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![\"Jasmeet](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/6a973b787eb64ecbd6730790jpeg.jpg\")
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJasmeet Raina poses for a portrait in Toronto, ahead of the release of season 2 of his show Late Bloomer, Thursday, April 3, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Cole Burston<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a pretty traumatic part of my life, as I\u2019m sure it was for a lot of people,\u201d recalled the 36-year-old.<\/p>\n
He used humour to defuse that tension and show others at school that he wasn\u2019t a threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI became a class clown,\u201d said Raina, now a professional comedian and actor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always liked comedy, but I really used it at that moment, because it was more like a survival instinct,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At that time not a lot of people knew what Sikh people were. I did my best to try to educate people on this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next week marks the 25th anniversary of 9\/11.<\/p>\n
In the years after the attacks, Raina began posting comedic skits and monologues on YouTube about being a racialized kid growing up in Canada. They garnered hundreds of thousands of views and subscribers.<\/p>\n
Those experiences also inspired his TV show \u201cLate Bloomer,\u201d streaming on Crave.<\/p>\n
Set in suburban Toronto, the dramedy follows his character, Jasmeet Dutta, as he chases viral fame while navigating his family\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n
One episode called \u201cNot My Uncle\u201d follows Raina\u2019s own experience as a child at school on 9\/11.<\/p>\n
The attacks changed comedy, said Raina.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s pre-9\/11 racism and post-9\/11 racism. And pre-9\/11 was like more lighthearted Apu jokes (from \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d), gas station jokes, taxi driver jokes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen post-9\/11, it just changed drastically, like, \u2018You\u2019re a terrorist, you want to bomb people, you want to kill.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Marlis Schweitzer, a theatre and performance studies professor at York University, said people around the world turned to comedy to overcome the trauma after 9\/11.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t happen right away.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the immediate aftermath, there was this sense that irony was dead, that satire was dead,\u201d Schweitzer said. \u201cIt was not acceptable to laugh or to poke fun at the horrific tragedy and the trauma of 9\/11.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the attacks, comedian Rick Mercer cancelled his wildly popular segment \u201cTalking to Americans\u201d on CBC\u2019s satirical news show \u201cThis Hour Has 22 Minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there was eventually room for laughter.<\/p>\n
James Nadler, a screenwriting and television professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, said many comedians started helping their audiences make sense of the tragedy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we laugh, it\u2019s because we recognize, \u2018oh yeah, that is true,’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the core of every joke there is truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jon Stewart began criticizing government policies in his late-night satirical show in the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018The Daily Show\u2019 moved from being about pop culture to being much more political in its thrust, in terms of its comedy,\u201d said Nadler.<\/p>\n
And many tuned in to watch.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a whole generation that did not get their news from NBC or the New York Times or even Fox, but were getting it from the \u2018Daily Show,’\u201d Nadler said, adding the show inspired other satirical programming.<\/p>\n
In Canada, Mercer launched the flagship \u201cRick Mercer Report\u201d in 2004, travelling across the country, poking fun at politicians along the way.<\/p>\n
Racialized Canadian comedians such as Raina and Russell Peters also began sharing their personal experiences with racism through comedy, Schweitzer added.<\/p>\n
One of her favourite Canadian plays \u201cThe Adventures of Ali and Ali and the Axis of Evil\u201d was produced after 9\/11. The comedy follows two refugees from a war-torn country as they try to adapt to western culture.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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Social media was also relatively new at the time, Schweitzer said, and it helped comedians share their satire across the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big genre shift was not so much longer-form comedy, but really bite-size comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Historically, comedy has always helped people overcome pain, Schweitzer said<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople, in periods of great loss and uncertainty, are seeking forms of community, ways of sharing connection, hope, laughter and comedy can provide that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 5, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jasmeet Raina leaned on comedy days after the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when students at school began circulating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-197805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}