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 costar of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Walsh has won 11 Gemini Awards, Canada's television honors. The bitingly satirical show has become a favorite, skewering politics in general, Toronto in particular, and anything else that strikes 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, 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 costars, fel­ low Newfoundlanders Cathy Jones, Greg Thomey, and Rick Mercer, all write their own characters as well.

     Walsh's off-the-wall but pointed humor 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 away from her own troubled and hard-drinking family, feeling abandoned. She was also 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 working 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 that has, until re­ cently, supported the Newfoundland culture and econ­ omy for hundreds of years. Their first production, Cod on a Stick ( 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 "Po­ lack jokes." But Codco turned the tables on Torontoni­ ans, forcing them to laugh at themselves.

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

Politicians are a particular target of the left-wing Walsh's wrathful humor: 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 theater, won the Best Support­ ing 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 Dud­ ley the Dragon. She also starred as Molly Bloom at Ottawa's National Arts Centre, as well as in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon/or the Misbegotten, in London, On­ tario. In 1992, she directed Ann-Marie MacDonald's Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet at Mon­ treal's Centaur Theatre.

     Walsh also hosts her own series on CBC, Mary Walsh: Open Book, which is a literary talk show, and continues to appear in films.