Dan Needles
Author & Playwright
Dan Needles, author, magazine columnist and creator of the popular Wingfield Farm stage plays, has been entertaining corporate, government and public service groups across Canada for 25 years. Winner of the 2003 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, Dan takes his inspiration from farm life in southern Ontario where he raises sheep. In his books and plays he chronicles the adventures of a myriad of characters in mythical Persephone Township, their modest successes and spectacular defeats. Persephone may be difficult to find on a map but it lies somewhere near the Canadian soul. You'll hear your neighbour's voices in his stories...and maybe even your own!
Dan Needles explores life where city and country meet. He brings to life the wit and wisdom of the old rural community and shows how those voices still whisper in our ears today. For nearly thirty years his popular Wingfield Farm stage plays have filled theatres across Canada and the United States, including several seasons at the Stratford Festival and with Mirvish Productions in Toronto.
Vintage Canada/Random House released the complete collection of Wingfield stories, Wingfield's World, last October. Dan's latest multi-character play, Ed's Garage, appeared at London's Grand Theatre in January 2012 and moves to the Manitoba Theatre Centre in January 2013.
Dan won the 2003 Stephen Leacock Medal for humour for With Axe and Flask, the pioneer history of his mythical Persephone Township. For the past 15 years he has been a regular columnist with Harrowsmith-Country Life and Country Guide magazines and has just started new columns for Small Farm Canada and three Ontario regional magazines, On The Bay, In the Hills and Watershed.
For 25 years, Dan has entertained audiences ranging from the Perth County Holstein Club Ladies Night to the Muck Soils Research Station in Bradford. He also has appeared for the Canadian Club, The Canadian Bar Association, Royal Bank, the Royal Winter Fair, the Outdoor Farm Show, the Writer's Development Trust and hundreds of farm organizations across the country.
This summer he will be doing the colour commentary for the Canadian Sheep Shearing Championships in Holstein, Ontario with past Canadian champion Donnie Metheral. He will also be giving this year's talk at the Leacock Lunch hosted by McGill University at Toronto's Fairmont Royal York Hotel.
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A Stroll down the Seventh Line of Persephone Township
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Dan Needles stands squarely in the tradition of other comic chroniclers of the human condition, such as T.C.Haliburton and Mark Twain
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Dan Needles has much the same gift for gentle comedy as England's James Herriot of All Creatures Great and Small glory
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A kind of philosophical Will Rogers touch with a flair for the well told anecdote that is like the best of W.O. Mitchell, AND IT"S FUNNY!
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Like visiting an old friend, but how many people do you know who are actually as entertaining as Walt Wingfield?...Comic gold.
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October 2011Wingfield's World: The Complete Letters from Wingfield Farm
Walt Wingfield is a Bay Street stockbroker who quits his job and buys a hundred-acre farm in Persephone Township, Ontario. In a series of letters to the editor of the local newspaper, Walt chronicles his modest successes and spectacular defeats in an age when farming has become difficult for farmers old and new. Dan Needles' rich and charming rural neighbourhood may be difficult to find on a map but it is very close to the Canadian soul.
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November 2002With Axe and Flask: The History of Persephone Township From Pre-Cambrian Times to the Present
In Persephone anything can happen and often does. Towering local figures dating back to the township’s murky colonial beginnings land-grabbing speculators, shady railway promoters, heedless despoilers of natural wonders, and spectacularly slippery politicians cross paths with the likes of Sir John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier, not to mention the rebel William Lyon Mackenzie and the future King Edward VII. With Axe and Flask tells it all, sparing no Canadian sacred cow in uncovering the township’s checkered past, from the displacement of its original native inhabitants to the recent invasion of the weekenders.
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