Robert Thomas Trivia

 ·         Although Robert Thomas Allen felt comfortable living in many different places and chose to spend his final years in the San Diego area, he was very proud of Toronto where he was born in 1911. He celebrated his native city in books like When Toronto Was for Kids (McClelland and Stewart 1961) that were described by reviewers as unique and authentic descriptions of both Toronto and a Canadian childhood in the 1920s.  

·         He was, in fact, highly regarded as a children’s author and was one of the first winners of the Ruth Schwartz Children’s Book Award for The Violin (1977).

·         Allen wrote and published 14 books in all. Two won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour: The Grass is Never Greener in 1957 and Children, Wives & Other Wildlife (1971).

·         His early career was spent in the advertizing and promotion offices of iconic Canadian department stores such as Eaton’s and Simpsons.  In similar work for publishing companies and newspapers, he made the contacts and learned the processes needed to make the leap into freelance writing fulltime. 

·         This leap into self employment was not until he was in his late thirties when married with two young children.  But Allen was soon established as a regular contributor to many major magazines like Reader’s Digest, Maclean’s, and newspaper supplements like Weekend, the Canadian, and the Star Weekly.

·         He became what was regarded as a career “Magazine Writer,” free from the daily pressures and ephemeral stories of beat journalism.  Before being recognized for his books, he won the Governor General’s Award (1956) for one of his magazine articles: a Christmas story published in the Canadian Home Journal called “I’m looking for the man we celebrate”.

·         Although he spent much of his adult, working life in the U.S., Allen and his writing became symbolic representations of what it meant to be Canadian. In fact, the bespectacled cartoon figure used for decades by the Toronto Star’s Duncan Macpherson to represent the Canadian “Everyman” in his editorial cartoons was widely known as having been based upon Robert Thomas Allen, or at least was inspired by his writings.

·         Macpherson, a member of the Canadian News Hall of Fame and winner of six National Newspaper Wards knew Allen as a friend and was illustrator of Allen’s books and articles.  He was quoted as saying that “if (Stephen) Leacock were alive, he would be lucky to win the Robert Thomas Allen  Medal for Humour.”

·         Allen died in San Bernadino in July 1990 of a heart attack after living with chronic heart disease for well over a decade. He and his wife were living nearby, and both of his daughters had settled in the U.S. as well.

·         Despite his health, Allen kept writing to the end, in a way - even beyond, publishing some stories posthumously.  One of his articles, submitted to the Globe and Mail newspaper, “Getaways Tijuana Trolly a Day Trip To Mexico Provides All the Novelties of World Travel”  G&M (December 7 1990), finally ran almost half a year after his death.

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Sources

Cathie James, “Robert Allen hailed as humourist” Toronto Star (July 15, 1990) A2

“Robert Thomas Allen Magazine Writer Was a Gentle Humourist” Globe and Mail (July 21, 1990) A9

Duncan Macpherson Obit: Brehl, Jack.  “The making of a Master”, Toronto Star (25 Apr 1993), H3

and - Scrapbooks and collections of his works are on file at the Toronto City Archives.

Ottawa Citizen - March 17, 2015

Excerpt from story Sunshine sketches of a book on humour

 

The article by Ottawa writer Louise Rachlis begins with:

  "During the day, Dick Bourgeois-Doyle, 62, is Secretary
General of the National Research Council of Canada.

Evenings and weekends, he’s the thoughtful writer and illustrator who created What’s So Funny?, a personal review of the 67 books that have won the Leacock Memorial Medal for humour."

 

What’s So Funny? was initiated “for fun and learning something new past the age of 60,” said Bourgeois-Doyle.

The book chronicles Canadian humour from the “old days” to the present. “Because humour is so contextual, it is really hard to compare the funniness of material from one era to another,” he said.

“Certainly, some stuff that was funny to Canadians in the ’40s would fall flat now. This is not too surprising, but I am struck how some books — like the 1948 winner Sarah Binks — still stand up, still resonate particularly with Canadians, and still make us smile.”

When writing his book, he tried to set aside a minimum of an hour a day to “stare at the keyboard,” as he puts it. “Setting goals of quantity or quality of words never seems to work for me. But I can always find or make an hour, and this drip, drip, drip approach eventually turns into progress.”

He has written other books — “for the most part, biographies, history of science and technology, and serious stuff” — so he found the latest book a diversion and an effort to break into a more creative format. “Even finding the old books was an enjoyable treasure hunt. Part of it is discipline and another part lies in the mysterious way we can always find time for things that we really want to do.”

The Canadian award began in 1947 with Ojibway Melody by Harry Symons. In 2014, The Promised Land - a novel of Cape Breton by Bill Conall was the winner.

Bourgeois-Doyle figures most readers would agree that some books are more deserving than others, and he does have his own particular favourites. “But I think the Leacock Memorial Medal is a peculiar beast that does not lend itself to easy judgments. It is awarded by human beings with their own set of references, memories, biases and work within a framework that is far from clinical.”

The award clearly values “funniness,” he said, “but literary merit counts too, as well as that magical capacity to resonate with the subset of Canada that honours Stephen Leacock’s memory.”

The result is a collection of accomplished authors like Richler, Davies, and Mitchell, “whom the medal tries to encourage to access their funny side, as well as developing naturally funny authors whom the medal tries to encourage toward a career in literature. It also honours the poignant, but mildly funny. I see a pattern and design to it all, but others might not.”

In the fall of 2012, BourgeoisDoyle set out to collect and read all of the Leacock Medal books. “I wanted to steal techniques, study different writing styles, and laugh,” he says in his book. “But when you spend hours asking yourself, ‘what’s so funny?’ or why one thing strikes you as funny and something else falls flat, you find the answers not in writing tricks and topics but in the memories, biases, and cares that induce reaction and define who you are.”

Bourgeois-Doyle hopes readers of his book will whet their appetite and be encouraged to read the Leacock Medal books and other Canadian humour, “and to do it through that lens of personal reference for the insight that comes from looking in the mirror and realizing that what we laugh at is a reflection of ourselves. It also frees you to judge for yourself what is funny and what is not.”

Bourgeois-Doyle would like to write like Donald Jack, a threetime Leacock Medal winner whose books took the form of mock memoirs of a character who started out as a First World War pilot. “Jack uses all the tools of a solid writer elegantly, intelligently, and to great effect, particularly a satire of war. But I would recommend many of the books; certainly, the very creative hockey story King Leary, Sarah Binks, Gregory Clark’s War Stories, Saturday Night at the Bagel Factory, the books by Robert Thomas Allen, and the surprisingly profound and influential Ojibway Melody.”

He thinks the best single book might be Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version. “For me, it was a modern, edgier, Canadian Don Quixote story that explores the interface between the real and the imagined around a solid story and out-of-the-box techniques. And my favourite book — non-Leacock Medal winner, non-Canadian book — by far is Don Quixote.”

 What’s So Funny? Lessons from Canada’s Leacock Medal for Humour Writing is published by General Store Publishing House Inc. for $22.95. Anyone wanting a copy of the book can also contact the author at bourgeoisdoyle@gmail.com.