Canadian comedian Mike MacDonald dead at 62
Mike MacDonald, a pioneer of the Canadian standup comedy scene, has died.
The longtime comedian died on Saturday afternoon from heart complications at the Ottawa Heart Institute, his brother J.P. MacDonald said on Sunday. He was 62.
MacDonald was a regular on the Just for Laughs stage and also appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and Arsenio Hall, and starred in multiple CBC and Showtime specials.
His brother said MacDonald loved nothing more than to make people laugh — something he discovered in high school.
“Obviously it’s easier in high school to make friends if you can make people laugh. But there was more to it than that. He was just really good at it, he was brilliant at it. It always just stuck with him and that’s what he wanted to do,” said J.P., who is also known by his stage name Johnny Vegas.
MacDonald, who was also a gifted drummer, got his comedy start at an Ottawa punk rock club called the Rotters Club in the 1970s. He prepared a mountain of material: three 45-minute comedy sets, which J.P. noted may be standard for a music gig, but not a comedy one.
“If you try to tell that to young up-and-coming comedian today, I don’t think they’d be able to wrap their head around it, because most young comedians are working on their first five-minute routine,” he said.
“He was that creative, it just flowed from him. Over the years, he wrote hours upon hours of comedy routines and movie scripts and TV scripts. He was very proficient and gifted at his art,” J.P. said.
Mike MacDonald kicked a drug-use problem in the late-1980s or early-1990s and had been clean ever since, his brother said. He received a liver transplant about five years ago and became an advocate for organ donations, weaving mention of it into his routines.
Social media tributes came pouring in Sunday.
“Mike MacDonald probably did more to popularize standup in Canada than anyone else of his generation,” comedian Kliph Nesteroff tweeted.