Stand and Deliver: Inside Canadian Comedy

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright, and fiction writer. She is the
author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

The fact that Andrew Clark ran a comedy club in England before he began
to write regular newspaper columns about Canadian comedy no doubt
accounts for his empathy with the gutsy performers who stand up on
Canadian stages and try to make us laugh.

In this straightforward history, Clark points out that unlike those in
performing arts that are supported by arts funding, comedy artists in
Canada have had to rely mainly on the CBC (which employed only 25
Canadian comics in 1996), Mark Breslin (who started the Yuk Yuk’s
series of clubs in 1976), and the Montreal Just for Laughs festival.
Wayne and Shuster, Jim Carrey, The Kids in the Hall, and the SCTV gang
have all had to go to the United States to achieve fame; countless
others whose names are not so familiar are working south of the border
as performers, writers, or producers.

Clark takes us from The Dumbells in World War I to Harland Williams,
who is discussed in the final chapter as “The Next Big Thing.” He
introduces us to the comics who live a life on the road that is often
ugly and violent, and to Lorne Michaels who ended up with an office in
the Rockefeller Center. He wonders why so many Canadian comedians hide
behind a character mask. He examines the particular case of female
comedians. He tells us about Colin Campbell, the jewel of West Coast
comedy, who could not stay sober.

What makes Canadians funny? Clark tells of a day spent on Sandra
Shamas’s farm. In an intensely personal account, we see Shamas in
tears and we hear her say, “My anger is what makes me funny.” Stand
and Deliver is a welcome addition to the record of our cultural history;
the absence of an index is unfortunate.