It’s hard to admit, but Trudeau was right to apologize

That’s the problem with prejudice — when you stumble across real people in the real world, it makes it so much more difficult to cling to.

Now, to back up a little, I must admit my instinctive distaste for our current prime minister is not based on any particular sound reasoning or even a solid political viewpoint. Sure, there are some things the current government he leads can be taken to task on, but overall, they’re not screwing up to such an extent it calls for revolution in our streets.

No, this dislike arises from a visceral starting point: I simply feel he’s faking all this seemingly endless sincerity and golly gosh, wideeyed concern for each and every one of God’s creations. This is usually expressed in dramatic style with perfect pitch and nuanced pregnant pauses as Our Justin rolls out yet one more apology to another aggrieved interest group.

Never having met the man, this is indeed a prejudicial viewpoint. Maybe it’s because he’s so darn handsome and suave, I’m jealous, maybe it’s because he’s a rich kid and I’ve always distrusted them, or maybe it’s because his dad screwed over Alberta so badly that letting that slide is tantamount to provincial treason.

Regardless, when I heard Trudeau the Younger was going to be apologizing to the LGBTQ community because of past wrongs committed against gay people, an initial knee-jerk reaction followed as surely as a Stampeders meltdown in the Grey Cup.

But then I read the story of Everett George Klippert. Suddenly, the idea of watching another solitary tear slowly descend our prime minister’s face as he says sorry to the camera didn’t really seem so annoying.

Klippert was born in Saskatchewan, but grew up in Calgary, the youngest of nine kids, and, after leaving school with a Grade 8 education, he eventually found regular work driving a city transit bus. After that, things went decidedly downhill. You see Klippert was gay — a male homosexual in a time when living out your desires was illegal.

Klippert was gay ... in a time when living out your desires was illegal.

In 1960, at age 34, he was arrested on 18 counts of gross indecency for having consensual sex with men and thrown in jail for four years. When he got out, he fled the city for a fresh start in the Northwest Territories, getting work as a mechanic in Pine Point. Sadly, with such a criminal record, the opportunity for a quiet life was non-existent.

When he arrived, he was warned by local Mounties that they’d be watching him and, sure enough, he was dragged in for questioning over an arson investigation in 1965 — a crime Klippert had nothing to do with.

But, of course, the cops asked him about his sex life, and when he told them that, yes, indeed, he’d been involved with other men, that was enough to get him hit with four new charges of gross indecency and a subsequent three-year sentence.

It didn’t stop there. During these legalities, a court psychiatrist concluded Klippert was “hopelessly homosexual,” though adding there was no risk he’d ever be violent. Nevertheless, the pronouncement that he wasn’t likely to change his homosexual ways resulted in Klippert being deemed a dangerous sexual offender who should be locked up indefinitely.

It would be that conviction and sentence that led Pierre Trudeau to eventually introduce a bill decriminalizing homosexuality in 1969. Even then, Klippert wasn’t released until two years later. He’d die of kidney disease in 1996. He was hardly the only gay person to suffer in such a way in this country, but he was the last one to be imprisoned, and though he’d later refuse offers to become a figure head for the burgeoning gay rights movement, his suffering would be instrumental in changing things for the better in Canada.

He deserves that apology. Prejudice is hard to swallow, but to do so is cathartic for everyone involved.

So, in memory of Everett Klippert, our prime minister is to be commended for doing the right thing.