Surrey ‘freedom’ comedian embraces the hate for her anti-woke jokes
Published 12:00 pm Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Elizabeth Stanton says she doesn’t try to offend audiences with her jokes, she just wants to start conversations through comedy.
The South Surrey comedian’s brand of “free speech” humour isn’t for everyone, yet the Peace Arch Hospital-born Stanton has found enough fans to press on as an entertainer in Metro Vancouver.
Her anti-woke jokes definitely aren’t politically correct, contrasting the reality of someone who considers herself “quite centrist,” politically.
“People will look at me and go, ‘How can a hippie be so bigoted?’” Stanton said in a phone call with the Now-Leader. “I’m like, yeah, I am a hippie. Hippies were anti-war, anti-government, they were anti-pharmaceuticals. I’m hippie, by every sense of the original term, which leftists have taken over.… We should have a nice, cohesive society where everybody gets along and we can say what we want and joke.”
This week Stanton is promoting “Conscious Comedy: The War on Terrible Comedy,” a show she’s hosting Saturday, May 9, a night “guaranteed to be hilarious and outside the norm of Vancouver comedy shows,” says the website where tickets are sold (for $22.63 all in).
“This is a special homage to war and current events edition of the show,” the website hypes. “Our comedians are not afraid to bomb, and we hope this show will blow up. We are currently in World War III, so come out and laugh before you have to hide in your bunker or the cops get you for posting a meme.”
Years ago Stanton did a 9/11-themed comedy night, and isn’t afraid to tell jokes about religion, minorities and concerns about censorship — in the spirit of the great philospher George Carlin, she says.
“I’d say that we’re trying to create a dialogue with our comedy because people are afraid to talk to each other at this point,” says the Elgin Park Secondary grad, raised by immigrant parents from New Zealand.
Nine years ago she started doing comedy “in the most liberal/left leaning place” but was treated with hate and contempt for making dark jokes, she says.
Mainstream comedy event promoters and fellow performers have shunned her, Stanton insists, so she books her own shows at pubs like Surrey’s Brownsville and Vancouver’s Moose’s Down Under, with fellow joke-tellers Garett Doran Moran, Thought Criminal Ian, Tom Lucas, Mark Cuzetto and a Justin Trudeau/Jordan Peterson impressionist.
“I think that there’s a draw for it, it’s just really hard to get the word out about these kind of shows in this area, especially big cities on the West Coast.”
Stanton’s Facebook page is filled with edgy video skits and bits including a recent open-mic moment where a “woke white heckler kept flipping out and threatened to hire a m*th head to end me for telling jokes.”
The COVID era was tough for all entertainers faced with limited-capacity shows, but Stanton found humour in the pandemic, and apparently found an audience along the way.
“I’m very proud to say that being an underdog with a lot of motivation can lead you in the right direction,” she posted in December 2023.
“I have run many successful shows for people who share the same beliefs, for people who have been pushed out of society and unfairly labeled. So I want to tip my hat again to the Fringe Minority. The people with unacceptable views accepted me for my views, love my comedy, and welcomed me. Now I run shows with other like-minded performers, and have people at the bar come up to tell me how much they appreciate what I do and what I say, and how left out they’ve felt until hearing this stuff.”