SOURCE: “The Enchanted Houses: Leacock's Irony,” in Canadian Literature, No. 23, Winter, 1965, pp. 31-44.

In the following essay, Cameron examines how Leacock sees the characters and their actions in Sunshine Sketches.

Critical discussions of Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town revolve about two central questions, upon each of which the critics are sharply divided. The first of these deals with the book's distinctive flavour: is it sharply satiric, or is it composed of kind and fundamentally affectionate comedy? The second question is concerned more with characterization and structure, and with the mind and motives of Leacock himself, the issue being whether or not the book is a tentative, exploratory step in the direction of the fully articulated novel, and therefore whether Leacock achieved his full potentialities as a writer.

Obviously, the two questions are logically related. The first turns on Leacock's relation to his material, on the...