[00:00:00] Ellington Brown: Welcome to SpeakUP! International with Rita Burke and Elton Brown! 

[00:00:14] Rita Burke: As on SpeakUP! International, we travel the world to find people we consider to be community builders. Today, we are traveling in Toronto, Canada, where we're speaking with Nicole Osbourne-James. Nicole describes herself as a free thinker, editor, speaker, runner, joker, and mama.

More recently she's become an accidental stand up comedian and producer. Nicole coordinates healing and humor events in support of Black mental health. And as we say on SpeakUP! International, we prefer if our guests tell their own stories. There's so much more I can tell you about Nicole. So I welcome Nicole Osbourne-James to SpeakUP! International!

[00:01:07] Nicole Osbourne-James: Thanks for having me! 

[00:01:11] Ellington Brown: Glad that you're here with us today Ms. Osbourne-James. What can you tell us about the spoken word? To me, the Spoken Word has a certain magic, a mystique. And I really do appreciate that form of creative entertainment. But you transformed, or I should say, you transitioned from the spoken word poetry to stand up comedy.

One, what made you do that? And two, which one do you find most enjoyable? 

[00:01:52] Nicole Osbourne-James: Wow, that's a good question. I think I got into spoken word the way that I did pretty much everything that happens in my life. It's usually an accident. Never anything that I had ever planned on. I started doing spoken word in the 1990s because that was a very popular form of entertainment.

A young people in the 1990s, even though I find Spoken Word as an art has really existed, throughout history, but I guess it's just all the teenagers of all the eras have always had their version of spoken word. Maybe perhaps when we were sitting around, being griots in Africa and just, telling stories to being on a stage in the back of some bar in downtown Toronto in the 1990s doing Spoken Word.

And I loved it. I loved writing poetry about everyday things in the 90s. I was doing poems about my hair, mostly, and what the world thought of my hair and the politics of higher education and student loans. And it was all, it was all Hip Hop and all very, of the culture and the time.

And it was just a great way for us to express ourselves. All of our feelings, mostly anger, because what else do you feel as a young person besides, anger at everything that we see as the system. But I really got out of Spoken Word after I had my, when I had my first child. I think it's funny to say that I looked at this new baby and I didn't have as many things to be angry about anymore.

And I also thought people probably didn't want to hear a lot of spoken word about, cloth versus disposable diapers, breastfeeding versus formula, nobody, what rhymes with how do I, fold down this car seat and how come I can't get the dishes washed, so there wasn't a lot of poetry at that stage of my life.

When I transitioned into, to comedy, when my many children were older and I had some time to think again, I realized that comedy really is about the same thing. It has less limitations than spoken word. So in comedy, I really can talk about how I can't get anybody to wash the dishes in my house in a timely fashion, and I can talk about how I feel about my job, and I can talk, I can still talk about my hair, but I can talk about So many other things and it doesn't even have to rhyme, so comedy gives me a much greater range of expression, but it still comes out of the same emotional space, anger and all of the other emotions that go along with it.

[00:04:23] Rita Burke: It's interesting that you talked about Spoken Word in the 90s. I don't know if you remember that in about 98, we had an open mic. At her space on Sinclair Avenue and the young people from all over the greater Toronto area would come on a Saturday evening about once a month and just talk and share. It was truly wonderful.

[00:04:50] Nicole Osbourne-James: I loved your space. I really did. And I really want to say that. A lot of what makes, a revolution or social change or activism happen is really these small community spaces that will actually give young people a place to gather. A revolution can't happen without spaces, and your story is such an important part of the history of what young people do.

Have done in this in this city. I loved it! 

[00:05:16] Rita Burke: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So you use the word and my next question includes that word to wisdom activists. Talk about yourself as an activist in our community. Nicole Osborne, James. 

[00:05:30] Nicole Osbourne-James: Activism, I think it's an interesting word. I didn't always have a word for what we were doing.

I think everything has a word now in our modern era. But in those times, I feel like our activism was intentional, but unintentional. We didn't know that what we were doing with activism. I think we just saw it as solving problems, like if there was a problem, we were going to show up if there was a meeting, we were going to go to it.

If there wasn't a meeting, we were going to call a meeting, if there was something that we didn't have we were always saying things like, how come there's no Black magazines? Okay then we'll just start one. We didn't know this was activism. We thought we were just doing stuff. We organized Kwanzaas in the community.

