Oprah Winfrey has taken her new-age wisdom and advice to Toronto, where devotees are being schooled by the media maven herself.
The longtime TV host is in Canada's largest city to headline two sold-out shows of "Oprah's Lifeclass: The Tour."
The tour is an on-the-road version of a show that, among other lessons, extols the value of spiritual reflection and living with purpose.
Big-thinkers such as spiritualist Deepak Chopra and motivational speaker Tony Robbins have joined her for the tour.
Hundreds of fans lined up outside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre ahead of the first show Monday morning.
The first eager pupils started lining up as early as 5 a.m., a publicist told The Canadian Press.
Individual tickets for "Lifeclass" in Toronto were priced as high as $1,000 on Craigslist as of Monday morning. Others were selling a pair for $600 on Kijiji, another online marketplace.
Winfrey herself has said she's guided by the show's lessons, which have included the importance of "being present" and learning how to bounce back from mistakes.
Patience, however, may be another of Winfrey's lessons as she grapples with the tepid reception of her specialty network.
Confronted with dismal ratings, OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network) has had to slash staff, restructure offices and cancel Rosie O'Donnell's talk show.
"We're not getting the initial return on that investment that we had hoped for but we continue to be optimistic about that," said John Cassaday, CEO of Corus Entertainment, which runs OWN Canada.
Cassaday told CP that he believes it's going to take some time for the network to catch on with audiences north of the border.
And while OWN has been coolly received by North American audiences, tickets for "Lifeclass" in Toronto sold out in minutes, suggesting that fans still want to see Winfrey do what she's famous for: talking.
