This is the tale of “Big Party Knight” who was knighted by his father the former King of Canada. It all began a long, long time ago (about 15 political years) when the leader of The Big Red Party was caught stealing Canadian bacon off the backs of the local peasants in the market, coining the phrase “Canadian Back Bacon”, or so it is in this fairy tale full of nonsense. Consequently, despite the evening tale spinners shouting their praises of The Big Red Party it remained very unpopular, and so it was for many years.

Now it so happened that The Big Red Party held a fund raiser and invited Shakespeare to be the guest speaker. When Shakespeare read the words from his famous play that “all the world’s a stage” it inspired The Big Red Party to write their own play. The play would be a travelling road show presented all over the known world to gain votes from a new voting block of peasants who were unfamiliar with the Canadian back bacon scandal.

But The Big Red Party was vexed on how to get the global migrants past the royal tower guards who protected the border since it was illegal for people to simply walk into the country unchecked. Tens of thousands of peasants walking across the border would not go unnoticed by the local peasants. And even if they were to sneak in, how would they get the local peasants to accept the global peasant migrants without a revolt. Canadians were very well known to be nice and welcoming of people in need, but peasants entering the country better dressed than they, and demanding free housing and maple syrup, well that was a different matter.

So, the strategists came up with a plan. Since Canadians are so nice, we will appeal to their sympathies towards these peasant migrants. We will tell them the migrants are “irregular” and in discomfort, not “illegal”. Our catch phrase will be: “It’s not illegal to be irregular.” Almost everyone in The Big Red Party agreed that this was a genius plan, but some scratched their heads thinking it sounded like nonsense.

Someone asked, “but what about the opposition parties who might complain that these peasants are illegal and not in discomfort? What then?” “No problem”, said the strategists, the international organization United Nocents, has an entire range of shaming tactics to use against anyone who dares speak against the irregulars.

“But what about all of the truly needy peasants and the people who have worked hard and grown old waiting to get into the country legally? Won’t all of this illegal entry make the local peasants angry that the royal border guards have no control over our their own borders?” “Yes”, said the Strategists, “but we have a plan for that too. We’ll just say that they are shamefully trying to compare degrees of irregularity.” A few of The Big Red Party members scratched their heads, but didn’t want to say it sounded like nonsense.

The play was written, and the stage was set. The only remaining problem was finding a lead actor. One of the strategists said, “it obviously has to be someone with reasonably good acting chops, but not so smart as to realize they are actually a puppet in a play and not a serious actor.” Just as he said this, the door burst open and in walked Big Party Knight, the son of their former King and a sometimes drama teacher. He was in black face, with a beer in one hand, and the other draped across the chest of a woman. Big Party Knight grinned and with glazed eyes said, “I asked where the party was and they sent me in here. Party on!” He then pulled out some grass, put it in his pipe, and began to smoke it.

“He’s perfect!” The Big Red Party said in near unison. Several of the strategists scratched their heads though and asked, “what will happen in the event that the peasants find out about this black face and costume. He might not be overtly racist in his inebriated mind, but it’s disturbing.” “Lighten up” said the others. “Black face costumes are only border line racist, and we can make up a story about his being a teacher of racism, not a racist teacher. We’ll just tell them that Big Party Knight is going to now teach everyone about racism and misogyny.”

And so it was that Big Party Knight became King of Canada. For many years he played his role well, convincing everyone irregularity was not illegal. Big Party Knight also legalized the smoking of grass and made it available on every street corner. There was an inexplicable drop in IQ for young peasants around this same time, but they all appeared very happy so no one was very worried.

Just as The Big Red Party was really getting started, a wandering minstrel wrote a lament titled “The Groper King.” Now, everyone knew that Big Party Knight was the groper. However, the fairer sex within the Big Red Party was afraid to appear unfair. So, they forgave Big Party Knight and extolled the virtues of being fair and forgiving to Knights who grope women.

About two years later, Big Party Knight was accused of covering up a scandal involving one of his prize merchants, QC Laval-Has-An-In. Big Party Knight’s Minister of Fairness, an honourable member of the fairer sex, would not go along with covering up the scandal, so she left the Big Red Party. Big Party Knight was not too ashamed to quarrel with her publicly even though everyone knew she was the fair one, making him appear very unfair and unwise.

Then in a separate incident, a scribe from the south wrote a story exposing Big Party Knight and re-drawing him in black face, and practically groping a woman. The Big Red Party had Big Party Knight rehearse his lines which he delivered flawlessly. “I am a teacher of racism, not a racist teacher. I am going to now teach everyone about racism and misogyny. Who among us hasn’t dressed in black face?”

The peasants looked around at each other very confused. Then someone leaning on a nearby pole offered to verify if what Big Party Knight had said was true or not. He shouted “have any one of you ever appeared in black face? “No”, was the unanimous response. “Well, have you ever known anyone who’s appeared in black face?” Again, the response was a resounding “no”. Big Party Knight pleaded with the Canadian peasants to forgive him.

This is a fairy tale and meant to be unbelievable, and so the tale of Big Party Knight continued with Canadians re-electing Big Party Knight, allowing their borders to continue to be breached by irregulars with actual, needy refugees left behind, the Groper King pretending to be fair to the fairer sex, and the QC, Laval-Has-An-In scandal all but forgotten.

However, as time went on Big Party Knight so vexed even the Liberal people of Canada with his betrayal of their country that they banished him to the United Nocents where he will forever grovel with communist dictators for a seat at the table.

*Drawing by TV Tropes.