We didn't know that there was a lack of Black activities. We just said, hey, want to get together and invite the community out to eat and hang out. I remember somebody spoke to me the other day now that I feel like I'm on the cusp of becoming an elder in the community and somebody that somebody who I knew a long time ago was reminding me of when my partner and I organized the Black media network conference and they said at the time that they thought.

That was really amazing that we, had the nerves to do that and I thought nerve. I didn't think it took nerve. I just wanted to get some black people in the room and talk about why we didn't have a Black radio station, what's that activism, I guess now it seems like it but it activism, from my perspective is just, filling a need and being something that needs to get done and just getting some people together and do it, it's how most of Africa would be colonized and it's the same thing today.

[00:07:10] Ellington Brown: It's so funny that how you mentioned, the things that you saw and you guys just went ahead and did them. I wonder this is a rhetorical question. I wonder if, if you knew it was activism, how would you approach it? If at all, because now you brought in this word that means so many things to many people.

And so what that had made you go, whoa. We're not into activism, so we're not doing that, or, we're gonna find a different way in order to handle this situation. And speaking of situations, I want you to talk to us about Ladies Love Cool Jokes Comedy Series.

[00:07:55] Nicole Osbourne-James: Oh my gosh the Ladies Love Cool Jokes comedy series is it's a set of shows that I produced that was really looking to give women a platform to be able to share our comedy.

I think it will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that there was just not enough women doing comedy. I didn't think about it much in my own introduction to the comedy. We, when we think about who our favorite comedians are, we're always talking about my parents would be talking about Paul Keane's Douglas and Oliver and Miss Lou were very funny comedians of their time, but Miss Lou had a very special place, that she had carved out in the middle of all of these very funny men.

My generation at Wallace House, but Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock, and, but who are the ladies? So as a performer now, I find that there were very few opportunities that were afforded to me, very few stages that I was invited to be on. Most shows will have five comedians and one woman, and it's mostly not a Black woman.

They will have a Black man, but they won't always have a Black woman. A lot of men say that it's because women are not that funny, but we are very funny to each other. My favorite sound in the world is probably the sound of my mother laughing when she was on the phone when I was a little girl and she would laugh.

I called it like the fish market laugh. She laughed I don't know why I couldn't even, everybody knows their mother when she reaches that laugh. And as a child, you just really want to know what the joke is. You don't know what it is, but you love the sound, so ladies love tool jokes is a a stage show that's based on.

How can we elicit that sound for ourselves? How can women get on stage and make each other laugh about the things that are important to us as women, I think I've got a whole, series of just talking about what our kids are doing. Talking about how we feel about our jobs.

Menopause is like a whole new area of comedy. So we laugh about the things that used to make us really uncomfortable. And we always do an all women's show. Although sometimes we provide an opportunity for one man to come and do it. And share his perspective, but the goal is really comedy for women, by women.

That's what Ladies Love Cool Jokes is all about. 

[00:10:12] Rita Burke: I guess what you're describing is, for your mom laughing, is what when I was a child they called a belly laugh. So you just laugh and laugh from deep down inside that gut. And it was contagious most of the time. Most of the time it was contagious. But you describe yourself in your bio as a speaker.

I'm curious to learn about some of your speaking topics. Nicole Osbourne-James. 

[00:10:43] Nicole Osbourne-James: As a speaker, I think I see myself more as somebody who speaks in community. I think when you think of a speaker, many people think, I'm a keynote speaker standing behind a podium. But that generally is not the case.

I do a lot of circle speakers. I facilitate a lot of conversation. About a lot of different things, healing and humor, how we can use comedy to better our health is a recent topic that I've been, that I've been working with a lot of things about media and how we're portrayed, how do we see ourselves, and how does that make us feel about ourselves, I've done conversations about books that we're reading, things that we're taking in, but it's always about, topics about what we're seeing and how it makes us feel.

[00:11:30] Ellington Brown: That is an excellent way to open the door for many topics to be discussed and not putting a lid on it, which I think we've had enough of that lid thing. At least I have. So how do you balance being a performer, producer, and mama?

[00:11:55] Nicole Osbourne-James: I won't lie. It is hard. It is so hard, because there's only so much hours in a day and so many responsibilities that we have. And I know a lot of people, when we see them in their lives, we think, oh, she makes it so easy. I don't think I make it easy. I don't think I make it look easy. I don't even try to make it look easy.

When people see me, they're like, how are you doing? And I think a lot of people would just say fine, but I'm like, oh my gosh, it is rough out here having a job and, running a comedy business and keeping up with my kids and making sure that I'm available enough. And also dealing with all of the pressures that society has us put on ourselves.

