an embarrassment.