The other day, I tuned my TV to the inestimable channel 9. In this area, for those of us not yet ensnared by Comcast, that happens to be the Canadian channel — the CBC.

Contrary to the beliefs of some Americans, the CBC isn’t just hockey, curling and Ian Hanomansing (who, apparently, plays neither hockey nor curling). There’s so much more, and all of it is steeped in glorious Canadian accents.

When I visited the official network of Don Cherry, I found a comedy special. But these weren’t typical comedians: they were funny. And not only that, but they were all what I like to call non-standard people. (You might know them as “disabled,” but that is a patently erroneous term.) I happened to find the program while a blind comedian was on stage (“When my wife is mad at me, she doesn’t yell; she moves the furniture”), but he wasn’t the one who really caught my attention.

The next comedian was a man named Chris Fonseca, and his non-standard feature was quite evident: he had cerebral palsy. But his was considerably more severe not just than mine, but also than that of my doppelganger, comedian Josh Blue. Fonseca was in a wheelchair, he had limited use of his hands, and his voice was heavily affected. But do you know what was most important?

He made me laugh.

For a sample of his humor, you can watch his appearance on Letterman.