A comic with a dream 20 years in the making to create a Canadian Comedy Hall of Fame is hoping he’ll soon be a step closer, as he brings comedians together to drum up support for the project this week in Hamilton.
The Canadian Comedy Hall of Fame Festival kicked off Wednesday night, with the finals of the Funniest Person in Hamilton contest at the Levity Comedy Club and Lounge downtown by Jackson Square.
The festival continues through Saturday featuring several shows, inductions into a virtual hall of fame, and a pancake breakfast.
It’s designed to celebrate some of Canada’s best-known comedians — including Jim Carrey, Eugene Levy and Martin Short — and lesser-known comedy legends, while also showcasing and encouraging up-and-comers.
It’s a passion project for actor and comic Tim Progosh, who moved to Hamilton from Toronto in December and is co-founder of the festival.
“Where would we be without laughter?” Progosh asked earlier this week.
A brick-and-mortar dream
Progosh has been working to honour Canadian comedians since at least 2000, when he started the Canadian Comedy Awards, which ran for 17 years.
The first two years of those awards included a virtual hall of fame but it was hard to maintain efforts for both, he said, so the hall of fame aspect fizzled.
The goal is to eventually have a brick-and-mortar museum-like location full of interactive exhibits, and entertainment that will draw tourists and teach visitors about Canada’s comedy history.
“You go to Ottawa, you go to the War Museum. It’s beautiful,” Progosh told CBC Hamilton. “Isn’t it just as important to celebrate laughter and the huge influence that Canada has on the world in terms of laughter?”
Tim Progosh co-founded the Canadian Comedy Hall of Fame. Ahead of a festival in Hamilton, he shares why the event is about more than recognizing past achievement.
Although that dream hasn’t come true yet, he and his team went ahead with bringing back the hall of fame idea and launching the festival this year, choosing steel town in part because of a three-year funding commitment from Tourism Hamilton.
Progosh’s previous attempt in 2013 to host a festival and hall of fame in Hamilton were voted down by council.
The Hall of Fame now has a board of directors, a nominating committee, over 400 industry voters and voting members of the public, with a system structured to avoid a popularity contest, Progosh said.
“It’s not like some other walks of fame around the world where if you show up or you contribute, you get in.”
Inductees include comedy club owner and Red Green
It’s also structured to ensure that people who aren’t widely known can be honoured.
For example, Progosh said, this year’s inductees include Jo-Anna Downey, who ran Spirits, an important Toronto comedy club where Robin Williams, Lewis Black and Patton Oswalt, and Joe Bodolai, who produced TV shows Comics! and The Kids and the Hall, co-wrote the first draft of Wayne’s World with Mike Myers and was a founder of The Comedy Network.
More well-known inductees include Steve Smith, who created CBC’s The Red Green Show, which launched in Hamilton, actors Jim Carrey, Eugene Levy and Martin Short and Billy Van, known for The Hilarious House of Frightenstein, which was also produced in Hamilton.
“These people had an influence on our culture and our history,” Progosh said. “They’re world renowned.”
He said that in a country often criticized for failing to recognize anyone who doesn’t make it big in the United States, spotlighting homegrown talent is important.
Progosh also hopes this encourages current and future talent. “Comedy is a tough slog,” he said. “If you can see that there is a Hall of Fame, there is a festival where I’m going to get acknowledged or get a chance,” that makes a difference.
That’s one of the reasons the festival includes The Funniest Person in Hamilton, and shows like Oui Nous Sommes Bilingue featuring comic Keesha Brownie and Got Land?, an Indigenous stand-up showcase produced by Ottawa-based political comic Janelle Niles, who will be hosting the Thursday night show.
Got Land? Producer Janelle Niles is hosting a comedy show as part of the Canadian Comedy Hall of Fame Festival in Hamilton. She says Indigenous comics are some of the funniest out there.
Niles, who is Black and Mi’kmaw from Sipekne’katik First Nation in Nova Scotia, said the goal of the Got Land showcase is for every Canadian, “whether they’re Indigenous, reconnecting, an ally or somebody who just doesn’t understand Indigenous issues to come together in solidarity and laugh with us and not at us.”
Too often she said, Indigenous people have been used as punchlines or in jokes, or Indigenous comics have been sidelined, Niles said. “What are the land acknowledgements for? What’s reconciliation for if we can’t acknowledge our entertainers?”
She got involved with the Hall of Fame project to vote on nominees and told the organizers about the touring Got Land? show, which Progosh said he went to see and loved.
Don Kelly — known for programs including CBC’s The Debaters and Crazy Like a Lynx on APTN — is headlining Got Land?, which will also feature Kevin Shawanda, Denise B McLeod, and Patrick Cheechoo, Indigenous comedians from across Ontario.
In the future, Niles says she hopes to see a diverse range of inductees including people of colour and queer comics, which would “give someone like me faith that I also deserve to be up there one day.”
Progosh said he expects to see more diversity in the inductees with time.
Search for a permanent home continues
Although the festival has a temporary home in Hamilton this week, Progosh said the search continues for a city in which to permanently host the hall of fame.
Challenges include difficulty securing sponsors and a physical space and increasing costs, Progosh said.
However, he said he thinks the hall of fame has a strong economic case and is “something that a lot of people believe in.”
Hamilton could be home to the project with enough support, he said, noting he’s watching plans for new downtown entertainment facilities.
Niles said she’s looking forward to her show, which she hopes people come out to despite it being on a week night.
“You’re going to have the best time and you’re going to sleep like a baby afterwards. You’re going to have such big belly laughs,” she said.
