Catherine O’Hara is Canada’s contribution to the pantheon of seminal female comediennes – and like legends Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball, she could make you laugh without saying a word. A genius of funny faces, unique voices and wacky improvisation, O’Hara lit up every room she entered. Born into a “really, really funny” large Irish Canadian Catholic family, she was part of the storied 1972-73 Toronto Godspell cast, many of whom would go on to become the country’s most beloved comedic stars. And when O’Hara and that rag-tag crew of SCTV players burst on the scene in 1976, she was just warming up. Hollywood blockbusters, genre-defining mockumentaries and prestige TV shows, like Schitt’s Creek, were yet to come, along with Emmys, Golden Globes, an Order of Canada and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards for Lifetime Artistic Achievement. Just last year, when she received the Toronto International Film Festival Norman Jewison Career Achievement Award, she recalled how 50 years earlier, she was “trying to sneak into TIFF parties.” Little did she know that five decades later, she would be the guest of honour. “When I see Catherine,” says lifelong collaborator and friend Eugene Levy, who presented the award, “I see success. I see a Canadian icon whose shining star rivals the Northern Lights. That’s how far you’ve come.” But O’Hara judged success in a different way. When asked what role she’d most like to be remembered for, she said without any hesitation, the mother of her two children and wife to her husband Bo Welch.
