Ed Smith has been writing "The View From Here" for more than twenty-three years. In that time, the humour column has been appearing in daily newspapers, weekly community papers, and monthly magazines. He has written for the Reader's Digest, the Toronto Star, and several other publications. A series of radio broadcasts presented on the national CBC network earned him and his producer a coveted international Gabriel Award for material that "uplifts the human spirit."
The columns in this book are deemed to be the best of his work from the early '90s. You Might As Well Laugh is his eighth book. His last, From the Ashes of My Dreams, became a Canadian Best-Seller and won the Newfoundland and Labrador non-fiction award for 2002.

Ed Smith taught in schools all over Newfoundland, finally settling in Springdale, where he and his wife, Marion, had lived. He had been a high school principal, an assistant superintendent of education, and principal of a college campus in Springdale. Ed retired in 1996, just over two years before a car accident left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. He began writing a humour column for the local newspaper in 1980. Other papers soon began running the column, “The View from Here” and it appeared in six papers and magazines. He had been nominated for the Stephen Leacock Award for humour and had written for the Toronto Star and Reader's Digest. In 2001 Ed prepared a series of short radio clips on life with quadriplegia, which he wrote and presented on CBC radio. These earned him The Canadian Nurses' Association award for excellence in broadcasting and an international Gabriel award for writing that upholds and uplifts the human spirit. Ed has been recognized by the Atlantic Community Newspapers Association for hilarious material. Five collections of his columns have also been published. Ed Smith, along his wife, had four children and six grandchildren. Ed Smith passed away on September 8, 2017 in Grand Falls-Windsor, NL.

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