The comedy world lost a community builder earlier this year.
Garry Yuill died suddenly in March. He opened Yuk Yuk’s Vancouver in 2012 and then Yuk Yuk’s Surrey (within Elements Casino in Cloverdale) in 2022.
“The world has lost a great man and I lost a dear friend,” Eric Lapointe wrote on Facebook at the time. Lapointe was Yuill’s friend and business partner.
Yuill was born in Wingham, and raised in Brussels, Ontario. He attended Western and then did an MBA at Laurier. He moved to Richmond in his late 20s and lived in Steveston for the past 20 years.
Lapointe told the Cloverdale Reporter he first met Yuill in 2022 about a month or two after the Cloverdale Yuk Yuk’s opened. Lapointe was scouting comics for the White Rock Buskers and Comedy Festival. So he looked up the nearest Yuk Yuk’s and headed over to Cloverdale and met Yuill.
He soon learned Yuill was not only a comedy guy, but also a businessman and a teacher—Yuill was an accounting prof at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
Over the next three years, Yuill and Lapointe became good friends and solid business partners. They took their company public and eventually bought Yuk Yuk’s Calgary.
Lapointe said Yuill ranked “quite high” when it came to the importance of building up and supporting comedy in the Lower Mainland.
“I only knew Gary for a short while, and it's hard to see these things immediately, but he was a great guy and very important to the comedy community,” he said. “He was a man of good humour and he had a gentle smile. And he had a very calm demeanour—he was very approachable.”
Lapointe said a comedian he knows described Yuill best.
“He said, ‘You know, the reason why this community is mourning so hard is because it’s very rare in the entertainment industry as a whole—that could be music or anything—that producers care more about the talent than the money,’ and Garry was that guy.”
Lapointe explained that Yuill’s importance to the comedy community reflected that of a professor and his students. It was natural for Yuill.
“He brought his teaching skills to the comedy world,” he said. “To a lot of comedians—even though he wasn't a comedian himself—he was very encouraging. He just naturally knew how to mentor people.”
Yuill gave many comedians the opportunity to get up on a stage.
“He could sense good talent,” recalled Lapointe. “He loved to laugh. He loved to sit at the back of the room and take it all in.”
He added that Yuill knew when comics were ready for the next step too. He gave many their first headlining gigs.
Eventually when COVID shut everything down, Yuill suffered something that broke his heart. He had to close Yuk Yuk’s Vancouver, the old club on Cambie, which he opened in 2012.
“It was a beautiful club that he had built,” noted Lapointe. “It had a beautiful stone background. The comics would say it was the best Yuk Yuk’s club across Canada. And it was probably the most active one.”
After new landlords bought the building and upped the rent, Yuill had to close down.
In 2022, Yuill saw a chance to reopen Yuk Yuk’s. This time in Cloverdale.
“He seized the opportunity and basically built a new partnership with Elements Casino,” Lapointe explained. “It’s a comedy club, but it’s a comedy club that is shared with the casino.”
He added Yuill “absolutely loved comedy” and strove to support comedians in any way he could.
“He was somebody who cared about the community around him,” Lapointe noted. “And he was the type of guy who would always crack a joke and make everyone feel comfortable.”
Yuill will forever be known as a man who built the comedy community up by both helping and mentoring new comics, but also by opening venues allowing comics a place to learn, perform, and thrive.
Part of that was a “comedy-outreach program” that Yuill and Lapointe started. They did some theatre shows in Vancouver and later expanded to White Rock, Abbotsford, Fort Langley, Delta, and eventually the Okanagan and Calgary.
“Yuk Yuk’s wouldn’t exist in B.C., post-COVID, if it wasn’t for Garry,” noted Lapointe. “He was looking in Vancouver, but the rents were just too high. So, he looked for other opportunities.”
Lapointe added that if Yuill had decided to close-up shop after he was forced to shutter the Vancouver Yuk Yuk’s, he doesn't know where the Lower Mainland comedy scene would be, nor the careers of so many comics that have passed through Yuk Yuk’s Surrey.
“I think it would’ve been very hard for Yuk Yuk’s to stay in the marketplace.”
He said it’s a testament to who Yuill was that he’ll be remembered and talked about as both a supporter of comedy and a mentor to both comedians and students.
“His legacy is really about supporting comics, being a good teacher, which includes both his students and the comics, and giving opportunities to people,” Lapointe explained. “He lifted them both up.”
Yuill passed away suddenly on March 24. He was 51.
Editor’s note: At the time of Garry’s passing, the family requested we hold off on publishing an article until they could get all the details sorted out for a celebration of life. That celebration of Garry’s life will now be held from 2-4 p.m. on June 1 in Richmond at the Steveston Hub (3551 Moncton Street).
