What an amazing evening! All-star, all Canadian, cast of entertainers kept the audience rapt or laughing out loud for two hours straight. This line-up of extraordinary Canadian talent donated their time for a great cause – Gilda’s Club. If you didn’t get tickets for this year, you’ll want to make sure you do in 2010.

Tickets for “Toronto’s Number One Night of Entertainment”, It’s Always Something, an evening of comedy, music and dance in support of Gilda’s Club, Greater Toronto, went on sale on Monday, September 28. This eighth annual Variety Show took place on Monday, November 23 at the Princess of Wales Theatre. It’s a benefit in support of Gilda’s Club, named after Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live fame. Gilda lost her battle with ovarian cancer in 1989, but not before imagining a place where people touched by cancer could go for social and emotional support.

Back for his third consecutive year of hosting, was Canada’s number one comedian and Gemini Award winner Russell Peters, with another all-star cast of comedians, musicians and dancers all donating their talents to Gilda’s Club, Greater Toronto, a cancer care centre providing free emotional and support programs for kids, teens and adults living with cancer, and their families.

Joining Russell was legendary Second City and SCTV star Dave Thomas, former Barenaked Ladies lead singer Steven Page, three of the acclaimed vocal group of four – The Canadian Tenors (all four pictured above, but as one was unwell only three pictured at the left with Tempo Toronto Publisher Tina Rogers), comedian and musical theatre star Sean Cullen, Canadian R&B artist and 2009 Juno winner Divine Brown, stars of the Emmy-nominated “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” Colin Mochrie (pictured right) and Brad Sherwood, and comedian Irwin Barker. Eugene Levy also stepped on stage to address the crowd of 2000.

As one of the must-attend and always sold out events of the entertainment year, all proceeds  go to support Gilda’s Club, Greater Toronto. Over its first seven years, the show raised more than $2.5 million to fulfill Gilda’s wish that “no one should face cancer alone.”

If you missed it you may want to plan to go next year, November 2010. There’s more information  at www.itsalwayssomething.ca, and about Gilda’s Club, Greater Toronto at www.gildasclubtoronto.org. Media relations for the event were in the capable hands of dkpr Public Relations Inc. www.dkpr.ca

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1. Russell Peters Hosts 9th Annual Gilda’s Club Event
2. The Canadian Tenors’ holiday album “The Perfect Gift” goes gold December 8
3. Colin Mochrie: improv master