# The Toronto Second City *A Biography of Catherine Ohara* — Legendary Biographies No. 218 - **Subject:** Catherine Anne O'Hara - **Written by:** Donovan Hadley - **Shelf:** Screen & Stage / Performing Arts - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 187 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 187 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-145-1) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Camille Rhodes (ISBN 979-8-90623-616-6) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/218-the-toronto-second-city.html ## About this book The 2020 Emmy is where most accounts of Catherine O'Hara begin. Donovan Hadley's biography refuses to treat it as the summit. The Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, awarded for Moira Rose, recognised late what the Best in Show and Beetlejuice years had earned her many times over, and a book that starts there has already missed most of the career. So this one opens earlier. Catherine Anne O'Hara, born March 4, 1954, in Toronto, Ontario, the second of seven children of an Irish-Canadian Catholic family. She started at the Second City Toronto theatre in 1974 alongside John Candy, Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin, joined the cast of the SCTV Network's Second City Television in 1976, and took two consecutive Emmy Awards for writing on the series, in 1981 and 1982. The parts most audiences know came next. Kate McCallister in Home Alone and Home Alone 2. Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice, and again in the long-delayed Beetlejuice Beetlejuice of 2024. The Christopher Guest mockumentary cycle: Waiting for Guffman in 1996, Best in Show in 2000, A Mighty Wind in 2003, For Your Consideration in 2006. Then Moira Rose, across six seasons of Schitt's Creek on CBC and Netflix from 2015 to 2020, a role the Levys, father and son, had built around her. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2025 and died of it on January 30, 2026, at seventy-one. Hadley follows the arc through all of it: the Toronto childhood, the early Second City years, the Guest films, the Schitt's Creek run, the return to Delia Deetz. Fifty years of work that was the connective tissue of the Canadian comedy export, and one award at the end of it that arrived long after the case had been made. ## Contents 1. The Sixth Child 2. Second City Toronto 3. Lola, Dusty, the Gallery 4. SCTV: The 1976-1984 Years 5. After Hours and the Move South 6. Kate McCallister 7. Cookie Fleck and the Christopher Guest Era 8. The Levys' Phone Call 9. The 2020 Emmy Sweep 10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and the Last Year 11. The Brentwood Years 12. January 30, 2026 13. The Moira Accent ## Questions **Who is The Toronto Second City about?** Catherine Anne O'Hara. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Toronto Second City — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 3,551 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 60,000 words, 13 chapters, 187 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Donovan Hadley is a Manchester-based culture writer for The Guardian and Sight & Sound. His biographies cover the film, theatre, and television figures whose work shaped the British and American midcentury. He spends his time researching archives to reconstruct the quiet moments behind major cultural milestones. His published work includes titles like The Nightmare Man, Frequency, and The Gap Year. He has also explored midcentury creative communities in books such as The Fifty Million Dollar Man, The USC Film School, Apartment Five C, Room 607, and The First Cast. He lives in Manchester, England, where he spends his weekends browsing local independent cinemas and collecting vintage film reels.