Am I being a good enough mother? Am I there to listen enough to what my kids want to talk about? Am I available for my husband? It's just a whole lot of being available. I find it very challenging, but at the same time, very exhilarating because if it wasn't fulfilling, I wouldn't do it but, in terms of how to balance it, I think it's important that we know that sometimes we just have to put things down.

If I compare myself to other comedians that I'm in the community with, I talk to some comedians and they say, Oh, I do three shows a night or I do five shows every weekend. Some comedians are on tour. Some comedians are making comedy specials. But I tend to have fewer shows that make them big shows, or I don't run a weekly show, I might do a show, a couple of shows a month, because I know what I can handle, and it doesn't do me any good if I just burn all the way out trying to be something that I can't handle.

So in terms of balance, I think it's just remembering that as much as I can do is enough. I can't compare myself to anybody else. 

[00:13:52] Rita Burke: Self awareness is the key to success. Isn't it? So they say to me is if you are on top of your game, but here's my next question to you, Nicole is, was there ever a time in your life when you had to say enough? 

[00:14:06] Nicole Osbourne-James: Yes. I think on a most basic level we say that all the time. Sometimes I look at the dishes in my kitchen and I'm like, somebody needs to come and wash these dishes. But I don't think that's what we're talking about. Probably something bigger, more meaningful.

I think I'm at that stage of life right now where I'm saying enough about a lot of things. I'm saying enough about a lot of things like enough of not taking the time that I need to sleep, enough of talking to people when I don't feel like it. I think right now I've discovered late in life that I'm an introvert.

I didn't always know what that meant. I thought I was not an introvert because I'm not shy and I don't have any problem talking to people, but it was recently explained to me that an introvert is about how you charge, how you recharge your social battery. So when you're all the way down, you're almost out of batteries, out of power, do you want to recharge?

With people, or do you want to recharge by yourself? And I've discovered that I really like to recharge by myself. So sometimes I have to just say, even enough to my own family, one thing I always say about my house is that. There's way too many people living in my house, but then considering that I gave birth to most of them, I can't very well complain about this because I have brought this on myself, but I have to stop feeling guilty for saying enough and just close my bedroom door and say nobody is coming in here because I need to read, I need to think, I need to decompress and everybody is going to have to be okay with that.

And it sounds so simple, but it's. I think a lot of parents and a lot of people can attest to how hard it really is, because the less time that we have for ourselves, is the last time we have for our families and everybody else work and our responsibilities bills at the cost of everything goes up encroaches so much on our daily lives that the little precious time that we have left.

Sometimes you, you feel that your responsibility is to give it to everybody else, but. We're no good if we don't give some time to ourselves, so enough of trying to be everything to everybody all the time, and yes to building myself up and making sure that I'm okay. 

[00:16:34] Ellington Brown: Okay, I got, I have two questions, first one is something is my guess something I want you to go back, remember, we were just talking about our moms laughing. Okay. Have you ever heard your mom laugh, and you're in another room, you have no idea what she's talking about, but you find yourself laughing, and she's in another room, and she's just, she's going at it. Obviously it was a joke, or maybe it was something they had no business talking about.

Who knows? All I know is that my mom could be in the living room, I could be in the kitchen, she starts laughing, I start laughing. Do I know what she's talking about? No. But her laughter I found to be contagious.

I'd like to know, okay, I love food. I love food. And, if I knew where you lived, I would knock on your door and beg for food. So I want to know where this whole comedy licious How did that come about? And I take it merges food and comedy in some kind of way. I don't know, do you get a knife and fork when you go to Comedylicious?

[00:17:55] Nicole Osbourne-James: Yes, but sometimes you use your hands. I love food too. I love food. I think it's not just for love of my belly, but I also love the way that food really denotes culture, and comedy and food are two of the greatest vehicles of culture, especially the way that when food is in front of us and we eat with other people, we just talk and we laugh, we're always laughing over food and I feel that, laughter is even more heightened when you have some good food.

Comedylicious is a festival. It's a annual festival that happens in, that we we organize in October. That came out of looking at the restaurants in our community after the pandemic lockdown. So many restaurants were lost and not big chain restaurants that are owned by millionaires that don't need our money.

But our small restaurants, all of our wonderful, what they call mom and pop shops, we probably should, we should be more enlightened now, but just call them, our community cuisine hubs. A lot of them were shutting down and they were they were struggling.

So in Comedylicious, we wanted to focus on the small venues, like how we we were talking about with Rita earlier, the small spaces in our community that are providing the places for us to perform Spoken Word and have shows and musicians come to town and perform there, but we also eat and we perform comedy in those spaces.

