John S. Crosbie
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John S. Crosbie | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1 May 1920 |
| Died | 10 January 1994 (aged 73) |
| Occupation | Writer, advertising executive, magazine-industry executive, editor, broadcaster |
| Years active | c. 1940–1994 |
| Spouse | Catherine Patricia "Patty" Crosbie |
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John S. Crosbie (1 May 1920 – 10 January 1994) was a Canadian writer, advertising executive, magazine-industry executive, editor and humourist. He was president of the Magazine Association of Canada in the 1970s and participated in the establishment of the organisation that became Canada's National Magazine Awards. He was subsequently listed as president of Magazines Canada, an association representing major Canadian periodical interests.
Crosbie published works on Canadian affairs, fiction, biography, riddles, humour and wordplay. He became particularly associated with punning through Crosbie's Dictionary of Puns, Crosbie's Book of Punned Haiku, Crosbie's Dictionary of Riddles and The World's Worst Puns. He was also the founder of the International Save the Pun Foundation, a Toronto-based wordplay organisation whose activities included the newsletter The Pundit, annual "Best-Stressed Puns" selections, educational outreach and an International Punster of the Year award.
Early life and wartime period
Crosbie was born on 1 May 1920.[1]
The Crucible and Halifax
A history of Canadian little-magazine culture identifies a "John S. Crosbie of Halifax" as the managing editor who took over the Canadian literary magazine The Crucible after editor Hilda Ridley relocated to Ottawa during the Second World War. The Crucible had suspended publication after its spring 1941 issue. It returned for February–March and April–May 1943, with Crosbie as managing editor, before ceasing publication.[2]
An index of contributors to The Crucible also lists a John S. Crosbie as the author of the poem "The Stored Mind" in the Christmas–New Year 1940 issue and "Lines in a Strange City" in the spring 1941 issue.[3]
The chronology, name and Halifax connection are consistent with the later writer and advertising executive, who would have been in his early twenties, although the literary-history source does not provide further biographical identifiers proving beyond doubt that every early Crucible reference is to the same John S. Crosbie.[better source needed]
Second World War service
Family accounts describe Crosbie as a Second World War veteran, although the details of his service have not yet been independently documented.[better source needed]
No enlistment paper, service number, nominal roll, attestation document, unit record, medal file or other military personnel record independently confirming this account has yet been located. The precise branch, unit, rank, dates of service and circumstances of the reported encounters with German submariners therefore remain unknown. The account is preserved as family testimony rather than established military biography.
Broadcasting and advertising career
By the mid-1940s Crosbie was involved in radio broadcasting. A 1945 work attributed to him, Microphones and Ministers, was published in connection with the United Church of Canada's Committee on Radio and concerned the effective use of radio by clergy.[1] Contemporary Canadian broadcasting coverage also referred to Crosbie's work concerning ministers and radio.[citation needed]
A later obituary in the Canadian advertising-industry publication Strategy stated that Crosbie began his professional career in radio and that his subsequent career included work in Toronto and Chicago.[4] Exact details of his early broadcasting employers and the chronology of his transition into advertising have not yet been reconstructed.
Crosbie spent much of his later professional career in advertising. A 1993 profile described him as a retired advertising executive.[5] A family account similarly recalled that Crosbie spent "most of his life in the ad industry", describing the professional environment around the family as reminiscent of the advertising world later depicted in Mad Men.[better source needed]
Canadian magazine industry
By the 1970s Crosbie had become a senior figure in the Canadian magazine industry. In 1976 he was president of the Magazine Association of Canada.[6]
That year, Andrew MacFarlane, dean of journalism at the University of Western Ontario, was developing a bilingual national awards programme for Canadian magazines after the discontinuation of an earlier university-sponsored award. Crosbie and MacFarlane helped secure the participation of the Canadian Periodical Publishers Association, which represented 193 magazines, and its former president, publisher Michael de Pencier. Other participants in developing the awards included Roger de la Garde of Université Laval and Alan Edmunds of the Periodical Writers Association of Canada.[6]
The resulting National Magazine Awards Foundation received non-profit status in Ontario on 14 November 1977 and developed the national awards programme that later evolved under the National Media Awards Foundation.[6] The organisation's later institutional history continues to identify Crosbie among the figures involved in the formation of the national programme.
