Tim Sims

Life1962-1995

Nationalities

RolesPerformer

Tim Sims (1962 to February 2, 1995) was a Canadian comedian, improviser, writer, and director who performed with The Second City Toronto. He died at age 33, and the Tim Sims Encouragement Fund Award was established in his memory by his widow Lindsay Leese, becoming one of the most important early-career comedy awards in Canada. The Second City Toronto named its main performance space the Tim Sims Playhouse in his honour when the company moved to 56 Blue Jays Way in 1997.

Sims was born in 1962 in Canada and came up through the Toronto comedy scene during the late 1980s, establishing himself as a performer, writer, and director with The Second City Toronto. He worked across multiple facets of the company, contributing to mainstage and touring company productions during a period when Second City Toronto was emerging as a major force in Canadian comedy. His skills extended beyond performance into writing and directing, and he became known within the company as a versatile creative presence capable of contributing at every level of production.

In 1991 Sims appeared as a cast member in Second City Live, a fifty-minute late-night television special produced by CHCH-TV in association with Second City Television Enterprises and directed by Larry Schnurr. The special, which aired on August 17, 1991, featured an ensemble that included Ryan Stiles, Kathryn Greenwood, Karen Hines, Rose Abdoo, Ed Sahely, and Judith Scott, with the Northern Pikes as the musical guest.

Beyond The Second City, Sims became widely recognized by Canadian audiences through two recurring performance roles. He played Jack the Cave Man, a recurring character on the long-running Canadian television comedy The Red Green Show. He also portrayed Circle Researcher Rory Tate in a series of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercials that aired across Canada from approximately 1990 until his death, becoming a cult favourite among Canadian television audiences during the early 1990s.

Sims was recognized within the Toronto comedy community not only for his performance and writing but also for his dedication to charity fundraising. He was married to comic actor Lindsay Leese. He died on February 2, 1995, in Toronto, at the age of 33, from AIDS-related causes. Sims continued as a core creative contributor to Second City Toronto through the early 1990s, recognized within the company for his versatility across performance, writing, and directing roles. His death on February 2, 1995, at the age of 33, ended a career that had been marked by rapid development across multiple creative disciplines within a compressed professional timeline.

In response to his death, his widow Lindsay Leese, along with Second City Toronto, established the Tim Sims Encouragement Fund Award, an annual award given to a deserving Canadian comedy performer to support their continued development. The award, which has been presented annually since its establishment, is administered through the Second City Foundation and recognizes emerging Canadian comedy talent. It has grown into one of the most recognized comedy development awards in Canada, its continued annual presentation sustaining Sims's presence in the institutional memory of Canadian comedy long after his death.

Sims's career trajectory at Second City Toronto, which placed him among the leading performers of his generation at the institution and recognized him as a complete comedy artist capable of contributing at every level of the company's creative process, makes his early death a loss that the Canadian comedy community has continued to mark through the award that bears his name.

Historical Context

Sims worked at The Second City Toronto during a period when the company was producing performers who would go on to reshape Canadian and North American comedy. His contemporaries at Second City Toronto in the early 1990s included Ryan Stiles, who would become internationally known through Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and the ensemble that populated the company's stages during one of its most creatively productive eras. His death in 1995 removed a performer and writer who colleagues described as one of the most talented of his generation from a community that was just entering a period of explosive growth.

The timing of his death, during the height of the AIDS crisis and before the broader availability of effective treatments, placed his loss within a larger cultural moment that affected creative communities across North America. The Toronto comedy world's response, channeled through the establishment of the Tim Sims Encouragement Fund, reflected both personal grief and a collective determination to ensure that emerging comic talent would receive the kind of support and recognition that Sims himself had exemplified.

Legacy

The Tim Sims Encouragement Fund, established by his widow Lindsay Leese after his death, has become one of the most significant early-career comedy awards in Canada. From 1996 to 2014 the fund awarded $65,000 in cumulative prize money to emerging comedians through a competition that opened each September with a Fresh Meat Showcase of approximately twenty Toronto-area comedians. Leese also created and served as executive producer of Cream of Comedy, the annual award showcase broadcast nationally on CTV from 1996 to 2007 and later on The Comedy Network.

Beginning in 2015 the award shifted to an annual grant to a graduate of the Comedy Writing and Performance program at Humber College, with a parallel award until 2019 for a graduate of the Second City Training Centre Conservatory Program. The Ontario Arts Foundation now administers the award. When The Second City Toronto moved to its venue at 56 Blue Jays Way in 1997, the main performance space was named the Tim Sims Playhouse in his honour, ensuring that his name remains present in the daily life of Canadian comedy. The naming of a major comedy venue after a performer who died at 33 speaks to the depth of impact Sims had on his peers and the community he served.