WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-‘GERRY DEE’

Art imitates life in Dee’s new classroom comedy

 Gerry Dee went back to school for his comedy – as a teacher. The stand-up comic taught for years in a Toronto private school before turning to comedy. Now he’s back in class but still in comedy with “Mr. D,” which recently began airing Mondays on CBC Television.

“Mr. D” is based on Dee’s early experiences in the classroom. He had studied kinesiology and physical education and then found himself history and geography – courses he says he felt completely unequipped to handle.

“I’m not a really well-read person,” he says. “I was always a Coles Notes person. I never really got into reading books. I’m too ADD. And here I am, teaching subjects that really require a lot of based knowledge on stuff. “I actually thought I was doing a good job, but when I look back, it was probably horrific.”

In “Mr. D,” he plays a character not far removed from his real-life experiences. He’s a teacher who thinks he’s popular with the kids, but they really don’t care one way or another. And he’s teaching social sciences, a subject he knows almost nothing about.

The show co-stars Jonathan Torrens (“Trailer Park Boys”) and Booth Savage as the vice principal and principal, respectively. The supporting cast includes Bette MacDonald, Naomi Snieckus, Wes Williams and Mark Little.

As for the students, all but one are played by first-time actors from the Halifax area, where the show is shot. “The students we got we would put up against any Hollywood kid actors,” Dee says. “They were unbelievable.”

Dee is new to acting himself. Born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area, he grew up in a family where the main obsessions were sports and musical theater. “My mother’s side and my sister had some dancing and acting, and brother and my dad’s side had the athleticism,” he says. “Luckily, I think I got a bit of everybody’s.

“I used to sing ‘Evita’ with my sister … and then I’d go play hockey with my brother.”

He played varsity hockey at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and was a good enough golfer to compete on a national level. He still plays with a 5 handicap. After university, he went to work as a teacher in Toronto, spending 10 years “embedded” in the education system.

For half that time, he moonlighted as a stand-up comic until, in 2003, he felt confident enough to quit the day job and try his hand in Los Angeles – a year after he became the first Canadian in almost three decades to win the San Francisco International Comedy Competition.

He says he never saw the move into comedy as much of a risk. “I always could have gone back,” he says. “I tell young comics this all the time: ‘Get a day job.’ It’s not a realistic goal to be a kid and think, ‘I’m going to be a comic.’ ”

Until a couple of years ago, he, his wife and two daughters divided their time between Toronto and Los Angeles. “I don’t want to raise a family in L.A.,” he says. “I’m very happy and proud to be Canadian. When I left L.A.,that was what I said: I’m just going to go back where I love it and try to make it here.”

 Since he came back, he has been moving into TV and film. He had a bit part in “Trailer Park Boys: The Movie” in 2006. Now with “Mr. D,” he has two TV gigs – he also appears on The Score as “Gerry Dee: Sports Reporter.” W