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“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

– Joseph Campbell, from The Hero With a Thousand Faces

When Ron James's publicist suggested I speak with the comedian at his office, it sounded like a fine enough idea. But then a thought occurs: Where in the (Canadian) heck would James be based? Kingston? Fredericton? Moose Jaw?

Toronto, it turns out, is where the Halifax-raised James receives his mail. So, I meet this jittery, bandy-legged little man outside the building he works out of, among a drab strip of warehouses in east-end Toronto.

“If I ever need a deal on any ironwork, it's right across the street,” James quips.

He has just returned from a schedule of soft-seaters through Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the likeable comic is a little bushed.

“It took me 30 years to get busy,” he sighs, tearing down the well-marked October sheet off his wall calendar, “and now I need a nap.”

James has a little time for snoozing, but not much. In between live performances, he's promoting Manitoba Bound, a one-hour concert special taped at Winnipeg's Pantages Playhouse that airs this evening on CBC Television. His continuing Mental as Anything tour culminates in a pair of shows at Toronto's Winter Garden Theatre in April.

“I live in Toronto, but my country's my home,” the Cape Breton-born wisecracker elaborates. “There's so many pockets, man, there's so much to see. It spoils you rotten.”

His office is as he is, unassuming and full of Canadian content: a Diefenbaker bumper sticker, a mounted Atlantic salmon, a framed Gemini nomination, a map of Nova Scotia and a small banner celebrating his completion of a Toronto half-marathon.

Yup, the dude is Canadian.

This country, all 10 million or so square kilometres of it, is what James calls his “niche market,” a place where the historically informed comedian both performs and mines his material. His decision to work exclusively in Canada came after years of sporadic showbiz employment in Los Angeles. While rereading Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces (a 1949 comparative work on mythic heroes), something clicked with James, who decided to “find the comedic mileage in the mythology and iconography of people and place here,” as he puts it.

Over the past decade and a half, inspired by the storytelling comedy of Billy Connolly, the savvy wordplay of Dennis Miller and the books of Pierre Berton and Farley Mowat, James has built up a sturdy fan base across Canada town by town, region by region, province by province. “It's putting one foot in front of the other,” the road-dogging 50-year-old says.

He keeps a journal on the road, often using the scribbled material for a televised special after the tour. In his outer office sit boxes of his DVDs: The Road Between My Ears, Quest for the West, West Coast Wild and Back Home.

While some of James's research is book-learned – tonight's Manitoba Bound has a bit on Louis Riel – other material comes by casual conversations as he crisscrosses the nation. “It's talking to Mounties in Atikokan [in Northwestern Ontario] or to homeless people in Victoria, and it's getting directions in Newfoundland and finding yourself getting a hell of a lot more information than you ever bargained for,” he explains. “Touring is the lodestone. It's where everything comes from.”

By working and engaging, James compiles notes on the Canadian consciousness, which he develops into further comic routines. This is Campbell's “mysterious adventure,” with James, the returning hero, presenting the comedic windfall to his audiences.

James's routines are often regionally based, but his aim is to connect the dots – to paint the bigger picture. “I'm trying to articulate this world we're walking through in the language of funny, and provide something for everybody who's in the room that night.”

Asked about his future plans, James mentions a pair of TV specials to come, one from Newfoundland and one, possibly, from Nunavut. When I mention that he's probably the lone Canadian comic looking to head north rather than south, the funny man laughs. “There you go,” he chortles. “Ron James's ambition, to play the tree line – the only comedian who builds his career around the Arctic char run!”

Sure, why not. It's a big country, James's home, where the roads are endless, the hunting is good and heroes are always needed.

Manitoba Bound airs on CBC-TV tonight at 9 ET.