Biography
Ron Sparks is a Canadian comedian, writer and actor, born in Chatham, Ontario. He first began performing with York University's Vanier Improv Company then sketch comedy. His troupe, The Minnesota Wrecking Crew, were nominated four straight years (2003–2006) for Canadian Comedy Awards for Best Sketch Troupe, winning in 2003 and 2004. In 2006 they won a third Canadian Comedy Award for Best Taped Live Performance for the CBC TV special Sketch with Kevin McDonald.
He began performing stand-up in April 2003 at The ALTdot COMedy Lounge and won that year's Tim Sims Award, given to Toronto's most promising new comedy act, then followed it up with the 2004 Canadian Comedy Award for Best Stand-up Newcomer. Frank Magazine described him as "the next stand-up wunderkind". Stand-up credits include the Halifax, Winnipeg and Just for Laughs comedy festivals. He was named JFL's Toronto Homegrown Champion.
On television he stars in MuchMusic's highest rated show Video on Trial and its spin-off, Stars on Trial. He has also been a regular on various Ed the Sock series and The Toronto Show. His CTV Comedy Now! stand-up special aired in 2008 and won a WorldFest Award and two Canadian Comedy Awards. He has also made appearances on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves and Out Front.
He has written his own series of shorts for The Comedy Network, From the Desk of Ron Sparks, and for various other series including This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Little Mosque, Life's a Zoo and Crash Canyon.
Currently Ron has a weekly live show in Toronto, The Newsdesk with Ron Sparks, which he also does as a weekly segment on 102.1 The Edge. He is also a regular guest on CBC's Debaters.
He has also won several awards as a playwright.
He is not related to fellow comedian Hal Sparks.
In 2006 he offered to fight Uwe Boll who had challenged his critics to a series of boxing matches leading up to the release of his movie Postal, but Boll declined due to Sparks's size advantage because he would be fighting five boxers back-to-back.
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Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)