Catherine O’Hara — who passed away on Friday, January 30 at the age of 71 — was fortunate enough to call John Candy a longtime peer and friend. That’s why she delivered a beautiful eulogy for Candy after the world lost him on March 4, 1994, when he was just 43 years old.
Speaking at Candy’s funeral at St. Basil’s Church in Toronto on March 18, 1994, according to Us Weekly, O’Hara said, “Who am I to be standing up here talking about John Candy? I’ll tell you who I am. I’m one of the millions of people whose lives were touched and enriched by the life that was John Candy.”
“I know you all have a story,” she continued. “You asked him for his autograph, and he stopped to ask you about you. You auditioned for Second City, and John watched you smiling, laughing. And though you didn’t get the job, you did get to walk away thinking, ‘What do they know? John Candy thinks I’m funny.’”
Catherine & John Worked Together Multiple Times
O’Hara first met Candy in 1974, when she auditioned for Toronto’s Second City touring company, per Us Weekly.
“When I joined him in the main cast, he drove us all the way to Chicago to play their Second City stage,” O’Hara recalled during her tribute. “I had a crush on him, of course, but he was deeply in love with [his wife, Rosemary]. So I got to be his friend, and I closed the Chicago bars with him, just to be with him. We did SCTV together. When we all tried to come up with opening credits that would somehow tell the audience exactly what we were trying with the show to say about TV, it was John who said, ‘Why don’t we just throw a bunch of TVs off a building?’”
The pair then reunited professionally to work on 1990’s “Home Alone.”
“He could give them one day, so they took him for 17 hours of improvising,” O’Hara said. “John gave himself so completely to every role, big or small. Not just because we all came to expect it from him, but because he loved doing it. He really had fun.”
Catherine Called John the ‘Patron Saint of Laughter’
“I realize when I think of John, it’s not in terms of details,” O’Hara continued while honoring the friend she had lost, according to Us Weekly. “I think of John in terms of the big picture. That is why we so mourn our loss, but we treasure it as well. John’s life had meaning. John had principles. He lived by them, he worked by them. He set an example in so many ways. He was a protector. He cared. If he felt you’d been wronged in any way, he’d risk everything to make it right. To make you know you were worth something, too.”
While calling Candy’s films “a safe haven for those of us who get overwhelmed by the sadness and troubles of this world,” she deemed the star himself as “the patron saint of laughter.”
“God bless and keep his soul. I will miss him,” she said. “But I hope and pray to leave this world too some day and to have a place near God — as near as any other soul, with the exception of John Candy.”
