Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, which first appeared as a newspaper serial, chronicles life in the fictional community of Mariposa, modelled on Orillia, Ontario, where Stephen Leacock spent many summers. It's a brilliant satire about small towns, small-town people, and small-town occurrences.

Life in Mariposa is never dull or ordinary. It's a town full of eccentrics, where boats sent to rescue passengers from a sinking steamer have to be rescued themselves, where the leading citizen is a 280-pound illiterate saloonkeeper, and where a barber who stumbles into a fortune is heralded as a financial wizard.