For Trevor Jang, Laughter Is the Best Medicine

[Editor’s note: Next month, Trevor Jang will join Tyee Creative Forces Anthonia Ogundele and Eden Fineday at a special Creative Mornings/Vancouver event at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Fri. Sept. 4, held in partnership with The Tyee. Tickets are free and available now. We recommend signing up soon as the event is expected to reach capacity.]

Earlier this spring, Trevor Jang travelled from his home in Richmond, B.C. to Port Hardy, a small municipality on the northeastern tip of Vancouver Island. The Kwakiutul First Nation was hosting an event to honour community members new to recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, and Jang had been invited to perform standup comedy.

During the drumming, singing, cedar brushing and a blanketing ceremony, Jang was standing with his fellow comedians.

“It was very profound,” he recalls.

“We were witnessing this, and then they’re like, ‘Okay, guys, go tell jokes!’”

Not all performers would be up to the task of marshalling such a vibe shift. But Jang’s work is about embracing the absurdity contained in dissonance. His jokes openly address the realities of mental health, substance use and biracial identity that audiences might otherwise experience in shame or isolation.

During his set in Port Hardy, he told a story from his young adulthood, when he was wrestling with problematic substance use. Wet’suwet’en on his mother’s side and Chinese Canadian on his father’s, Jang spent his early years in Vancouver and Richmond. He moved with his mother and brother to Smithers when he was in the middle of high school.

“It was very much a culture shock. Richmond and Smithers are two completely different worlds,” he explained. “I appear Chinese, my last name is Jang, and Smithers at that time was a very racist place.”

After experiencing violent racism in Smithers as a teenager, binge drinking became a feature of his life.

Jang told the Port Hardy crowd about how he got hold of some cocaine at a karaoke bar in downtown Vancouver called, of all things, Funky Winker Beans. The cocaine was cut with fentanyl, and he overdosed.

“I didn’t care if I lived or died. I just didn’t want to die at Funky Winker Beans,” he said. Angry that he’d missed his karaoke spot, he offered pep talks to the other people and patients in the ER. His increasingly outlandish story brought down the house.

Following his set, an Indigenous Elder involved in the healing ceremony approached him. She told him she was hard of hearing and couldn’t take in most of the jokes.

“But she just enjoyed seeing her community laughing for an hour,” he said.

“She told me that they really needed that.”

The Elder’s words moved him.

A former journalist, Jang’s transition to a career in standup comedy arose directly out of his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.

“Pretty much everybody has been impacted by the toxic drug crisis in some way,” he said.

“Part of my deeper purpose in comedy has been to use humour as healing for myself, use humour as healing for the audience and to help destigmatize addiction in this public health emergency that we’re in.”

A profound transformation

In June, Jang celebrated his 34th birthday, a day that coincided with another personal milestone: the four-year anniversary of his sobriety. He started doing standup while in recovery in 2022, when he joined Hilarapy, a therapeutic comedy program founded by local counsellor and standup comedian Lizzie Allan.

For 10 weeks, Jang and his Hilarapy cohort met every Thursday to engage in three hours of intensive group therapy and standup comedy.

“Not only did I learn the basics and foundations of this craft that I have since fallen in love with and pursued, but I went through this very profound personal transformation,” he said.

“Lizzie’s whole purpose of that program is not necessarily for you to go on and pursue standup. But it’s to transform your shame and to own your story. And to provide hope to others who are either struggling themselves or know someone who is.”

The work set him on a path towards healing and comedy, which are inseparable to him now.

He is currently a sought-after presence on the Vancouver comedy circuit.

This year, he made his television debut as part of Comedy InvAsian III. The East Asian comedy showcase made a major splash in Variety and will stream on Hulu later in 2026.

A process of reconnection

Jang is also at work on his first book. Entitled Two Eagles Flying, the novel explores his experiences losing his father to drug overdose at a young age, as well as his own journey through addiction and what it means to start life again through recovery.

In 2025, he completed a six-month program through the Audible Indigenous Mentors Circle in which award-winning Anishinaabe and Polish author and journalist Tanya Talaga offered mentorship and guidance on his manuscript.

All this work builds upon Jang’s accomplishments as a former journalist. A graduate of the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s journalism program, Jang hosted a radio show for Canada’s First Nations Radio, also known as CFNR, in Terrace, B.C. He was also a recipient of the 2016 CBC Indigenous Fellowship through the Canadian Journalism Foundation.

He won silver for Best Personal Essay at the 2018 Digital Publishing Awards for his essay “Kids of Addiction,” which was published by Discourse Media.

Journalism offered Jang a lens through which to explore his Indigenous identity and reconnect with his heritage.

“I was a young media broadcast professional, still cutting my teeth in the industry, but at the same time going through this profound cultural reconnection,” he said of his early years as a radio host and news reporter.

As part of his process of cultural reconnection, Jang learned about his great-grandfather, the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief Johnny David. He was the first Wet’suwet’en chief to give evidence in the precedent-setting Delgamuukw v. British Columbia court case.

“It proved that Aboriginal title had never been extinguished by the Crown in British Columbia,” Jang said.

“It was basically the test for every First Nation moving forward to be able to prove Aboriginal title. For the first time in 2013 as a 21-year-old, I was learning about my family, my own lineage and the role that my own family played in the advancement of Indigenous rights across the province.”

Jang draws strength from this knowledge as he continues to forge a path as a comedian.

Later this month, he will compete in the Yuk Yuks Rising Comics Championship in Surrey, perform as part of the Comedy at Dusk series in East Vancouver, compete in a standup competition in Cloverdale and perform in an Indigenous comedy showcase in North Vancouver.

Amidst the successes of his current life, he thinks often of his little brother, who died in a car crash at age 20. At the time, Jang was a little over a year into his own recovery.

“I know he was worried,” he said, of his family’s concern for him during his years using substances. “He would have loved to see what I’m doing now. Wherever he is, he’s watching. And he’s laughing his ass off.”

Join Trevor Jang, Anthonia Ogundele and Eden Fineday in a special breakfast event celebrating The Tyee’s Creative Forces with Creative Mornings/Vancouver at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Fri. Sept. 4. Hosted by Jackie Wong. The event is free and attendees must register online.