Eugene Levy, left, and Martin Short, right, pose together at the opening of The Comedy of Errors in Los Angeles in May 2009. (Chris Pizzello/Associated Press)

Canadian comedian Martin Short made a career out creating characters such as nerdy Ed Grimley, albino entertainer Jackie Rogers Jr. and celebrity talk show host Jiminy Glick.

As he heads for an engagement at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, those characters are still with him.

"I don't get tired of them because I always improvise within them all. There's so much I don't plan, that sometimes I'm amused by what I've said," Short said in an interview with CBC's Q cultural affairs show on Wednesday.

Many of those characters were created for 1980s sketch comedy hit SCTV and later reprised on Saturday Night Live, while Glick had his own show, Primetime Glick.

"What I loved about doing Primetime Glick is that I never showed up as myself, I was always someone else. It was certainly fun to be other people," Short said, speaking from his cottage in Muskoka, Ont. "They're all my creations, even me on stage is my creation."

Characters he's performed over the years will come back to him in unexpected ways, Short said.

For a long time, he had no reason to morph into the character of Franck Eggelhoffer, the gay wedding planner from Father of the Bride. But Franck recently re-emerged as a way of discussing American politics, he said.

Stumbled into comedy

Hamilton, Ont.-born Short says he "stumbled into" comedy after doing theatre for four years while at McMaster University. Short initially went into pre-med, then trained in social work.

"It wasn't so much that I wanted to be a doctor as that I was a fan of the CBC's Quincy," Short said. "Then I took social work, but mainly in an attempt to create a schedule so I could do theatre, which I did obsessively throughout my four years at Mac."

His ability to create memorable comedic characters was honed at Toronto's Second City Stage.

"I started to become confident that I could improvise, which I didn't think I could do. I started to do characters where I thought I was doing what everyone did, but as Catherine O'Hara would later say, 'You were the only one who had his own water dish with his own special hair-do for each character,'" Short recalled.

"That really taught me a lot. Working with people like Catherine and John Candy and Andrea Martin taught me about being loose and free and not worrying about being funny — just being real in the character."

O'Hara, who went from SCTV and SNL to films such as Best in Show and actors such as Dan Aykroyd , Candy, Martin and Short were part of the Canadian contingent who enriched U.S. comedy in the 1970s and 1980s.

Short has also been successful on the stage, winning Tony Award in 1999 for his performance in the musical revival of Little Me and returning to Broadway in 2006 with Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me.

He said live work is his "favourite thing to do."

"It's always dangerous to take too long a break from it because then you think — do I still want to do it, can I do it?" Short said.

While the earlier part of his career was built on taking risks, it's live comedy now that keeps him edgy, he said.

"What gets even trickier is if you reach a point in your career where you don't have to take risks. Now you've got to keep yourself interested. At 59 [his current age], there's a very valid reason to say excuse me while I disappear ... I still love doing this and it keeps me very young and limber."

Short said he's performed at Just for Laughs in Toronto and been invited several times to Just for Laughs in Montreal, but this is the first year he hasn't had a conflict.

He'll host the Just for Laughs gala Saturday at Theatre St. Denis in Montreal.