'Performing is what makes me happy': A cancer diagnosis brought this Broadway star back home

After making it big on Broadway, Catherine Wreford is back in her hometown of Winnipeg. This summer, she's performing at Rainbow Stage, where she got her start in showbiz.  

But what brought her back to the prairie theatre isn't a starring role. Five years ago, Wreford was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. 

Now that she's back where it all began, Wreford can't help but remember being a teen with Broadway dreams. 

"I kept telling all my friends: 'I'm going to be on Broadway!', and they were like: 'only like 0.2 per cent of people get to Broadway', and I was like: 'okay, that will be me'." 

Wreford's determination and talent landed her role after role, starring in musicals like Annie Get Your Gun, 42nd Street, and Oklahoma. 

But after touring extensively for five years, she was mentally and physically exhausted. She moved to Los Angeles where she met her husband and had two kids, all while attending nursing school.

It was right after she graduated that she received the devastating cancer diagnosis.

"I graduated May 12, had my daughter May 18, and then I was diagnosed with brain cancer. They took me in for a CT scan and everybody's faces were sort of white when I came out. They said: 'you have a small mass in your brain'."

The doctor showed her a picture of her scan and the "small mass" was actually bigger than her surgeon's fist. 

"I called my husband and I said: 'I have a tumour, a brain tumour,' and I just remember trying not to move but tears were going down my eyes."

With the cancer diagnosis, doctors said she had between two and six years to live. This year marks almost five years since the diagnosis. Ultimately, she's living on borrowed time. 

Wreford and her husband decided to move back home to Winnipeg. Soon after, she made another major life change. 

"I took a minute to figure out what I really wanted to do. It was not nursing, I figured out that performing is what makes me happy."  

So, more than 10 years after her last performance, Wreford is back on stage in Rainbow Stage's production of Beauty and the Beast. 

Not only does she have to train to sing and dance again, but the surgery and chemotherapy she has undergone make the hill she has to climb that much steeper. 

"Singing is hard because from radiation it's kind of fried my vocal chords, and because they took out a quarter of my brain, I don't have much short term memory."

Despite these obstacles, and the fact that this could be her last summer, Wreford is unwaveringly happy to be on stage performing again.

"I get paid to do what I love. It's me, it's my life, it's where I'm most comfortable out of any place in the world. To me this is home, this is where I live, this is where I am my best person."