The first successful phase of CanariCam on-telescope commissioning began at the GTC in June 2011. Initial results are encouraging and imply that CanariCam and the GTC will enable outstanding science. Formal CanariCam commissioning is obviously intended to demonstrate that CanariCam itself is ready for use by the GTC community, but in fact the commissioning procedure is an assessment of the performance of the combined CC-GTC system. This is a complicated process, since the GTC is also a new facility, and CanariCam requires that certain previously unused GTC operational modes be fully functional. We present an overview of the early CanariCam commissioning process and initial results for the modes examined so far, which include imaging, low-resolution 10 micron spectroscopy, and polarimetry. We comment on how we see the CanariCam-GTC system performance evolving over the first year or two of scientific operation. Other papers presented at this meeting will examine complementary aspects of these early CanariCam commissioning results. We wish to acknowledge the excellent support of numerous scientists, engineers, and managers at both the GTC and the University of Florida who helped make CanariCam a reality.