The Dashing Chronicles: Life on Planet Beyak
- Winston McLean | April 19, 2017
For those of you who don’t know, Lynn Beyak was the flouncy Senator on the Aboriginal Affairs Committee that proudly announced, “I speak partly for the record, but mostly in memory of the kindly and well-intentioned men and women and their descendants — perhaps some of us here in this chamber — whose remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part and are overshadowed by negative reports."
Because I often pretend to be a journalist, I felt it was my duty to at least pretend to do some investigating into who she is and why she would say such ridiculous things with what apparently counts as a straight face.
Duty. Love that word. Even though it sounds suspiciously like doody. But I digest.
I spent an entire minute googling her origins. What I discovered shocked and amazed me.
She grew up the eldest of twelve children in coal country. Her family was dirt poor. At an early age she married a war veteran who helped her launch her career as a singer. Or was that Katy Perry?
Fact is, I didn’t get much info on Beyak because I got bored. Sure, there’s the question of her time as an insurance agent. Allegations she was in real estate. And, before entering the murky waters of politics, she polished her craft as a automotive dealership, um, dealer.
To escape the boredom I began to fantasize that Beyak is an alien. Then things began to make sense.
On planet Beyak it is par for the course to break several thousand eggs to make a few decent omelets. “Hey look, this one turned out kinda nifty! Our cold, ham-fisted, superiority is working. Let’s celebrate with cake! We’re gonna need, more, eggs.”
True enough, there are reports that a few kids did have a decent time at the residential schools. Hell, even a busted clock “works” at least twice a day.
Now here is where I may lose a few of you. It is also true there were decent people who worked those institutions, who tried to make things better. And when these good people saw the evil going down in these schools they were silenced.
Peter Bryce is a great example. Unlike Beyak, Bryce was neither an insurance agent, realtor nor a car dealer. He was a mere a doctor and a public official with the federal government at the peak of the residential school system in the early 1900’s.
Bryce investigated the schools and wrote a book called “The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921.” It was not a happy story. His findings got him pushed out of his job with government.
So part of Beyak’s obnoxious rant may be true, but not in the way she thinks. And her rose coloured view of the world does not overwhelm the fact the schools were traumatizing, genocidal factories.
What kept me interested in this story was Beyak’s deft, or daft, attempts to stickhandle her way through the storm she summoned, saying her comments were to be taken in a larger context of taxes and a push for an audit of First Nation spending.
Being your humble fake news-ologist – which sounds suspiciously like proctologist – I tried to grasp how taxes and audits are connected to the benefits of child abuse. I wanted to get to the bottom of things.
My brain attempted several tortured moves and stretches and a couple of twists of imagination. She’s a better mental gymnast than I, but then again, that’s not saying much. Have you seen my Olympic ribbon-dance routine? It needs work.
Perhaps on Planet Beyak the lack of gravity enables one to leap over facts and realities in a single flounce. Perhaps that same lack of gravity allows the brain to function with less blood so that depth-defying turns of logic can be performed with ease.
My money is on the fact that, like Superman, our Sun has given her superpowers rendering her immune to the truth. Like a slice of lemon against an oncoming asteroid, the truth does not stand a chance.
Dirk knows too many of you are picturing me in sparkly man-tights, dancing across a large gymnasium mat to the tune “Another One Bites The Dust”, jasmine ribbons flowing awkwardly in the air. You people are sick.