We wanted to celebrate them in some way. So we formed a partnership where we would do comedy in a series of venues throughout the city and just give people a reason to come out, sit down, eat food. And if they came for our shows, then who knows, they might take something really wonderful and come back the next week, some of the restaurants that we partnered with over the last two years that we've been doing the festival. We've worked with the Real Jerk. They've been a tremendous partner to us. We've worked with Laz Authentic Cuisine, which is an amazing restaurant in in Markham. They hosted our Belly Bus Brunch last year and this year we had Hilarity At Last, which was a comedy high tea party.

We've worked with, there was a Haitian restaurant that I think it's still on the Danforth the name just went out of my head right now. But that was an exciting, that was an exciting partnership for us because I'd never had Haitian food before we partnered with this restaurant. Comedylicious is really an opportunity for people to get exposure to small spaces, the venues that we have in our community, and to have a good laugh at the same time.

It's been an excellent initiative. I should say that the first year that we had it, we got some small funding from the Canadian Comedy Foundation. So that gave us the legs that we needed to be able to put this festival together and make sure that we paid the comedians that are performing because comedians have a significant underpayment problem.

So we were able to partner with the venues, pay our comedians last year, which was the 2nd year. We had it in 2024. we did it. We did it independently, which was challenging, but we still got it done and we're going to be back again in the last week in October in 2024.

[00:21:19] Rita Burke: You're saying we, Nicole. Talk about who the we is. 

[00:21:25] Nicole Osbourne-James: I say we, when I was in, in high school, we called it the royal we, where you say we, even though mostly it's mostly I, but in my case, when I say we, I'm talking about the fact that we can't possibly do anything alone. I never work alone.

Even though I may take the lead on a lot of things, I have a very solid community of comedians that I work with who support me. We support each other through all of our initiatives. I have a wonderful husband and an amazing family of kids that I put to work at every opportunity. I have friends. I have other people that I know in the community.

There is no me. There is, there's only we. So anything that I've ever done for anything, I can never say that I do it alone. So it's always going to be we when you hear from me.

[00:22:16] Ellington Brown: Oh, that's, that solves the we question versus the me question. 

[00:22:22] Nicole Osbourne-James: That's right! 

[00:22:23] Ellington Brown: All right! So I want to know what challenges have you faced as a woman? I know we talked a little bit about that earlier. How it seems the comedy industry seems to lean towards men. As opposed to women. So I would like to know your personal challenge that you faced as a woman in the comedy industry. And how did you get over that wall? 

[00:22:50] Nicole Osbourne-James: I think there was one conversation that was probably a turning point for how I viewed my place in the business of comedy, and this was an opportunity that I had to sit in on a casual conversation with a bunch of male comedians who are much more, seasoned than I am, a bit more log in the tooth.

If you will, they were talking about the early years, maybe in the 80s and 90s when they had first gotten into comedy and they were reminiscing on some of their experiences, about how hard it was getting into bands and just driving across Canada and performing in any small bar and places where they didn't get paid.

They might say, here's two drink tickets and, give you a couple of beers, but these were the sacrifices that you had to make to be able to one day be a huge success. They didn't see their families, they were just out there winter, spring, like they performed in Saskatchewan, drove to Nova Scotia, like they were everywhere.

And it was fascinating to listen to, but my thought in that whole thing was, Who was picking your kids up after school while you were doing all of that? Like where was your wife? Who was making dinner? And who was paying the bills while we're talking about it while you were out there getting paid in beer and chicken wings, who was paying for things at home because all of the men, most of the men in this conversation I know had children and families.

And while I may not have understood where they were during those times what the sacrifice was that they were making, I know that there was definitely somebody who was making what seemed to me a bigger sacrifice at home for your success. And I think as women, we often don't have the opportunity to make that choice.

I have not yet met the husband or the partner who's going to say, it's okay if you spend the next six weeks in a van driving up and down across Canada. I'll pick up the kids from school. I'll cook dinner every night. I'll go shopping. I'll go to those meetings that the teachers always want to have at random times of day when nobody is available.

I will do all of that. And so to, I think I was filled with such a sense of anger that I probably sound like the angriest person on earth because so much of the things I do is motivated by rage, but. I really thought about how many times I had been told that women are not in comedy historically because women are just not funny.

And I think we're very funny, but it'd be nice if we had the time to show that. So out of that conversation, I had already been, dabbling in production and creating opportunities before that, but I just had a much greater surge and a more focus of what my responsibility is out there. And I realized that.

