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w at er lo oc hr on ic le .c a W at er lo o C hr on ic le | T hu rs da y, Ju ly 4, 20 19 | 18 EMMANUEL UNITED CHURCH Corner of Bridgeport & Albert www.emmanueluc.ca Worship Service 10am Sunday School provided WORSHIP WITH US To advertise your services contact Matt Miller at 519-623-7395 ext. 208 or mmiller@cambridgetimes.ca Voluntary Pay Contribution Program We ask you to consider contributing $30 per year towards delivery of your Community Newspaper. Many of our Readers have made the decision to show their support for the Waterloo Chronicle. It is our pleasure to provide the Waterloo area with a Community Newspaper. We Appr eciat e Your Supp ort! Yes! I would like to contribute to the Waterloo ChroniclePlease find a cheque for $30 enclosed for a 1 year contribution. Signature: _________________________________________________________ Name: _____________________________________________________________ Address: ___________________________________ City:___________________ Postal Code: ____________________________ Phone #: _______________________________ 475 thomPSoN drive, UNitS 1-4, CAmbridge, oN N1t 2k7 for more iNformAtioN CAll 519-623-7395 ext. 795080 TORONTO - The happi- ly-inebriated guy at the back of The Ossington bar slowly hopscotched his way, table by numbered ta- ble, toward the stage. The standup comedian that unnerving night a cou- ple of years ago in Toronto, Waterloo-raised Courtney Gilmour, was aware of his advance. He closed in on the per- former. She closed in on a punch line. "I guess he was really drunk," recalled the 34- year-old Gilmour, who is preparing to open her one- person show "Congratula- tions" for a two-week, eight-show run at The Tar- ragon Theatre as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival on Wednesday. "He was also very into the show. He actually kept moving forward and changing seats to come closer and closer and clos- er - until he was five feet away from me." He didn't have to be that close to see that Gilmour was born with no hands and one leg. Surely, he could hear the perfor- mance by the one-time St. David Secondary School student well enough from the front row. But he had embraced other notions. "During one of my punch lines, he gets up and comes over to me on the stage and lifts me up - puts his arms around me and lifts me up into the air," she said. "I think he was drunk- enly so happy and he didn't know how to express it. So this very bizarre idea came to him that I should just, like, show my gratitude for this comic by lifting her up in the air like 'Dirty Danc- ing.' That was really crazy," said Gilmour, who became the first female comic to win the Just For Laughs homegrown competition in Montreal in 2017. As crazy as the daugh- ter of a mortgage consul- tant and a realtor writing and performing her own one-hour soliloquy about the dark and bright mo- ments of her life. You'll get the darkness of her depression-led de- parture from English lit and communication stud- ies at the University of Windsor - a degree Gil- mour later completed on- line. You feel the joy, and vali- dation, of her triumph at Just For Laughs. After all, Gilmour fig- ures she is super introspec- tive and would have been considered the member of her family least likely to harvest chuckles and belly laughs for a living. "I love being alone and I love working alone," said Gilmour - who is backed up by a director, stage manag- er and publicist on her show - in a phone interview on Thursday. Her first standup expe- rience was opening for a hired comedian working a fundraiser she organized in Windsor back in college. Five minutes was her plan. She went overtime. Of course, being born without hands comes up a lot in her material. "I'd never spoken so much about my lack of hands than I have since starting comedy," said Gil- mour, who uses a custom- made microphone holder during standup sessions. "Even from being a kid to an early adult when I started standup. I wasn't talking about it much." Now, she writes about it, answers media questions and talks about it in daily encounters. Why was she born that way? Perhaps, she suggested, it had to do with her parents living in Sarnia's chemical valley in the '80s. A bunch of birth defects occurred then, she said. There was lots of pol- lution in the air her mom drove through daily to get to work while carrying her. "The way I was raised, I never felt the need to come to terms with anything," she said. "I've always been pretty cool with it." One day, the absence of hands may not even get a mention in her routine. "There are moments in the show where I come to a crossroads - should I just retire this material or does that mean I'm retiring as a comic if I do that?" she said. "The goal would be, I guess to have the option of being able to talk about just whatever I want. But, for me, it's mostly coming to terms with not really car- ing so much about other people seeing me as this no- hands comic." And whatever hap- pened to the audience member that gave her such an uplifting embrace at The Ossington a few years back? "We had to get people to come and take him away," she said. "What do you do in that moment? You're just so per- plexed because that had never happened to me be- fore. And I doubt it will happen again." WATERLOO COMEDIAN COURTNEY GILMOUR PREPARES FOR ONE-WOMAN SHOW IN TORONTO Waterloo-raised comedian Courtney Gilmour was the first female comic to win the Just For Laughs homegrown competition in Montreal in 2017. David Cyr/photo JEFF HICKS jhicks@therecord.com LOCAL BORN WITHOUT HANDS AND ONE LEG, WATERLOO COMEDIAN OPENS HER ONE-PERSON SHOW AT TORONTO FRINGE FESTIVAL ON JULY 3