JOHN SHAVER CROSBIE

For many years the president of Magazines Canada, John Crosbie was not only an inveterate and unabashed punster and linguistic gamester, but also a devotee of the haiku form of poetic expresssion. He was the author of numerous articles and books, including The Incredible Mrs. Chadwick, Crosbie's Dictionary of Puns, Crosbie's Book of Punned Haiku, Crosbie's Dictionary of Riddles, and The Mayor of Upper Upsalquitch. John founded The International Save The Pun Foundation, and its official publication, the pundit, in 1979. By the time he died in 1994, he had gathered about him, through his books, his newsletter, and his many appearances on radio and television, an army of thousands of lovers of the English language in all of its kaleidoscopic forms. Thanks in no small part to John, their one great unifying passion was, and is, the pun, that shamefully undervalued form of humourous talk so loathed by the French and so adored by many of the greatest English wits who ever lived. His legacy to us is the Foundation. Its expression is the pundit . John, along with Joyce Heitler, launched an annual dinner for punsters in Chicago, which has taken place on April 1 each year in Chicago since 1989. At this dinner, the Punster-Of-The-Year Award is made, amid great revelry, games and dressup fun. The year John died, P.C. Swanson assumed responsibility for the dinner. A man who never took himself overly seriously, John, in response to the carping and groans from the legions of long-suffering friends and relatives of punsters, was always prompt to quote one of his greatest heroes, James Boswell, who in his Life of Samuel Johnson said "A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation."