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Leacock was probably the first Canadian to qualify as a "pro-American British imperialist." A colleague, Prof. John Culliton, said of him, "Long before Winston Churchill, Leacock was saving the Empire every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 3 p. m. in Room 20." He was also ahead of his time in prodding Americans and Britons toward greater friendship and understanding.
His feeling for both sides of the Atlantic came naturally. He was born on the Isle of Wight in 1869, and emigrated to Canada as a six-year-old. On his retirement from McGill, influential English friends urged him to return to live in the land of his birth. He refused, saying, "I’d hate to be so far away from the United States. It’s second nature, part of our lives, to be near them. Every Sunday morning we read the New York funny papers. All week we hear about politics in Alabama and Louisiana, and whether they caught the bandits who stole the vault of the National Bank —well, you know American news. There’s no other like it."
In the eight years of his retirement, Stephen produced the work he believed most likely to endure. It was far removed from the kind of wit which had made him famous. He described his history, Montreal: Seaport and City, as "the best job I’ve done." Unlike most historical works it bubbles with the author’s laughter. In his foreword, after thanking two former colleagues for checking the manuscript, he added that any errors which remained obviously must be theirs. "Acknowledging these debts," he concluded, "I also feel that I owe a good deal of this book to my own industry and effort."
Midway through World War Ⅱ, I asked Stephen if he would write a foreword for a book I had written on the Canadian navy and its gallant role in convoy escort. He agreed. Some time later he handed me more than 20,000 words, in which he had told the whole fascinating background story of Canada’s lifelong relationship to the sea. His research was staggering to a reporter who had simply described events and engagements to which he had been an eyewitness.
"I got interested in the subject," he explained. "If you don’t like it, throw it away and I’ll write something shorter."
Not a word was changed. To my joy, the book appeared under our joint by-lines. Soon after, throat cancer took Stephen from the thousands of Old McGillers who loved him.
Leacock loved human beings for their little vanities and pretensions —and laughed at his own. The fictional town of Mariposa of his famous "Sunshine Sketches" is obviously Orillia, Ontario, where Leacock built a summer home and developed a farm, which, he said, "used to lose a few dollars a year, but by dint of hard work and modernization, I have contrived to turn that into a loss of thousands." The citizens of Oriilia had little difficulty in self-identification when the book reached town, but they soon realized that Leacock had ribbed his own idiosyncrasies more sharply than he had pinpointed theirs. Today% Orillians speak of him with the awe given to any community’s adopted son, though it was he who adopted Mariposa-Orillia.
Stephen Leacock was so honestly simple that to many men he seemed to be a mass of complexities. To the world he remains the man of laughter. His greatest achievement, however, was that he taught thousands of young men and women who want to know. By example he proved one simple fact to all of us who attended his classes, certainly to that numerous crew who came to enjoy his friendship —that the right of outspoken dissent is the free man’s most precious heritage. Such men do not often pass this way.
The author was probably ______.