The comedy the comedy industry as we know it right now is largely built around the needs of men, shows happen at night in these dark bars and whatnot else. And I wanted to carve out a space where we're not competing against men for their spaces, but that we are creating better opportunities for women.

Why can't we have shows that happen in the daytime in well lit places that are safe? Why can't we have good food? Why can't we have childcare so that a mother who really needs it can drop their kid off in a room and come inside and enjoy the show? We're working on that series now. So we want to create things that are built around what women's needs are.

We've had shows where we've had comedy and cocktails where women come and we have a bunch of mimosas and we eat things that we like and we share things that we like. And it's not to be stereotypical about what women's needs are. Like, it's not, our lives are not all relegated to just, who's going to look after our kids and who's going to cook dinner.

But The truth is that despite all of our efforts, society really has a long way to go before these things are not primarily women's responsibilities. They shouldn't be, but they just are. And so until we can do better on that side of things, all I want to do is make it easier for women to participate in this space.

So you see that accidental activism, word out of rage right there. 

[00:27:22] Rita Burke: That is truly fascinating. You did a keynote speech on activism in favor of women's rights to do what they want to do when they want to do it. So I thank you. Right now we're speaking with Nicole Osbourne-James and on SpeakUP! International we seek to inform, inspire, educate.

And Nicole, you are doing that with us right now and I thank you. My next question is, What would you say is the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

[00:27:56] Nicole Osbourne-James: I've gotten a lot of advice in my life. I'm a, I'm the daughter of a, of Caribbean parents, grandparents, there's always a lot of advice to be had, but Barring all of that great advice, I think the best advice I have ever gotten was from a friend in the community. Her name is Marcia. Marcia Lopez, maybe someone knows her, she's a labor activist in our community and a really a great person.

Marcia came to my 40th birthday party, some years back, and we were having a great time. Everybody was in the party. I had a lot of people. I had a DJ. I had a bartender. We were going crazy dancing. It was fun. And in the middle of this, Marcia pulled me aside and she said, I have to talk to you.

Marcia is a little older than I am. Marcia said to me, I have to talk to you. I said, now? They're playing my song. I gotta get back on the dance floor. What's the matter with you? She said, no, this is important. She said, because if I don't tell you now, you're not gonna make time for it later.

She goes, I really want you to hear me say that. Say this. I said, okay. Marcia said, you're forty now. She said, everything after this day is going to be different. I said, how? She said, trust me. She says, if you don't make this important step, and that step is to put yourself first. She said, after forty, you have to put yourself first.

She said, you got to think about the things that you want to do. Do things that make you happy. She says don't wait until the kids are older. Don't say oh when they're finished school and maybe when they're off to college I'll do something. She says do it now because if you don't do it she said in the next Four to five years, she said, you'll be looking at your husband and you will be ready to divorce him.

You will look at your children and you will hate them. You will look at the world and you will be angry and you will be disappointed. She said, don't wait until you're angry and disappointed. Do it now. She said, because once you're 40, she said, all the things you used to put up with, you are not going to want to put up with them anymore.

All the excuses you made for the reasons why things happen, you're not going to make excuses anymore. She said, just your brain is going to rewire itself and the stuff you used to put up with. It's going to aggravate you seriously. She said, trust me, do it now. And I thought that the timing of this was okay, whoa, I thought, why don't you just calm down?

This is my birthday party. But, I decided to, she seemed so serious about it. I thought I probably should take her advice. And so many things have happened in the years that I that I had that conversation, my mother has passed over into the ancestral realm, I've had to rearrange my life, the pandemic happened, there's been a lot of financial turmoil, like so many things have happened, and I think that I have been better prepared to face those challenges because I started taking Marcia's advice the very next day.

That is definitely, at least, I can't say that it's entirely the best advice that I ever received, because like I said, I've received so much advice in my life that has all been useful, but it has definitely been, most recently, the one that I remember and turn to and share. With other people. How old did you say you were?

Oh, let me tell you something. I've become the Marcy of the community now warning people about what it is to be a woman over 40. 

[00:31:32] Ellington Brown: If you start doing that at the party, people are going to run away from you because they're going to say, Oh, no, she's going to come back here with this advice and right now, I got my martini, my song is on!

[00:31:44] Nicole Osbourne-James: I'm gonna wait in the parking lot. . I'm just gonna wait in the parking lot and jump them after the party.

