MARY WALSH. Born in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada, 1952. Studied at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto, Canada. Began career at CBC radio, St. Johns, Newfoundland; began acting career at Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto; co-founder CODCO performance group, 1973; toured Canada with CODCO throughout 1970s-80s; with CODCO television program, 1987-93; in film from 1991. Recipient: Best Supporting Actress at the Atlantic Film Festival in 1992; numerous Gemini Awards.

TELEVISION SERIES

1987-93 CODCO
1993- This Hour Has 22 Minutes

TELEVISION MINISERIES

1993 The Boys of St. Vincent

FILMS

Secret Nation, 1991; Buried on Sunday, 1993.

STAGE

Moon for the Misbegotten; Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet (director).

 

See also Canadian Programming in English; CODCO

 

 

 

   

Mary Walsh can be credited with single-handedly bringing Newfoundland culture to the rest of Canada through the medium of television. As the creator and co-star of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Walsh has won three Gemini Awards, Canada's television honours. The bitingly satirical show, now in its third season on CBC, has become a favourite, skewering politics in general, Toronto in particular, and anything else that takes Walsh's fancy. No topic is taboo. The show takes its title from the outrageously controversial newsmagazine show This Hour Has Seven Days, which ran on CBC from 1964 to 1966.

A Canadian precursor to Britain's Tracey Ullman, the 43-year-old Walsh has introduced Canadian audiences over the years to a range of wacky Newfoundland archetypes, including the sharp-tongued, purple-housecoated know-it-all, Marg Delahunty, and the slovenly rooming-house owner, Mrs. Budgell. Her co-stars, fellow Newfoundlanders Cathy Jones, Greg Thomey and Rick Mercer, all write their own characters as well.

Walsh's off-the-wall but pointed humour results in part from her unusual upbringing in St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland. One of eight siblings, at the age of eight months she contracted pneumonia and was dispatched next door to live with a still-beloved maiden aunt. She thus grew up next door to her own troubled and hard-drinking family, feeling abandoned. She then was influenced by the strict rules of a convent education in the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic province of Newfoundland.

After taking acting classes at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto and a summer job at CBC Radio in St. John's, Walsh began acting at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. It was there that she met Cathy Jones, Dyan Olsen, Greg Malone and Tommy Sexton; together they would become the comedy troupe CODCO, named after the fish which has, until recently, supported the Newfoundland culture and economy for hundreds of years. Their first production, Cod on a Stick in 1973, was a play based on the experiences of Newfoundlanders in Toronto. It was a time of "Newfie jokes," Canada's equivalent of the racist "Polack jokes." But CODCO turned the tables on Torontonians, forcing them to laugh at themselves.

After touring the play successfully throughout Newfoundland, CODCO stayed in their home province and continued to develop the wickedly satirical sketches and characters which they soon parlayed into the CBC television series CODCO. The half-hour show lasted seven seasons, from 1987 and 1993, reaching a nationwide audience.

Politicians are a particular target of the left-wing Walsh's wrathful humour: referring to Preston Manning, the conservative leader of the Reform Party, she put these words in the mouth of Marg Delahunty: "I've always enjoyed Mr. Manning's speeches. And I'm sure they're even more edifying in the original German." About a right-wing media figure, she has this to say: "That's typical of those people: they want everything--all the power and the money, and the right to call themselves victims too." Of the ongoing one-way rivalry between Newfoundland and Toronto, she has said: "I forgive Toronto and all the people in it. Toronto was the first large city I ever went to and I thought every large city was like that--cold and icy, like being in Eaton's [department store] all the time. But then I realized...it's very much a part of being specifically Toronto. It is just its outward style." She also jabs at the United States, describing her short stay in Colorado after high school and her exasperation at some Americans' misguided belief that they defeated Canada in the War of 1812.

Walsh, who is actively involved in social issues through her work in the theatre, won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Atlantic Film Festival in 1992 for her performance in Secret Nation, and has guest-starred on the children's show The Adventures of Dudley the Dragon. She also starred as Molly Bloom at Ottawa's National Arts Centre, as well as in Eugene O'Neill's Moon for the Misbegotten, in London, Ontario. In 1992 she directed Ann-Marie MacDonald's Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet at Montreal's Centaur Theatre.

-Janice Kaye