Montreal’s Just for Laughs festival fundraising for comedian’s legal fees
Montreal’s Just for Laughs comedy festival is throwing its support behind a Quebec comedian who was ordered to pay damages to a young artist he mocked onstage.
The internationally renowned festival will host a bilingual comedy show on Saturday to help fund Mike Ward’s appeal of a Quebec Human Rights Tribunal ruling this month ordering him to pay $35,000 to Jeremy Gabriel for jokes about his singing and facial disfigurement.
Just for Laugh’s chief operating officer Bruce Hills said the idea came from comics who wanted to support Ward.
Hills called the ruling “a slippery slope” in an interview Friday.