[00:31:50] Ellington Brown: I, okay, so I remember as a kid having guns, okay, you remember those guns play guns, and you put those caps in it and you, they were red paper and you put it in the gun and they were gonna make this snapping sound. So I wanna know. About this blog that you had created called Guns and None! 

[00:32:14] Nicole Osbourne-James: How in the world did you find out about that?

[00:32:18] Ellington Brown: Hey! Hey! And so I want to know, what's, what, Guns Get None? None of what? 

[00:32:25] Nicole Osbourne-James: Wow. Now, I did not know this was, this is not just a podcast. This is investigative journalism. I haven't thought about that for so long. I, wow, like you you're trying to get some trouble. You're trying to get yourself in trouble!

[00:32:40] Ellington Brown: No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not trying to get anybody in trouble. And you can always say, you know what? I'm not answering that question. I'm going to step aside. And it will be just edited out. It won't even, it'll be like it never even happened. 

[00:32:54] Nicole Osbourne-James: I'm not adverse to it. I just think it's funny because the Guns Get Done podcast was one of those things where, if you say Google yourself, you just wait for a few years for it to go down and down and down.

So I know if you Google that you had to have gone to like page nine or something to, cause I'm like, how did he find that? Guts Get Done, it did not start off as a blog. It started as a conversation, which taught me a very good lesson about the power of media. It taught me a good lesson. Some things that I had not yet learned.

But it was a conversation that happened after a significant shooting that had happened in Scarborough. I can't remember the year. I want to say it was the Danzig shooting, but it happened in Scarborough, and it was, like, many people were shot. And so there were a lot of community conversations happening, and the traditional style of community conversations, people are going to get together and we're going to talk about what can we do in the Black community about the problem of violence in the Black community.

Guns Get None came out of a random conversation we were having on Facebook. Where we were have so let's say a younger cohort was having the same conversation, but now these traditional conversations were being had in a new space in the social media realm, which was still fairly new at this time. In this conversation, we were proposing solutions and I said rather offhandedly that if it was up to me.

Any man that has a gun should not have access to us as women because a gun, a man with a gun to me serves no, like this is not a husband or a provider. And the truth is that even if men have guns in the home with the intention of protection, often we as women end up being on the receiving end of the violence.

That because if there's a gun in a home, it will be used and if not on somebody else, possibly on us. I suggested that similar to, the African leader woman leaders that we have read about that we would, curtail sexual activities with men who have guns they should not be able to date, they should not be able to marry, they should not, if you find out that a man has a gun You should not engage with this man like that should be a deal breaker because I think as women we have more power than we think we do.

I also said, as mothers, it wasn't just a sexual thing I said as mothers, any of us, we know that our sons have guns, all of these men live somewhere they eat somewhere they're being Supported by, the women in our community, and we need to take accountability for that. But it was, it really was just started off as an offhand conversation and we were laughing about it.

Then one of my friends said, oh, can I share it on my social media so that we can talk further about it? Okay, so we did that. And then we started a blog because the conversation seemed to be taking legs. And it was very, from an activism perspective, it was very exciting at the time for us to say, let's talk about this.

Because if we could stop even one young girl who's just starting to date, from, making the decision to be with a guy that could be perpetuating violence against our community. We could stop one. Maybe there's a girl he really likes and the fact that she won't date him because he wants to have a gun, maybe he would get rid of the gun.

In hindsight, maybe we were, it seemed so simple at the time. And then I was found and asked by the by some of the major media, the Toronto Star did a story, the Toronto Sun did a story. Then I was asked to be on the CBC with Dr. Roz from Dr. Roz's Healing Place and that was very exciting.

However, we did learn after that about social media backlash, so in these days, it's not like anybody was writing a letter to the editor and mailing it to be reviewed. But instead, there were a lot more comments on the stories, and then there were threats made against me and my family, and then there was all, yes, all of that happened, and I'll be honest and say that I thought it was terrifying because there was Many people who have guns for reasons like hunting, that we're like, oh, I will, I have my gun and you're going to pry my gun from my whole dead, my cold dead hands, there's an entire community that exists outside of the Black community.

And even though we are often the ones that are seen as having the, the issues with violence. There is a significant amount of violent rhetoric and violent threat that exists. In the mainstream community, too. And it was a lesson that I was not looking to learn. I learned it, but it did have significant impact on how I viewed online activism from that point.

I think, I would not say that it curtailed my my views or what somebody might think as radical views, but it did. Encourage me to move activism, not so less online and more back in the living rooms and back in the small spaces where we used to have it, because not all of our activism needs to be public, not all of our activism needs to be supported by mainstream media.

