Canadide: A patriotic satire

by Eric Nicol

Book by Nicol, Eric

183 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1983

About the author

Eric Patrick Nicol was a Canadian writer, best known as a longtime humor columnist for the Vancouver, British Columbia newspaper The Province. He also published over 40 books, both original works and compilations of his humour columns, and won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour three times.

Reviews

[Derrick Grose · Rating 3 out of 5]

This "patriotic satire" is an account of a naive journalist's recruitment into the civil service as a consequence of his blundering upon a government minister involved in a compromising sexual encounter in a hotel room. From there he finds himself caught up in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and ineffectually involved in attempts to manage a "Gerda Munsinger" type affair, protests over the baby seal hunt, the F.L.Q. and R.C.M.P. barn burnings, an N.D.P. campaign to elect an Inuit artist as an M.P. and a Liberal campaign to get representation in Alberta before, disillusioned, he retires to a sexually unsatisfying relationship in B.C. His apparent successes and failures are consistently accidental despite his good intentions. Despite the dated and sometimes juvenile humour, there is a ring of truth in the cynicism in this novel.

[Katya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this absolute gem at the thrift store. The story is super vulgar, excessive and cartoonishly exaggerated, operating to its own deranged laws of logic, which relies on open-minded individuals with acquired tastes (or high tolerance) for such absurd political satires. Slapstick comedy prevails in every scene, making the book sometimes read more like a stand-up comedy and actually had me facepalming like 10 times in the first 10 pages. The sheer accumulation of ridiculous scenarios in which Richard Martin (or Martin Richard?) found himself is impressive, but also felt like I got whiplash while reading them. it was a rollercoaster from start to finish. awesome!