A federal government study of Canadian magazine policy from the mid-1980s separately listed "Magazines Canada" with John S. Crosbie as its president. The association represented a comparatively small group of major periodical interests that included publications such as Reader's Digest, the international edition of Time and TV Guide.[7]
Available sources establish that Crosbie was president of the Magazine Association of Canada in 1976 and was later listed as president of Magazines Canada; they do not, by themselves, establish the exact legal or organisational relationship between the two bodies.
Crosbie's 1994 Strategy obituary also stated that he had received a "Canada medal".[4] The exact medal or decoration intended by that description has not yet been identified, and it should not be assumed to refer to another similarly named Canadian honour.[clarification needed]
Writing
Crosbie wrote on Canadian affairs, humour, fiction, biography, riddles and wordplay. The complete bibliography of his work has not yet been reconstructed. Open Library associates a number of works and editions with him.[1]
Early and non-humour writing
Crosbie's early known work includes Microphones and Ministers (1945). He later published Canada and Its Leaders, first published in 1968.[1]
In 1973 McGraw-Hill Ryerson published The Mayor of Upper Upsalquitch, a humorous fictional account centred on a small-town mayor. A contemporary review in International Fiction Review remarked on the book's use of jokes, anecdotes, quips and puns.[8]
His 1975 book The Incredible Mrs. Chadwick: The Most Notorious Woman of Her Age, published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson, concerned the Canadian- American confidence trickster Cassie Chadwick.
Pun and wordplay books
Crosbie became most widely associated with wordplay. A Canadian edition of Crosbie's Dictionary of Puns appeared in 1972, and Harmony Books published a major American edition in New York in 1977. The book organised a large collection of puns in dictionary form. The 1977 Harmony edition was approximately 282 pages and was illustrated by Janet Sutherland.[9]
He followed the dictionary with Crosbie's Book of Punned Haiku (1979), illustrated by Roslyn Schwartz; Crosbie's Dictionary of Riddles (1980); and The World's Worst Puns (1982), also illustrated by Schwartz.
Publisher files concerning Crosbie's Dictionary of Riddles and The World's Worst Puns are preserved in the Macmillan Company of Canada fonds at McMaster University.[citation needed]
Crosbie's pun writing also circulated beyond his own books. A Reader's Digest language collection credited an item entitled "Alphabet You'll Like These Puns" to Crosbie and described it as condensed from the 1977 Crosbie's Dictionary of Puns.[citation needed]
The dictionary was subsequently cited in academic work on wordplay and linguistics. Linguist Arnold Zwicky, for example, used material from Crosbie's Dictionary of Puns in a discussion of phonological wordplay.[10] Crosbie's work has also been cited in later research concerning humour, riddles and automatic or phonological pun recognition.[citation needed]
A catalogue of Marshall McLuhan's personal library has been reported to include a lightly annotated copy of the 1977 edition of Crosbie's Dictionary of Puns. This establishes the provenance of a copy of the book but does not indicate that Crosbie and McLuhan personally knew one another.[citation needed]
A digitised January 2018 issue of Reader's Digest also credited a joke to The World's Worst Puns by John S. Crosbie, demonstrating continued circulation of his humour almost a quarter-century after his death.[citation needed]
International Save the Pun Foundation
In the late 1970s Crosbie founded the International Save the Pun Foundation (ISTPF), a Toronto-based organisation devoted to punning and other forms of wordplay. Sources differ on its precise founding year. New Hampshire Public Radio gives 1978, while other organisational and later accounts have given 1979.[11] The organisation can therefore be dated most conservatively to 1978 or 1979.
Crosbie used the deliberately punning title "Chairman of the Bored". Contemporary newspaper coverage regularly used the title when referring to his position in the organisation.[5]
The Pundit
The Foundation published a newsletter entitled The Pundit, edited and published by Crosbie. By 1991 it was described as a monthly newsletter, with an annual subscription costing $20.[12] In 1993 Crosbie said that he had been publishing the newsletter for approximately twelve years, suggesting regular publication from around 1981.[5]
After Crosbie's death, the newsletter apparently continued under the management of Norman Gilbert, a close friend of Crosbie's.
