EX-POLITICIAN HEHR REFLECTS ON HIS AGONY AND HEALING
Forgiveness. We all desire it. Since none of us is perfect, and all of us have made mistakes, yearning for forgiveness from others is part of the human condition.
Kent Hehr, former Liberal Party MP and cabinet minister, says he has spent the last two years mulling the practice of self-reflection and forgiveness.
In a beautifully written June 18 post on his Facebook page, Hehr points out that more than two years have passed since he faced the #Metoo accusations that caused his rather precipitous fall from grace.
“While it has been a whirlwind, I have taken pause every day since to reflect not just on the accusations, but how I have lived my life,” he writes.
In January 2018, an Alberta woman said on Twitter that 10 years earlier, while working at the Alberta legislature — when Hehr was an MLA for the opposition Alberta Liberals between the years of 2008 and 2015 — he called her “yummy” while in an elevator together. She said he made similar remarks or tried to brush up against her in later encounters. The feeding frenzy on Twitter by many thousands of people was swift and near-unanimous. The next day he resigned from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet as sport and disabilities minister.
The Prime Minister’s Office commissioned an independent investigation, which found the woman’s claims were legitimate, but details of the review were kept under wraps by the PMO due to privacy concerns — even though the accuser wanted them made public.
Hehr said then and maintains today that he doesn’t recall meeting the woman at the legislature or calling her or anyone else “yummy” — ever.
A couple of days later, another woman — a staff member of a fellow Liberal MP, alleged that Hehr grabbed her from behind during a photo shoot at a staff Christmas party in 2016 and left his hand there.
It’s vital to point out that Hehr has zero feeling in his hands or forearms. He relies on his shoulder muscles to move his arms and can’t fully control where his arms end up. Indeed, Hehr has received third-degree burns to his hands from a hot cup of coffee offered to him by a well-meaning person — feeling nothing as layers of skin peeled away, requiring medical treatment.
At the age of 21, on Oct. 3, 1991, Hehr, a bystander, was shot in a drive-by shooting in Calgary. The resulting spinal cord injury he suffered rendered him a quadriplegic, with no feeling below his breastbone.
In Hehr’s Facebook post, which has received more than 2,500 likes, 610 overwhelmingly positive comments and 346 shares, he writes that what he went through came into “sharp focus” on April 30 “when the woman who accused me of sexual harassment in 2018 apologized for making libellous statements about Canadian public figure Warren Kinsella.” She made false claims, was forced to retract her statements, apologize and pay his legal bills. “Kinsella wrote an article that provided some context for all of this ... Here’s how he closed it: ‘ ... to Kent
Hehr, wherever you are: I now wonder whether you deserved better. I wonder that a lot.’”
This is not to say that the woman who complained about Hehr should be disbelieved or that she should be threatened for making her complaint — which she says has happened.
“When I read this,” wrote Hehr, “my mind immediately went to the classic Clint Eastwood film,
Unforgiven. My favourite scene is when Eastwood’s character, an aging outlaw killer, stands above the corrupt sheriff who pleads, ‘I don’t deserve this, to die like this. I was building a house.’ Eastwood’s character replies, ‘Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.’
“In response to this accusation I wrote, ‘I have never been perfect but have always strived to do better,’ and this remains true today. The important question for me is whether I could become a better person from the #Metoo movement. The answer has proven to be yes.
“I used to think that I could call myself a feminist simply because I was a progressive ... But it was not enough, not even close.
“It meant looking at my own behaviour and language. It means humility by consistently choosing to be humble. It means renouncing attitudes once taken for granted.
“The truth is: I have acted inappropriately at times in my life — sometimes inadvertently, sometimes by choice. I grew up playing hockey, and if there was ever a place for toxic masculinity to fester it was in the dressing room.
“Even as an elected politician, I could revel in a bad joke with friends, colleagues and my own staff. I realize now more than ever that this was also wrong. I take personal responsibility, and what I stated in 2018 doesn’t just stand: it takes on new meaning for me every day.”
Powerful words that come from two years of self-reflection, intense suffering, counselling with a psychologist and the love of his wife of eight years, Deanna Holt, and from his family and friends.
Another thing that has likely brought all of this into sharp focus is recent serious criminal charges against Ontario Liberal MP Marwan Tabbara and news that Tabbara was approved to seek re-election as a Liberal in 2019 despite the party’s internal investigation into allegations of inappropriate touching and unwelcome sexual comments against a female staff member during his 2015 election campaign.
Why the double standard? What about the easy pass Trudeau gave himself after it was alleged that 20 years earlier he had groped a young journalist, who immediately told her publisher about it and wrote about it? Trudeau explained that away by saying, “Women experience interactions in professional contexts and other contexts differently than men.”
But when the allegations came out against Hehr, Trudeau tweeted in part: “When women speak up, it is our duty to listen to them and to believe them.”
Hehr refused to comment on Tabbara or Trudeau. He is focusing on the present, which includes returning to practicing law and volunteering to help others.
“This has been as difficult emotionally as being shot, maybe even more so,” admits Hehr, who lost his seat in Calgary Centre in the Oct. 21, 2019, federal election.
It’s an astonishing statement that everyone should ponder.
“I am fully committed to concentrating on how I can better my life, how I can become an improved human being, how I can continue to build, grow and love and be a better person,” he said in a recent interview.
In his post, he writes: “Here’s another quote I love from Unforgiven. The Schofield Kid says, ‘Yeah ... well, I guess they had it comin,’ Eastwood’s character replies, ‘We all have it comin’, kid.’ I agree: sometimes we do have it coming, whether we deserve it or not.
“At 50, there are more days behind me than ahead. I’ve learned during my time rolling this earth that, while ‘deserve’ may have nothing to do with it, forgiveness does. I hope to be forgiven and I want to forgive others as well.”