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ITEM 10 · THE TESTS AS THE RECORD'S POSITIVE CONTENT
The comedy record for Walkerton is a record of negatives, and this closing article gathers them as findings, each with its test — because a town's cultural record includes, honestly kept, the chairs that were never filled. No comedian was born or raised here (the tie-tested sweep). No comedy was produced here for broadcast (the market tie test). No humor magazine or revue rose on its campus (the publications record). No local humor column or persona is documented in its paper's banked course (the named-voices read). No comedy room was ever seated here, and none is documented now (the room test, both halves). Five negatives, five named tests — and against them, this section's one positive certainty, printed once more at its class strength: comedy came to Walkerton constantly for a century and a half, on the opera house's bills, the theatre's screen, the radio's and television's schedules, and the road to the cities' rooms, and the town laughed at all of it. The reception is documented; the production is not; and a cultural history that can say which of those it is printing, article by article, is the difference between this section and a inflated one.
Principal sources: this section's articles above, each carrying its test and its sources.