Local comedians staging Jasper wildfire fundraiser

There’s nothing funny about the Jasper wildfire and the utter devastation it caused.

Hundreds of Jasper residents lost their homes, their jobs and unspoiled beauty of their mountain surroundings when a firestorm hit the townsite on Wednesday, July 24, destroying one-third of the town’s structures.

A group of comedians in Prince George want Jasperites to know they care about what happened to them and they're ready to help.

They are organizing a fundraising evening of stand-up performances at Knox Performance Centre on Thursday, Aug. 8.

“Back in 2017 we did one up at UNBC through the Red Cross for Fort McMurray and when I saw the Jasper footage, about the only thing we can do as comics is tell jokes,” said Mike McGuire.

“I’m not going to fight fire and I’m not going to go rebuild a house but we can get some money for the Red Cross, that’s what we can do in the comedic community. It’s going to be a whole community effort, at least 10 of us will be performing. They immediately jumped on board.”

Joining McGuire on the Knox Centre stage will be local comedians Sam Bennison, Mwanasi Loongo, Steph St. Laurent, Shannon Street, Dale Ehrstien, Cody Malbeuf, Sara Jones, Virginia O'Dine, Devon Flynn and Dianne Hewitt.

McGuire figures the last time they all got together on the same stage was for the 2017 Fort McMurray fundraiser.

The Jasper fire obviously hits closer to home for Prince George people.

“The one video I saw was the main street where you come in and remembering all those houses and the Petro-Can and it looks like a war zone,” said McGuire.

“It’s devastating. You see places in Europe you’ve never been to and that’s terrible, but then you see something where you’ve been to, it hits that much harder. Who of us hasn’t spent some time in Jasper?”

The show starts at 7 p.m. and the doors open at 6:30, with admission by donation. The Knox Centre has a capacity of about 200 and McGuire is hoping the crowd will provide a minimum donation of $10 each.

McGuire says the Alberta and federal governments will provide matching funds to that collected by the Red Cross and he’s hoping for a minimum donation of $2,000, which would grow to $6,000 with the matched funding. He’s awaiting more information about a website set up by the Red Cross to funnel the donations.