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                 1968 "And Now ... Here's Max" by Max Ferguson 
              
May 31, 2013
                  T
he story in the 1968 Leacock Medal winner “And Now ... Here’s Max” that I most often recite with a knowing smirk is woven throughout the whole book, but is not mentioned explicitly until the final chapters ...
     
                             
                   1969 "You're Only as Old as You Act" 
                by Stuart Trueman                              J
une 7, 2013
                 
                  Stuart Trueman was often called “Mr. New Brunswick” because of his energetic promotion of his home province, its natural attractions, and its history.  He was a very committed New Brunswick resident, living and working his entire 84 years around his native city of Saint John.



              
                 1970
"The Boat Who Wouldn't Float" by Farley Mowat
                 June 14, 2013
                
                Author, environmentalist, and character-filled character Farley Mowat and his impressive wife Claire sent me a small but moving gift this year. I will treasure it for many reasons ...

                    1971 "Children, Wives and Other Wildlife "
                 by Robert Thomas Allen

                 
June 21, 2013
           
                     In the 1970s, I worked for a forestry consulting company in British Columbia that specialized in field work around remote, isolated camps with crews living together in tents for weeks on end.


          
        1972 "The Night We Stole the Mountie's Car"            
            by Max Braithwaite
               June 28, 2013 
             My high school career counseling sessions throbbed back into my head when I read the “writhed in discontent” opening passage to Max Braithwaite’s The Night We stole the Mounties Car, the 1972 Leacock Medal winner.  


 
           1973
"Saturday Night at the Bagel Factory"            

            by Donald Bell
               July 5, 2013 
             Driving a rented Volkswagen through central Alberta in late April of this Canus Humorous year, I am surrounded by skiffs of snow, patches of brown grass, and puffs of dust ...  

                      





            1974 Bandy- "That's Me in the Middle"            
            by Donald Jack
               July 12, 2013
              Me in the Middle, the second installment in the Bartholomew Bandy series and the second,  imaginary Bandy memoir to win the Leacock Medal for Donald Jack, was another one of those Canus Humorous books that I read with the help of ...


            1975   "Good  Place to Come From"           

            by Morley Torgov


               July 19,2013
                For a long time, I would reconcile my hours of work with the meager sales of my Don Quixote in a government office parody (Don Quincy de la Mangement: The Life and Adventures of the Most Strategic, Integrated and Aligned Servant of the Public) with a typical writer’s rationalization.

       
           1976   "The Luck of the Irish"


            by Harry J. Boyle



              July 26, 2013
              The “miracle” at the core of Harry J. Boyle’s 1976 Leacock Medal winner Luck of the Irish is eminently explainable and even commonplace. Few readers would evade this assessment





 
                   1977 That Far Greater Bay by Ray Guy
                    August 2, 2013

                     
                     One of the best times of my life was the week that I was hit by the tail end of a hurricane, got stuck with a rent-a-car flat tire down a rugged and remote country road, and worked running my hands through mud and slime every day ... 




                 1978 Whirligig by Ernest Buckler        
                      August 9, 2013

                     

                        Early in the spring of this year, I took a few minutes off from the grind of my Canus Humorous studies to email in an entry for a local “Bad Poetry Contest.”
 


 

                  1979 True Confections by Sondra Gotlieb        
                      August 16, 2013



                      An introductory, wannabe-creative-writer course that I took about a decade ago still causes me unease ...  


 

 

                1980 Me Bandy, You Cissie by Donald Jack 
                   
                      August 23, 2013

               
                      As I started reading Me Bandy, You Cissie,Volume IV of Donald Jack’s imaginary Bandy journals and the third tin the series o win the Leacock Medal for Humour, I had two questions in my mind ...
       
            

              1981 Take My Family- by Gary Lautens


                August 30, 2013

                It affected me more than I expected ...


       
            



               1982 Gophers don't pay taxes by Mervyn J. Huston

                  September 6, 2013
                       

                   Digging through papers and personal effects after the successive deaths of my parents in 2005, I came upon ...                
         




                       September 13, 2013

                      I was blessed with a family of modest and imprecise expectations ...



              

                 1984 No Sex Please... by Gary Lautens


                  September 20, 2013
                   This is embarrassing. Gary Lautens gives me nightmares ...
 
                  1985 Love is  Long Shot ... by Ted Allan
                       September 27, 2013
                       One of the most  oddly enjoyable books I read this year
                       was Love is a Long Shot

              1986 No Axe Too Small to Grind by Joey Slinger

                   October 4, 2013

                    When I noticed Joey Slinger’s 1986 Leacock Medal Winning book No Axe Too Small to Grind approaching on my reading schedule, I was not particularly excited ...





                  1987 Fencepost Chronicles  by W.P. Kinsella
 
                  October 11, 2013

                  You ask yourself “Is he really doing what I think he is ?”

 





                  1988 King Leary  by Paul Quarrington
                October 18, 2013 
                  Without King Leary, the catalogue of Leacock Medal winners
         would not have a single book with hockey as its major theme ...


                    1989 Winter Tulips  by Joe Kertes




                       October 2,  2013

                  Approaching Guelph, Ontario from the south, the road rises a bit and then slopes down just before entering the town ... 




More to come - Fall 2014.