Bob Smith is a long-time Adult Education specialist. During the years he has spent doing this, he has encountered an incredibly wide variety of students, instructors, and situations both positive and negative. His humour, for which he uses the phrase ‘victimless humour’, meaning there is never a target, allows him to deal with people and situations effectively and supportively.
The characters in Full Circle: What Goes Around … , their problems and their hopes, reflect those myriad people and stories. He says, “I think I learned my first week on the job that no matter how educated we might be, no matter how successful our lives, no matter how together we think we are, there is always something others can teach us. How we treat others comes back again, so we need to be honest, fair, and kind, so when it comes back … Humour that doesn’t victimize any group or person is a definite necessity when confronting difficulties.”
In Learning The Rules, he continues to demonstrate such values and understanding, as the characters overcome the kinds of challenges we all face in our efforts to build rich, satisfying lives.
Student Body shows the same understanding of people as the characters struggle to overcome suspicions they are murderers.
In the Christmas short stories The Love Pile, The Perfect Gift, and The Real Gift, he again shows this triumph of spirit in heart-warming stories about unselfish love and giving.
The short story North Of Superior is a humourous tale about how one particularly boisterous Saturday at the Maniwassi Hotel became a Northern Ontario Legend.
Catching Two Big Ones is a short story about how a relaxing day by the lake almost turns into a tragedy until two big ones are fished out of the water. Springs outlines the challenges someone faces during the winter until the coming of spring. Election Fraud needs to be ‘heard’ as much as ‘read’ to appreciate the humour. The play The Observation Ward is a departure from Smith’s usual short stories and novels. He says, “I had several short stories with the speaker in common, wry comments from an astute observer of life. I didn’t know what to do with them though. Then I was at an event hosted by a local actor, and part way through the evening realized he would be perfect playing the role of that man. The play evolved from that insight.”
There are actually two versions of this play. One is the traditional stage-produced version, and the other a one-man show, suitable as a podcast.