Accompanied by her husband, David Siddall, it was a moment to celebrate her hero in front of the hundreds who gathered Sunday at Amherst’s First Baptist Church.
“There was nothing I loved more than watching my grandfather laugh. She was the first woman I saw making people laugh.”
Walsh has made generations of Canadians laugh through characters like Marg Delahunty, Warrior Princess, confronting politicians as a plastic sword-wielding, tutu-wearing dispenser of widely held but unspoken truths wrapped in humour.
But like Siddall and so many others who perform, Walsh comes from a life with potent shares of struggle, addiction, loss and beauty. In recent years she’s turned her voice to advocating for mental health and addictions support through sharing her own story.
On Sunday, she took a break from a busy book tour for her latest offering, a collection of reflective essays titled Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet: A Memoir in Pieces, to speak at a fundraiser for the Cumberland Regional Library and Lilac Place, a Cumberland County resource and counselling centre for women and gender-diverse individuals.
“It was just a delight to be there,” Walsh told The Chronicle Herald.