Mess with the sheep. Get the horns.

What happens when beloved cloven hooves and a penchant for good humour intersect? GO Cranberly’s resident traffic flagger lifts the curtain on the Bighorn Comedy Tour.

W & P: Sarah Stupar

HALLMARK MOVIES continue to have a huge impact on my life. Longtime readers of GO Cranberley might remember my “coming home” article from Oct 2020. I talked about how life isn’t actually a Hallmark movie, a lesson I learned when I ended up here during the pandemic. My film set work had some other implications as well.

When I worked in film, it was in the Locations Department. Holding a stop/slow sign is a job that sometimes exists on the film set, and having a traffic control ticket gives you a leg up in the Production Assistant world. I got the ticket and then proceeded to avoid on-set traffic control duties at all costs.

When I first moved back to Cranbrook, I was lucky to land one of the only professional acting gigs that exists around these parts: summer theatre at Fort Steele. But as summer turned to fall, the professional acting work faded away. I saw a job posting for a flag person with Cold Country Traffic control. I’m qualified for this, I realized with horror.

FLAGGING actually turned out to be a great fit for me. Standing beside the highway holding a sign for 15 hours might sound like a nightmare, but to be honest I really enjoyed it. I wasn’t standing outside just anywhere. I was standing outside all up and down the East Kootenay. Some people, when they come to the Kootenays, they come because they want to be “out there,” you know the mountains are calling. They need to ski and snowboard and climb ice or whatever. Me, I’ve always been a low maintenance kind of gal. It’s enough for me to just...look at them. I got to do that all day, every day, when I was flagging. I loved it.

I worked a lot on the traffic circle in Radium, including through the winter. Even with a 1.5-hour drive each way and below-zero temperatures, I still loved these days because I knew I would get to see some bighorn sheep. Maybe it’s because I’m a stand-up comedian, but I love an animal with an attitude. These salt-licking bastards have a lot of personality. Some of the best horns in the animal kingdom, and square pupils that seem to emanate an absolute disdain for humans. If bighorn sheep could speak English, I’m sure it would be with Ratso Rizzo energy: “Hey, I’m walking here!”

It seemed like something changed in 2021 though, and their strong IDGAF attitude was no longer enough to protect them. Perhaps, due to being locked up inside during the pandemic, people seemed to hit the road with less patience — and they were hitting the sheep too. When I came back to the East Kootenay, I tried my best to embrace it, to live the most East Kootenay life possible. I felt that working alongside the sheep was definitely a part of that, so as the fatalities mounted, I was devastated. I felt this overwhelming desire to “do something.”

I’d been producing small-scale comedy events since 2016, but I’d never had the guts to take it to the next level. Trying to sell 50 tickets to a comedy show in a restaurant was a comfortable risk, but I was too afraid to take the next step, theatre shows. Key City Theatre holds around 600 people. I couldn’t imagine taking on that kind of risk, trying to move 600 tickets for a comedy show. I would need a lot of help and I just didn’t think I could make it happen.

The sheep issue gave me an idea. What if it was more than just a comedy show? What if it was a comedy show for the sheep? Now I could imagine people getting on board. I reached out to Wildsight Society to see if they would be interested in partnering with me on this project. To my absolute delight (and fear), THEY SAID YES.

So it is with great pleasure that I am working to bring the Bighorn Comedy tour to the East Kootenay. I’ve also partnered with ECL productions who currently produce a monthly show in Cranbrook at the Heritage Inn. This show gave me an amazing opportunity to book two headliners whom I think will absolutely understand the spirit of the Kootenays: Jarrett Campbell and Brittany Lyseng. These two comedians will be able to serve up the laughs to this population in a way that few others can.

JARRETT CAMPBELL, like many a new East Kootenay resident, is originally a rural Ontario guy. I was first able to catch his act in Calgary last year and I instantly thought ‘this guy would kill in the Kootenays.’ He kills everywhere. He was nominated as the 2019 Breakout Artist of the Year at the Canadian Comedy Awards, and he appeared on Roast Battle Canada and Just for Laughs in Montreal, but he is especially relatable to anyone who spent their teenage years drinking in a field.

BRITTANY LYSENG is basically a trailblazer for me. Her comedy career began after 12 years as a tradesman when she says she developed the desire to lift less and laugh more. I truly believe that rural, redneck women are a special type of woman, and Brittany’s humour encapsulates this perfectly. Any woman with jokes about drinking at the Legion is a woman I know I will get along with. Born and raised in Calgary, Brittany’s comedy has been on TV (CTV’s Roast Battles Canada), the radio (CBC’s The Debaters), and in print (recently she was featured in Reader’s Digest magazine).

I can still hardly believe that this is going to happen, me doing comedy in front of 600 people at the Key City Theatre. On the one hand it seems so terrifying, but on the other hand, it’s not like I’ve never been on stage at the Key City Theatre before. In 2001 during my Sam Steele Sweetheart run, I did a comedic monologue from the Marx Brothers for my talent. Now here I am 20 years later about to deliver my original comedic material on the same stage.

It would be the perfect Hallmark moment, except some of my jokes are a bit blue for Hallmark.

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