Surrey \u2018freedom\u2019 comedian embraces the hate for her anti-woke jokes<\/p>\n
Published 12:00 pm Wednesday, April 29, 2026<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Stanton says she doesn\u2019t try to offend audiences with her jokes, she just wants to start conversations through comedy.<\/p>\n
The South Surrey comedian\u2019s brand of \u201cfree speech\u201d humour isn\u2019t for everyone, yet the Peace Arch Hospital-born Stanton has found enough fans to press on as an entertainer in Metro Vancouver.<\/p>\n
Her anti-woke jokes definitely aren\u2019t politically correct, contrasting the reality of someone who considers herself \u201cquite centrist,\u201d politically.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople will look at me and go, \u2018How can a hippie be so bigoted?\u2019\u201d Stanton said in a phone call with the Now-Leader. \u201cI\u2019m like, yeah, I am a hippie. Hippies were anti-war, anti-government, they were anti-pharmaceuticals. I\u2019m hippie, by every sense of the original term, which leftists have taken over.\u2026 We should have a nice, cohesive society where everybody gets along and we can say what we want and joke.\u201d<\/p>\n
This week Stanton is promoting \u201cConscious Comedy: The War on Terrible Comedy,\u201d a show she\u2019s hosting Saturday, May 9, a night \u201cguaranteed to be hilarious and outside the norm of Vancouver comedy shows,\u201d says the website where tickets are sold<\/a> (for $22.63 all in).<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a special homage to war and current events edition of the show,\u201d the website hypes. \u201cOur 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Years ago Stanton did a 9\/11-themed comedy night, and isn\u2019t afraid to tell jokes about religion, minorities and concerns about censorship \u2014 in the spirit of the great philospher George Carlin, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d say that we\u2019re trying to create a dialogue with our comedy because people are afraid to talk to each other at this point,\u201d says the Elgin Park Secondary grad, raised by immigrant parents from New Zealand.<\/p>\n Nine years ago she started doing comedy \u201cin the most liberal\/left leaning place\u201d but was treated with hate and contempt for making dark jokes, she says.<\/p>\n Mainstream comedy event promoters and fellow performers have shunned her, Stanton insists, so she books her own shows at pubs like Surrey\u2019s Brownsville and Vancouver\u2019s Moose\u2019s Down Under, with fellow joke-tellers Garett Doran Moran, Thought Criminal Ian, Tom Lucas, Mark Cuzetto and a Justin Trudeau\/Jordan Peterson impressionist.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that there\u2019s a draw for it, it\u2019s just really hard to get the word out about these kind of shows in this area, especially big cities on the West Coast.\u201d<\/p>\n