From opening for Seinfeld to raising a family in L.A., the first Canadian woman at Just For Laughs is proving you can go home again.
Before Lisa-Gay Tremblay was opening for Jerry Seinfeld and Rodney Dangerfield at sold-out venues across America, she was doing something far less glamorous: working in statistics in her hometown of Ottawa.
“After working for several years in the exciting world of statistics,” Tremblay says with the kind of self-deprecating timing that would later serve her well on stage, she decided to take a shot at stand-up comedy.
“I left a very secure job when I was only 26. I remember calculating how many years I had until retirement and thinking, ‘Wait… this can’t be the whole plan.’ That moment pushed me toward a more creative and meaningful path.”
It turned out to be a wise decision—though it required leaving the nation’s capital for Toronto’s Yuk Yuk’s circuit, and eventually, a whole lot more.
The trajectory reads like a fever dream version of the Canadian-to-American entertainment pipeline. After touring Canada and becoming the first Canadian woman to perform at Just For Laughs, a milestone that still resonates in a country where comedy’s glass ceilings have been notoriously stubborn, Tremblay won her U.S. green card.
She opened for comedy legends like Seinfeld and Dangerfield before heading west to Los Angeles. There, she landed her Screen Actors Guild card through Boy Meets World, appeared on Showtime, A&E, and built a resume of national commercials that kept the bills paid while she navigated Hollywood’s perpetual game of “what have you done lately?”
Then came the pivot that defined her personal life as much as her professional one: motherhood. She scaled back the comedy work and became a full-time mom, keeping her hand in the game with charity stand-up gigs and improv classes.
But when her daughter left home for college, and her husband retired, Tremblay observed that “he had no hobbies and suddenly I had a full-time audience following me around the house. I realized very quickly that I still had stories to tell and work I wanted to do.”
She decided it was time to step back into the spotlight — not just for herself, but for the creative life she wasn’t ready to put on pause.
“I’ve always believed reinvention is healthy—and sometimes necessary for your marriage too,” she says with the kind of timing that explains why she opened for Seinfeld.
In a capital city where people tend to be risk-averse and afraid to make a casual joke for fear of reprisal, Tremblay represents something rare: someone who’s actually funny without a script, who’s lived outside the bubble, and who’s not afraid to say what everyone’s thinking.
Lisa-Gay Tremblay is at Yuk Yuk’s, 1394 Richmond Rd., on Feb. 20 & 21
Call 343-575-7178 or book via the Yuk Yuk’s Ottawa website.
Ottawa Life Magazine readers get two tickets for the price of one with promo code*: Ottawa
*The offer does not apply to dinner-and-show packages.
