Leacock Stephen - Stephen Leacock

Stephen Leacock

ALSO IN THE

EXTRAORDINARY CANADIANS

SERIES:

Big Bear by Rudy Wiebe

Lord Beaverbrook by David Adams Richards

Norman Bethune by Adrienne Clarkson

Emily Carr by Lewis DeSoto

Tommy Douglas by Vincent Lam

Glenn Gould by Mark Kingwell

Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin

by John Ralston Saul

Wilfrid Laurier by Andr Pratte

Ren Lvesque by Daniel Poliquin

Nellie McClung by Charlotte Gray

Marshall McLuhan by Douglas Coupland

L.M. Montgomery by Jane Urquhart

Lester B. Pearson by Andrew Cohen

Mordecai Richler by M.G. Vassanji

Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont by Joseph Boyden

Pierre Elliott Trudeau by Nino Ricci

SERIES EDITOR:

John Ralston Saul

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First published 2009

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

Copyright Margaret MacMillan, 2009

Introduction copyright John Ralston Saul, 2009

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

MacMillan, Margaret, 1943

Stephen Leacock / Margaret MacMillan.

(Extraordinary Canadians)

ISBN 978-0-670-06681-0

1. Leacock, Stephen, 18691944.

2. Humorists, Canadian (English)20th centuryBiography.

3. Authors, Canadian (English)20th centuryBiography.

I. Title. II. Series: Extraordinary Canadians

PS8523.E15Z882 2009 C818'.5209 C2009-900457-7

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CONTENTS

John Ralston Saul

How do civilizations imagine themselves? One way is for each of us to look at ourselves through our societys most remarkable figures. Im not talking about hero worship or political iconography. That is a danger to be avoided at all costs. And yet people in every country do keep on going back to the most important people in their past.

This series of Extraordinary Canadians brings together rebels, reformers, martyrs, writers, painters, thinkers, political leaders. Why? What is it that makes them relevant to us so long after their deaths?

For one thing, their contributions are there before us, like the building blocks of our society. More important than that are their convictions and drive, their sense of what is right and wrong, their willingness to risk all, whether it be their lives, their reputations, or simply being wrong in public. Their ideas, their triumphs and failures, all of these somehow constitute a mirror of our society. We look at these people, all dead, and discover what we have been, but also what we can be. A mirror is an instrument for measuring ourselves. What we see can be both a warning and an encouragement.

These eighteen biographies of twenty key Canadians are centred on the meaning of each of their lives. Each of them is very different, but these are not randomly chosen great figures. Together they produce a grand sweep of the creation of modern Canada, from our first steps as a democracy in 1848 to our questioning of modernity late in the twentieth century.

All of them except one were highly visible on the cutting edge of their day while still in their twenties, thirties, and forties. They were young, driven, curious. An astonishing level of fresh energy surrounded them and still does. We in the twenty-first century talk endlessly of youth, but power today is often controlled by people who fear the sort of risks and innovations embraced by everyone in this series. A number of them were deadhanged, infected on a battle-field, broken by their exertionswell before middle age. Others hung on into old age, often profoundly dissatisfied with themselves.

Each one of these people has changed you. In some cases you know this already. In others you will discover how through these portraits. They changed the way the world hears music, thinks of war, communicates. They changed how each of us sees what surrounds us, how minorities are treated, how we think of immigrants, how we look after each other, how we imagine ourselves through what are now our stories.

You will notice that many of them were people of the word. Not just the writers. Why? Because civilizations are built around many themes, but they require a shared public language. So Laurier, Bethune, Douglas, Riel, LaFontaine, McClung, Trudeau, Lvesque, Big Bear, even Carr and Gould, were masters of the power of language. Beaverbrook was one of the most powerful newspaper publishers of his day. Countries need action and laws and courage. But civilization is not a collection of prime ministers. Words, words, wordsit is around these that civilizations create and imagine themselves.

The authors I have chosen for each subject are not the obvious experts. They are imaginative, questioning minds from among our leading writers and activists. They have, each one of them, a powerful connection to their subject. And in their own lives, each is engaged in building what Canada is now becoming.

That is why a documentary is being filmed around each subject. Images are yet another way to get at each subject and to understand their effect on us.

The one continuous, essential voice of biography since 1961 has been the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. But there has not been a project of book-length biographies such as Extraordinary Canadians in a hundred years, not since the Makers of Canada series. And yet every generation understands the past differently, and so sees in the mirror of these remarkable figures somewhat different lessons. As history rolls on, some truths remain the same while others are revealed in a new and unexpected way.

What strikes me again and again is just how dramatically ethical decisions figured in these peoples lives. They form the backbone of history and memory. Some of them, Big Bear, for example, or Dumont, or even Lucy Maud Montgomery, thought of themselves as failures by the end of their lives. But the ethical cord that was strung taut through their work has now carried them on to a new meaning and even greater strength, long after their deaths.