A lot of our activism, the problems that we need to solve in our community, we just need to solve them for ourselves and keep these conversations with ourselves. So even out of that, that very challenging situation, there was still a lot of good lessons to learn that we could apply to the work that we want to do today.

[00:38:48] Rita Burke: Nicole, I didn't know this part because I am not a fan of social media, so I never knew this story. But again, my first question to you at the beginning was about your activism and there's no question you have shared so many different pillars. where you have been active on behalf of our community. No question about that.

And I wish you were still doing that particular part right now, but I could understand how it may have been, it would have compromised you and your family's safety, and I hear loud and clear about that. Now, I want you to tell us about somebody in our community that somehow has impacted your life. And I say impacted in a positive way.

Could you think of anybody? 

[00:39:36] Nicole Osbourne-James: Absolutely. I absolutely could. And it's really, there are so many people, but I think it's just the timing of what's been on my heart at the time that you asked this question. I think a person in my community, I would say a person in my community that has impacted me positively is my friend Motion.

Many people know Motion. Motion is a radio DJ. She's a rapper. She's a writer. She works in television. She's like a quiet, constant presence in our community. She's there. Everybody knows her, but she's not over the top, about anything. Motion has impacted, My me as a person, because I feel that in the years since we first met we met, actually we met really going to the Million Women March back in 1997.

Yeah, in 1997. Again, with much audacity, I organized a bus trip to go from Toronto to Philadelphia to take Black women to the Million Women March. We just put a flyer out and said, hey, anybody want to come to the march? Let's go. And Moshe was one of the women that came on the march. In fact, in my coming back to Toronto after university, I have seeing that so many of the women that I met for the first time, the young women that came on those trips, have become very significant people, very well known people in the community.

One has become a midwife, one is running a dance program for young people. They do good work, but back then we were just a bunch of 17 to 22 year olds try to get to Philadelphia. But going back to Motion, that is where we met and our friendship has grown like a slow cooker over the years where she is always encouraging me into new directions.

And always that person who on a personal level says, you know what? Have you tried this? You can do this. You can never tell her. You know what, I don't think I'm ready for this or I don't think I know how to do this. She'll find resources and just, when you find yourself in a situation, you realize that she has pushed you all the way over there.

And I'm like, how did I even get here? Because if you asked me if I was going to do something, I would have just said, I don't know how to do that and left it there. But she always seems to make sure that I end up someplace I had no plans on going. And then I'm happy I'm there. And I've done something that I really didn't expect to do, but she has just encouraged me.

I think when we're talking about impact, there's so many ways that we can impact someone's life in this world, but nothing is as impactful as a good, constant, quiet, encouraging friendship. 

[00:42:22] Rita Burke: I hope she hears this conversation because she promised me a year and a half ago that she would be interviewed by us.

[00:42:29] Nicole Osbourne-James: Good luck. 

[00:42:30] Rita Burke: So I hope she hears this conversation. 

[00:42:32] Nicole Osbourne-James: Oh, maybe I'll get an opportunity to push her right back.

[00:42:36] Ellington Brown: Wow. I, whoever this person is, I hope she's fine. I'm embarrassed to be called out on the podcast. That's a definite shocker, that's part of comedy. Let's see, yeah, call them out. And this was a good call out. This wasn't like something bad or anything. So that's cool.

So you have always been an activist, you didn't call it that, but if you saw something that just wasn't right, you guys just, knocked it out of the way, you fixed it. Saw something else, you did that. How did you, or how do you use your platform to amplify conversations about mental health in the Black community?

[00:43:23] Nicole Osbourne-James: Oh my goodness! Mental health in the Black community is just, it's such a wonderful thing to see how many people are working at creating programming and events and opportunities around that. It just seems to me like it was not so long ago when we used to say that as Black people, and particularly as Black Caribbean people, we don't have anything to say about mental health, because we always know if somebody is crazy, we used to just say they're mad, right?

Everything was mad, and you're going to the madhouse, but we never really talked about, what is actually wrong with people. In fact, we say if you're old, then you're mad, but if you're young, then you're bad. We don't want to know about ADHD or something, you're either you're brock bad or you're mad.

That's it. That's all we had, so it's really amazing to come of age in a time now where I can see my kids are talking about, oh, who's been, diagnosed with something, who has depression, do they really think that, drug treatment is the best thing, blah, blah, blah, and comedy is a great way to talk about a lot of these issues because when people are laughing, they're learning, and they're really open to taking things in a way that is not clinical, but it's so necessary.