"Best-Stressed Puns"
Each year the Foundation selected and circulated a list of what it called the year's "Best-Stressed Puns". The lists were distributed to the press and were reprinted or discussed by newspapers outside the Foundation's own membership. The Washington Post, for example, published material from the 1990 selections in 1991.[12]
Canadian newspaper archives also preserve references to Crosbie's "10 best-stressed puns" for 1984, while New Hampshire Public Radio's archive preserves a 1990 broadcast by language writer Richard Lederer presenting the Foundation's selections from 1989.[11]
Family testimony states that Crosbie made regular appearances on international radio and television programmes and appeared on Good Morning America annually to present the Foundation's "Best-Stressed" selections. No complete television archive or independent published source confirming an annual appearance has yet been located.[better source needed]
Educational purpose and membership
Crosbie said that the Foundation had originally been created to encourage young people to have fun with words and to become interested in reading. He expressed concern that television was drawing children away from books and believed that playful language could help restore their interest.[5]
Schools and teachers could receive gift memberships, and Crosbie said that entire classrooms sometimes submitted puns to the Foundation. Its activities therefore combined an adult humour society with informal educational and literacy-oriented outreach.[5]
By March 1993 Crosbie described membership as numbering in the "thousands" and spanning a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. He said the volume of correspondence had recently required the organisation to double the size of its Toronto post-office box.[5]
The organisation functioned before widespread public Internet use and maintained its community through postal correspondence, its newsletter, media circulation of annual selections, awards and recurring social events.
International Punster of the Year
The Foundation presented an annual International Punster of the Year award. An April Fool's Day dinner in Chicago was associated with the honour; more than 200 reservations had reportedly been made for the 1993 gathering.[5]
Language writer Richard Lederer received the Foundation's International Punster of the Year honour in 1990. More than three decades later, Lederer still publicly identified himself by the award. Writing in 2024 about his participation in a contemporary pun competition, he stated that he had received the honour from the International Save the Pun Foundation in 1990.[13]
Personal life
Crosbie was married to Catherine Patricia "Patty" Crosbie (née James). Her obituary states that they had been married for 23 years when John died in 1994, implying a marriage beginning around 1970 or 1971 if the figure was exact.[14]
The obituary describes a blended family. Patty's daughter Kate and son Charles are named, together with her stepsons Peter, Stephen and Andrew. The available obituary does not provide sufficient information to reconstruct every biological, adoptive or step-parent relationship with certainty.[14]
Patty Crosbie also had a long career in the advertising community. She spent 18 years as the founding executive director of the National Advertising Benevolent Society, an organisation assisting people in the advertising industry.[14]
Death
Crosbie died on 10 January 1994 at the age of 73.[4][1] His death date is reported in the contemporary Strategy obituary published two weeks later and in bibliographic authority records.
A 2016 New Hampshire Public Radio retrospective instead states that Crosbie died in March 1994.[11] The contemporary January 1994 obituary is substantially closer to the event and supports 10 January as the preferred date.
The International Save the Pun Foundation did not cease operations with Crosbie's death.
Legacy
Crosbie's legacy survives in three overlapping areas: the Canadian magazine industry, the continued circulation and study of his books, and the organised punning culture created and encouraged by the International Save the Pun Foundation.
National Magazine Awards
One of Crosbie's principal institutional legacies was unrelated to punning. The national magazine-awards programme that he helped establish in the 1970s survived him and developed into the organisation now known as the National Media Awards Foundation. Its historical account continues to identify Crosbie among the figures who helped organise the national programme.[6]
The awards continue to recognise Canadian magazine journalism, editing, photography, illustration and other forms of publishing work. Crosbie's role in their establishment consequently represents a lasting institutional contribution to Canadian publishing independent of his later reputation as a punster.
Survival of the International Save the Pun Foundation
The International Save the Pun Foundation continued for years after Crosbie's death.
