John Candy: A Life in Comedy

By Paul Myers, the veteran chronicler of Canada’s pop-cultural past, John Candy: A Life in Comedy is both a celebration and a reckoning. It’s not merely a biography of one of Canada’s most cherished exports—it’s an elegy for a generation of comedians whose warmth, absurdity, and improvisational brilliance helped define what “Canadian funny” meant on the world stage.

Myers, best known for his work on Barenaked Ladies: Public Stunts, Private Stories and A Wizard, a True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio, writes with the steady hand of a documentarian and the heart of a fan. He captures Candy’s dual nature: the exuberant sketch performer from SCTV, all bravado and bluster, and the private man who never stopped worrying that his weight, or his kindness, would one day undo him.

The book opens in the Toronto comedy trenches of the 1970s—Second City, CBC hallways, cheap beer, and late-night rehearsals—and traces Candy’s rise to Hollywood through Splash, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and Uncle Buck. What emerges is a portrait of a performer whose generosity often bordered on self-sacrifice. Myers shows Candy not as a comic genius who burned too fast, but as a working actor who couldn’t say no—to his friends, his fans, or another helping of life.

Interviews with Catherine O’Hara, Dan Aykroyd, Eugene Levy, and Steve Martin give the book an affectionate insider pulse. They remember a man who led with empathy and humility—traits that, in the ruthless 1980s studio system, made him both beloved and vulnerable. Myers doesn’t shy away from the darker corners: the health scares, the exhaustion, the final days on location in Mexico filming Wagons East. But the tone remains tender, not tragic. The author’s reverence for Candy’s craft and character keeps the narrative from collapsing into melodrama.

Where some celebrity biographies lean on gossip or posthumous sanctification, Myers’s strength is balance. He understands that Candy’s humour—wide-eyed, self-deprecating, unguardedly human—was the key to his universality. “He didn’t make jokes at people,” one friend notes. “He made jokes with them.”

The writing itself is brisk and elegant, peppered with sharp turns of phrase and the occasional affectionate wink. Myers gives the reader the sense of being in the room, whether that’s a smoky SCTV writers’ session or a lonely hotel bar in the California desert. There’s an undeniable rhythm to his storytelling, a cadence that mirrors Candy’s own comedic timing: big heart first, punchline second.

If the book has a shortcoming, it’s one of inevitability. Candy’s life ended too soon, and Myers—ever the respectful narrator—avoids speculation. Some readers might wish for more psychological excavation, more friction between the lovable public clown and the complex man behind him. But perhaps that restraint is the point. As with Candy’s best performances, the silences say as much as the laughs.

In the end, John Candy: A Life in Comedy leaves you smiling through a lump in your throat. It reminds us that kindness, even in comedy, can be radical—and that the laughter of one man from Newmarket, Ontario, could ripple across a continent.