I think I use my platform to give many comedians an opportunity to talk about their mental health issues and the things that stress us and the things that make us feel bad. And, people feel like, oh, laughter is not the solution, but it really is, laughter clears the way for us to shake it off and then we can actually make a move towards a solution.

In more recent years probably during the, during the pandemic, when I think everybody being locked down and staying at home, there was a lot more opportunity for us to work together with community organizations to say what are we going to do about people's mental health, with all of these problems and all of these fears that we're dealing with.

 During that time, I created a program that was called Healing and Humor, and we were delivering it online. I was delivering it online where I would meet with a group of people on Zoom or, because Zoom was such a new technology then, and we would just talk about things and try to make each other laugh, and It really grew into into a good vehicle to, we've done it in professional environments to talk about people and work.

Myself and another comedian friend, her name is Lady Gay. Lady Gay is working with me to develop a workshop that we call healing for humor. No, Humor For Healers. So it's healing and humor, but for healers. So for people who they themselves may be therapists or counselors or community workers, they also need to know how they can use their tools, use the tools of laughter and comedy to help them better carry the burden of other people's mental health problems.

I don't work in that field. I'm not a clinical anything. I'm not a doctor of any kind. I call myself a comedy practitioner, but that really is just a joke. But using comedy has given me a chance to really see the different types of work that people are doing out there to heal our community and to have better, funnier conversations about how we can be healthier, how we can be mentally healthier.

[00:46:52] Rita Burke: It is time. It's time for us to see the humor in that and to help people using humor as a tool. Of course, you may not know this, but of course my background is mental health. I specialized in mental health nursing for many years. Ooh, I didn't know that. A lot of people don't know that. They know me as Rita Burke, who owned Burke's Bookstore, but that was my background.

As a matter of fact, I taught that as well. But so I do have a solid understanding of mental health, and of course, it was a taboo topic in our community, we swept it under the rug, but we still had our people who were experiencing challenges, so I'm happy to hear that you're somehow trying to connect humor to healing people with issues, mental health issues.

So I appreciate that! Thank you so much! 

[00:47:45] Nicole Osbourne-James: That is. Thank you. That is the thing I love about comedians though. They play, comedians play such a vital role in our culture because comedians are not afraid to laugh at ourselves or to make fools of ourselves. Comedians get on stage and they talk about the things that we all wish that we could talk about and we, in that way, we remove the stigma.

I've seen other comedians performances where they talk about, Having to be hospitalized for whatever their issues were, or they talk about how they had to be medicated and what the side effects were. You wouldn't think that the side effects could be so funny, but we will find ourselves laughing and just laughing and laughing over.

Situations that really could break your heart, they can really break your heart, but the comedian themselves is having a healing journey by being able to get on stage and share their story with other people and then at the end have people hug them and shake their hands about it. There's no better feeling, so I especially want to just really.

Raise up the comedians that I work with and all the people who are doing this amazing work And also there's a lot more room for her for anybody that wants to get out and have that feeling, you know Get into comedy. Let's do it. We'll help you. It's good for you, 

[00:49:08] Ellington Brown: Nicole. It has been wonderful talking to you this afternoon.

I don't know about anyone else, but my stomach hurts because I've certainly got a few good belly laughs in there listening to the stories that you were gracious enough to provide us. We talked about your entertainment career, which is ongoing and different levels and the many things that. You found yourself into Comedylicious, which I'm going to always remember that because it's all about food and your activism and social initiatives that we talked about and, was a lot of that was fueled by anger, but that's okay.

All of these things need some type of fuel in order to move forward. And because of your anger, a lot of things were fixed. And not in the where you were looking for a lot of doing it you just wanted to fix and personal insights and experiences. We got to talk a little bit about those things as well and I just want to thank you so much.

And when you turn that chapter Close that chapter again Please come back and tell us what your next venture happens to be because i'm sure it's gonna be hilarious I just know it. 

[00:50:40] Rita Burke: It certainly has been a treat. It's been a delight. I appreciate your taking your time to spend with us to tell your story.

And I know that our listeners are going to be inspired tremendously by how you said it and what you said. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you! 

[00:51:01] Nicole Osbourne-James: Thank you very much! 

[00:51:04] Ellington Brown: Thank you for listening to SpeakUP! International! If you wish to contact Ms. Nicole Osbourne-James, please be prepared to submit your name, your email address, and the reason why you wish to contact Ms. Osbourne-James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleOsbournejames/. 

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