On 31 December 1995, United Press International reported that the Foundation had released its "Best Stressed Puns of 1995", including a submission from Malaysia.[15] This demonstrates that one of the organisation's principal annual activities continued into at least the second year after its founder's death.
Crosbie was succeeded as "Chairman of the Bored" by Norman Gilbert, a Toronto financial planner.[11] By 1998, the Foundation was reported to claim more than 1,500 members around the world and to describe itself as a major international wordplay society.[citation needed]
The organisation's International Punster of the Year honour also continued into the twenty-first century. Later biographical and punning sources identify recipients associated with the O. Henry Pun-Off community. Punster Gary Roma has been described as the Foundation's 2001 Punster of the Year.[16]
Long-time O. Henry Pun-Off figure Joel McColl was also subsequently identified as an International Punster of the Year; surviving accounts have given 2006 and 2007 for the honour.[citation needed] Six-time Pun-Off champion Steve Brooks has likewise been identified as receiving the Foundation's International Punster of the Year title in 2010.[citation needed]
By 2016 New Hampshire Public Radio described Punsters United Nearly Yearly (P.U.N.Y.), an organisation associated with the O. Henry Pun-Off community in Austin, Texas, as being "closely affiliated" with the International Save the Pun Foundation.[11]
The Foundation therefore appears to have passed through several stages: Crosbie's Toronto organisation, continuation under Norman Gilbert, continued awards and publications, and increasing association with the wider American organised-punning community.
No definitive legal dissolution date has been located.
End of the Foundation
By the mid-2020s the International Save the Pun Foundation itself no longer existed as an operating organisation.
A biographical note concerning Canadian educator and environmentalist Grant Douglas Linney states that Linney retained a lifetime membership in the International Save the Pun Foundation "even though the organization no longer exists".[17]
The statement provides evidence that the Foundation ultimately ceased operating while also showing that former members continued to regard their membership as part of their identity long after the organisation itself had disappeared. A precise date or formal process of dissolution has not been located.
Relationship to the O. Henry Pun-Off
Crosbie did not found the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships. The Austin competition developed independently at approximately the same period as the International Save the Pun Foundation. The organisations' histories later overlapped through punsters, award recipients and groups such as P.U.N.Y., but the Pun-Off should not be described as the legal or organisational successor to Crosbie's Foundation.
The broader culture of competitive punning nevertheless continued long after Crosbie's death and after the eventual disappearance of the Foundation.
On 9 May 2026, the City of Austin and the Brush Square Museums Foundation presented the 49th Annual O. Henry Museum Pun-Off World Championships at Brush Square Park. The city described the Pun-Off as an internationally known spoken-word competition devoted to punning and one of Austin's long-running "weird" traditions. Its two principal competitive formats remained Punniest of Show and Punslingers.[18]
The connection between Crosbie's Foundation and contemporary punning is also visible through former award recipients. In 2024 Richard Lederer wrote about participating in Pundemonium, a modern pun competition, while still introducing himself as the International Punster of the Year honour he had received from the International Save the Pun Foundation in 1990.[13]
Thus, although the International Save the Pun Foundation itself later ceased operating, the form of organised wordplay that Crosbie promoted continued through competitions, clubs, gatherings and individual punsters associated with the same wider community.
Books, scholarship and archives
Crosbie's books also developed an afterlife beyond their original publication. Crosbie's Dictionary of Puns remained represented in libraries and private collections, was excerpted or adapted in Reader's Digest, and was cited in later work on humour, linguistics and pun recognition.
A copy of the 1977 dictionary has been catalogued among the books from Marshall McLuhan's personal library and described as lightly annotated.[citation needed] The presence of the book in the collection does not establish any personal association between the two men but illustrates its circulation within contemporary Canadian intellectual and literary collections.
Crosbie's Dictionary of Riddles has likewise been cited in later humour scholarship, while publisher correspondence and files relating to Crosbie's later books survive in archival collections at McMaster University.[citation needed]
Material credited to Crosbie continued to appear decades after his death, including a joke attributed to The World's Worst Puns in a digitised 2018 issue of Reader's Digest.[citation needed]
Family testimony further states that a much larger private archive survived Crosbie, including unpublished manuscripts, thousands of wordplay cards and inherited intellectual-property material.[better source needed] If preserved and catalogued, such material could provide further evidence concerning his unpublished writing, broadcasting appearances and the day-to-day operation of the International Save the Pun Foundation.
