Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

In Homer’s epic, the Odyssey, the ancient protagonist, Odysseus, asked his ships’ crew to tie him to the mast head and blindfold him, but keep his ears free to hear the Siren’s song, the embodiment of temptation itself, where the Siren’s womanly attributes and heavenly songs drove ships toward them — only to perish into the rocks. For their part, the crew was instructed to wear wax in their ears to protect them from the call of the wild.

Knowing neither Greek oral history nor common sense, (or paying heed to the history of his paramour Julie Couillard), former Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier dated her anyway – very publicly. He even brought her with him to the United Nations.

The siren in question, Julie Couillard, and her problem isn’t her past criminal associations, it is her street fighting present, her sense of entitlement, her malice. When trying to appear as a non-opportunist, for example, Julie says: “Everyone knows it: A minister earns $250,000 dollars per year. What’s left after taxes: $125,000, $130,000? I am constantly with businessmen who make a lot of cash. A minister has no money.”

What a wonderful act of social and sexual charity for Julie to deign to lower herself to Federal Cabinet status!

Hers is an interesting and telling statement from a woman who has never earned that much money, a woman who lost a house, has no professional or educational pedigree, who operated a “casting service” for wannabe actors and models (most of those operations are specious at best) and who describes herself as an “actress”. Now, she claims to be in real estate — although the company she has been associated with denies it (?!)

Wasn’t it singer Billy Joel who, in his song The Piano Man, characterized these types of people with unachievable pretensions as “real-estate novelists”?

With a Daddy who, himself, has a criminal past with drugs, it appears that her abandonment issues with an absentee Daddy plunged herself, and her neckline, into the arms of the Hell’s Angels (I guess they made more money than Max). I also guess she considered them “businessmen” as well.

The old line about lying down with lions or swine applies here.

The facts are the facts: two of Couillard’s former husbands are dead by violent means; a third man is in witness protection. The link to organized crime enforcers, or operatives, has been consistent. There is a long pattern. Moreover, her style is still from the street: knowing that she had destroyed the career of her former boyfriend Bernier when she went on Quebec TV to reveal that he had stupidly left Government documents regarding Afghanistan at her place, she continued with the media the next day saying “He was spineless” and “Should have protected me” from revelations about her past.

But shouldn’t she have known herself that her past would come out when she dated such a political figure and met President George Bush?

Julie Couillard did not find her way in life because of her brains or because of her character.

And as far as her Hell’s Angels association goes, she is even rumored to be a police informant in that regard, or a past one. It sounds familiar: no rules, no loyalty. Just like the street.

The only true love of her life Julie Couillard says was Montreal crime figure Gilles Giguere who was shot three times in the face and left in a ditch three months before their wedding.

If Maxime Bernier had any brains at all, which he obviously doesn’t, he would have listened to Homer and worn wax plugs in his ears like Odysseus’ crew or would have had someone tie him to the mast.

It is much more honorable to live a life loving those who play it straight instead of those who play the angles. That principle applies to both Julie and Maxime.

Julie knows that too. Deep down, she knows who, and what, she is.

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