Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a series of vignettes by Canadian author Stephen Leacock. The book was written about many small towns near Lake Superior but is set in the fictional town of Mariposa. The vignettes create a portrait of the town and many characters within it, and the tone is humorous, if a bit sarcastic. Set on the shore of Lake Wissanotti, the town is based on Leacock's own experiences living in the small town of Orillia, Ontario.

Like Winesburg, Ohio and other place-based vignette collections, the town of Mariposa and its people are the driving force behind Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Many of the events that take place, while enormous in the lives of the characters, are laughably minor in the view of larger political and social problems. This strategy gives the book an absurdist, humorous tone, reflecting Leacock's own perspective on small town life and its dramas.

One of these major events is the national election. Though an event of much greater significance in other parts of the country, the locals of Mariposa act as if the election were taking place in their own backyards. Considering themselves at the center of the chaos, they act accordingly with townspeople fighting each other, speeches being made, and other absurd responses to a distant problem. Instances like this reveal the overall goal of the collection, which is to portray, through archetypal characters, common human flaws, such as egoism, hopeless romance, idealism, hunger for power, and greed.



Characters that drive the collection include Josh Smith, the power-hungry proprietor of the Smith Hotel, the barber Jefferson Thorpe, the undertaker Golgotha Gingham, a bank manager, ship captain, local professor, and more. The main character is the unnamed and unreliable narrator, who watches the events in the town with a large degree of skepticism and bias. As such, the town and its characters are colored by his particular lens, which is often one of absurdity or couched criticism.

The characters in Mariposa interact in strange and often incongruent ways. Josh Smith, for instance, painted as a talented businessman, is the richest man in Mariposa. After being fined by the liquor board for selling drinks after hours, Smith decides to open a French cafe to appeal to the townsfolk and appease the Licensing Commission by giving them more revenue through increased sales.

Down the street, Jefferson Thorpe, the local barber, is known around town for his keen eye for investments. A decent man and a chatty barber, Thorpe talks while shaving the heads of all the men in town. During one of these chats, the narrator learns that Thorpe has recently lost a fortune on a scam mining venture. Despite this, he doesn't raise his prices, something for which the narrator commends him.



Other dramas include the romance between bank teller Peter Pupkin and Zena Pepperleigh, the daughter of the judge and an avid reader of romance novels. Pupkin pines after Zena, who mostly doesn't notice his advances. Dean Drone, the local priest, struggles with debt after building a new chapel for which he cannot pay. And, in a moment of incredible suspense, the narrator recalls the sinking of the local shop the Mariposa Belle, which sank in Lake Wissanotti, stranding its passengers. Fortunately for everyone involved, including the ill-equipped rescue team, the boat sank in only six feet of water.

With a short introduction revealing Leacock's own perspective on small towns in Canada and the world over, these vignettes paint a humorous portrait of life in the hamlets of Lake Superior.

Canadian teacher and humorist Stephen Leacock was considered the best-known English-speaking humorist in the world from the years 1915 to1925. Born in Southern England, he moved to Ontario, where he was educated at the University of Toronto. His works include dozens of humorous novels and a similar number of non-fiction works on Canadian history and other topics. The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal of Honor is named for him.