As the Canoe Tips: Comic Scenes from Canadian Life

Beryl Hamilton is a freelance writer in Thunder Bay who specializes in
home gardening.

Bill Casselman is a Canadian humorist with an original brand of humour
based on a lifetime of being a Canadian writer, broadcaster, producer,
and performer. He has spent time in Vancouver as producer of CBC’s
This Country in the Morning and as executive producer of The Vancouver
Show, and in Toronto as the producer of The Bob McLean Show. For 10
years he was the movie reviewer on Jack Farr’s Radio Show on CBC. He
has written for the Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Toronto Life, The
Panic Button, Canadian Geographic, and Macleans.

Casselman notes in his preface that the reader will meet characters
“out on a day pass from [the] subconscious, released for silly
behaviour and on their own lack of recognizance,” while assuring us
that “these funny pieces have been safely tested on blind albino
gerbils.” This sort of quirkiness is typical of Casselman’s offbeat
style of humour.

In a section titled “Words in My Life,” Casselman takes on the
kooky world of semantics. Here the canoe does really tip with wordplay
and zany chapters such as “The Pedantry Shelf” or “Who Let the
Lessor Omentum Out of Its Cage?”: “the lesser omentum could be a
furry wee beast of the raccoon ilk. In medical terms it is the double
fold passing from the lesser curvature of the stomach to the transverse
fissure of the liver.” A chapter titled “Bureaucrats Bungle a
Canadian Bridge Name” lampoons the naming of the Confederation Bridge
in Prince Edward Island: “what a corny frumpish name, Confederation
Bridge!, another waspy, bureaucratic bit of toponymic tedium from
Ottawa.” In a chapter titled “The Pword Ptarmigan Plooks Pfunny,”
he asks—and answers—the riveting question: “What odd tie binds the
medical word ptosis and the bird word ptarmigan?”

Casselman is an exuberant wordsmith, and his often acerbic and
tasteless humour occasionally makes one feel guilty for laughing. As the
Canoe Tips is not a book of easy-to-read jokes, but rather a very
entertaining look at national oddities, happenings, and history.