Taken together, Crosbie's legacy extends beyond the survival of any single organisation. The National Magazine Awards institution he helped establish continued, his books remained present in libraries and later scholarship, former Foundation members continued to identify themselves with the organisation, Foundation honours remained part of the competitive-punning world, and organised punning continued through events such as the O. Henry Museum Pun-Off and Pundemonium.
Bibliography
Books and known publications
- Microphones and Ministers (1945)
- Canada and Its Leaders (1968)
- Crosbie's Dictionary of Puns (1972; later editions including Harmony Books, 1977)
- The Mayor of Upper Upsalquitch (1973)
- The Incredible Mrs. Chadwick: The Most Notorious Woman of Her Age (1975)
- Crosbie's Book of Punned Haiku (1979), illustrated by Roslyn Schwartz
- Crosbie's Dictionary of Riddles (1980)
- The World's Worst Puns (1982), illustrated by Roslyn Schwartz
Periodical and organisational writing
- "The Stored Mind" — poem attributed to a John S. Crosbie in The Crucible, Christmas–New Year 1940
- "Lines in a Strange City" — poem attributed to a John S. Crosbie in The Crucible, spring 1941
- The Pundit — newsletter of the International Save the Pun Foundation, edited and published by Crosbie, c. 1981–1994
Incomplete or uncertain bibliography
Family testimony states that Crosbie published approximately 18 books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, meaning the list above may represent only part of his published output.[better source needed]
- Hot Cross Puns — title identified by Crosbie's family; publication status has not yet been established.[better source needed]
Open Library's authority data has at times associated other material, including A Lo Divino Lyric Poetry, with an author named John S. Crosbie. That title is substantially different from Crosbie's known Canadian, broadcasting and humour bibliography and may result from a catalogue or authority-record collision with another writer of the same name. It should not be attributed to the Canadian humourist without additional evidence.
See also
- Pun
- Word play
- National Magazine Awards
- O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships
- Richard Lederer
- Punsters United Nearly Yearly (P.U.N.Y.)
- International Save the Pun Foundation
- National Media Awards Foundation
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "John S. Crosbie". Open Library. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ Irvine, Dean (2008). Editing Modernity: Women and Little-Magazine Cultures in Canada, 1916–1956. University of Toronto Press. p. 210. Search this book on
- ↑ "Comprehensive Index of Contributors to The Crucible Magazine, 1932–1943". Canada's Early Women Writers. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Obituary: John Crosbie, 73". Strategy. 24 January 1994. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Holmstrom, David (24 March 1993). "Making Puns of Fun With a Few Words". Los Angeles Times. The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 "About the Foundation". National Media Awards Foundation. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ Evaluation Assessment of Bill C-58 (PDF) (Report). Government of Canada. 1986. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ "Brief Mentions: John S. Crosbie, The Mayor of Upper Upsalquitch". International Fiction Review. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ "Crosbie's Dictionary of Puns". Open Library. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ Zwicky, Arnold M. (1982). "Phonemes and Features" (PDF). Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Huftalen, Cameron (23 June 2016). "NHPR's Rewind: No Pun Like an Old Pun". New Hampshire Public Radio. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Petersen, Clarence (11 March 1991). "The Hits Myths of 1990". The Washington Post. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Lederer, Richard (2 March 2024). "Pun-Up Girls and Pun-Gents Are Pun for All and All for Pun". Verbivore. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 "Catherine Patricia Crosbie Obituary". Allison Funeral Home. 2024. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedUPI1995 - ↑ "Brain Trustees". Idea Champions. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
- ↑ Linney, Grant Douglas (2025). Outdoor Magic. Retrieved 31 August 2026. Search this book on
- ↑ "49th Annual O. Henry Museum Pun-Off World Championships". City of Austin. 9 May 2026. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
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