Stephen P. H. Butler Leacock FRSC (30 December 1869 – 28 March 1944) was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humourist.

Stephen's mother, Agnes, was born at Soberton, the youngest daughter by his second wife (Caroline Linton Palmer) of the Rev.

Leacock's mother was the half-sister of Major Thomas Adair Butler, who won the Victoria Cross at the siege and capture of Lucknow in India.

[5] When Stephen was six, the family moved to Canada, where they settled on a farm near the village of Sutton, Ontario, and the shores of Lake Simcoe.

[7] Stephen Leacock, always of obvious intelligence, was sent by his grandfather to the elite private school of Upper Canada College in Toronto, also attended by his older brothers, where he was top of the class and was chosen as head boy.

As a teacher at Upper Canada College, his alma mater, he was able simultaneously to attend classes at the University of Toronto and, in 1891, earn his degree through part-time studies.

[7] He was closely associated with Sir Arthur Currie, former commander of the Canadian Corps in the Great War and principal of McGill from 1919 until his death in 1933.

According to one source, Leacock's light-hearted and increasingly superficial approach with his political science writings ensured that they are largely forgotten by the public and in academic circles.

[15] Early in his career, Leacock turned to fiction, humour, and short reports to supplement (and ultimately exceed) his regular income.

The presentation occurs in June each year at the Stephen Leacock Award Dinner, at the Geneva Park Conference Centre in Orillia, Ontario.

The family, eventually consisting of eleven children, immigrated to Canada in 1876, settling on a one hundred-acre farm in Sutton, Ontario.

However, Leacock's real interests were turning towards economics and political theory, and in 1899 he was accepted for postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he earned his PhD in 1903.

In 1900 Leacock married Beatrix Hamilton, niece of Sir Henry Pellatt, who had built Casa Loma, the largest castle in North America.

In 1906, he wrote Elements of Political Science, which remained a standard college textbook for the next twenty years and became his most profitable book.

The book was spotted by a British publisher, John Lane, who brought out editions in London and New York, assuring Leacock's future as a writer.

This was confirmed by Literary Lapses (1910), Nonsense Novels (1911) – probably his best books of humorous sketches—and by the more sentimental favourite, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912).

[21] Leacock's humorous style was reminiscent of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens at their sunniest – for example, in his book My Discovery of England (1922).

Collections of sketches continued to follow almost annually at times, with a mixture of whimsy, parody, nonsense, and satire that was never bitter.

A prize for the best humour writing in Canada was named after him, and his house at Orillia on the banks of Lake Couchiching became the Stephen Leacock Museum.

Shortly after his death, Barbara Nimmo, his niece, literary executor and benefactor, published two major posthumous works: Last Leaves (1945) and The Boy I Left Behind Me (1946).

The following year, the Stephen Leacock Centennial Committee had a plaque erected at his English birthplace and a mountain in Yukon was named after him.

[28] Canadian stage actor John Stark was most noted for An Evening with Stephen Leacock, a long-running one-man show.

[30] Stark also later produced a television film adaptation of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, as well as a stage musical based on Leacock's short story "The Great Election".