© Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto SunKerry Lemieux at his new school in Hamilton, left, and last year in Oakville wearing a wig and fake breasts
The system is a joke, a self-parody, a stereotype of woke culture and all that is wrong with it.
Last year, Kerry Lemieux showed up to classes at Oakville Trafalgar High School wearing ridiculously large prosthetic breasts, a blonde wig and tiny bike shorts. The kids giggled in the class and in the hallways, parents raised concerns as did the Ministry of Education, but the board defended Lemieux and his ridiculous appearance.
Now Lemieux is back in the classroom, this time at Hamilton's Nora Frances Henderson High School, and dressed as a man. He has been spotted wearing cargo shorts, a golf shirt and even sporting a beard. Gone are the Z-cup fake breasts, gone is the wig and the tight bike shorts.
The students are told to address him as Mr. Lemieux.
Lemieux isn't talking, the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board says it's a private personnel matter, which is the same kind of runaround the Halton board gave those inquiring last year. It's an infuriating stance for anyone who wants answers on what the heck was going on last year and why school officials went along with Lemieux's bizarre actions.
Students were caught in the middle of something very strange, their school year was upended by protests, by bomb threats, by the spectacle of a teacher taking the piss out of the system.
Was Lemieux simply trying to punk the system last year? Was he trying to make a political point? Show how far the school system had gone?
It certainly looks that way now as he smiles beneath his beard at the new school in Hamilton.
When Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington spoke to Lemieux earlier this year, he claimed that he wasn't transgendered but rather was born intersexed. He also claimed the giant breasts were real, that he had grown them suddenly due to a rare condition called gigantomastia.
Well, those breasts are gone this school year, so that claim was obviously false. All of the claims should have been taken as false and dismissed last year but our school system is utterly ridiculous and Lemieux has at least exposed that for all to see.
His actions also resulted in changes in the system at both the local and provincial levels.
The Halton District School Board, after much coaxing by parents and the province, passed a professionalism policy that includes issues such as wardrobe. The Ford government, meanwhile, passed Bill 98, which among other things granted the province's education minister greater power to direct boards, including in matters such as this.
While many were critical of Stephen Lecce for not taking charge of this matter, prior to Bill 98, his only recourse would have been to dissolve the local board and impose a supervisor. That would have been an extreme step for dealing with a single problematic teacher.
Though perhaps in hindsight it wasn't the teacher who was problematic but the school and board administrators who went along with Lemieux's charade and now look all the more foolish.
As for his reasonings, there has been speculation that his motivation was an anti-woke agenda while others have claimed the whole thing was in response to a dispute and disciplinary action from school administrators.
Whatever the reasons, Lemieux may very well have punked us all simply because no one in the education system had the sense to say no.
That was my sense all along, knowing that he had been accused of being too masculine previously.