Sheila Tweets about Zexi

Tough and sassy. Versus phony and unwholesome.

Sheila Gunn Reid is Editor-in-Chief at Rebel News. She spent much of yesterday on Twitter reporting on the Emergencies Act hearing. She’s hilarious. When the hearing resumes on Monday, be sure to check out her Twitter feed here.

Tough and sassy, she has a gift for cutting through nonsense, for stating matters plainly. Yesterday some of her commentary on the testimony of Ottawa resident Zexi Li made me laugh out loud.

Zexi has a busy life. At the tender age of 21, she’s already a civil servant, a data analyst employed by the federal government’s information technology agency. In February she became the front woman for a $300 million class action lawsuit against the Freedom Convoy. A month later, the city of Ottawa rushed to give her the mayor's City Builder Award. Because suing fellow citizens who’ve driven thousands of miles across the country in the dead of winter is what great cities are all about. Because harassing peaceful protesters desperate to be heard is how healthy communities get built. There’s something phony and unwholesome about all of this.

Sheila, on the other hand, is the real deal. She describes herself as an oilpatch wife, a farmer, a bow hunter, a meat evangelist, and a mom. She doesn’t live in a fancy Toronto or Ottawa neighbourhood surrounded by sanctimony and self-satisfaction, as do too many journalists. Rather, she resides in Alberta.

It is the position of Canada’s chattering classes that COVID measures were no big deal, but Sheila knows otherwise. Her mother died in December 2020. Family members were first prevented from visiting her in the hospital. Then they were forbidden from attending her funeral.

Sheila belongs to a large church that holds 800 people. But a one-size-fits-all government edict capped funerals at 10 mourners. The rules were the rules.

In Sheila’s words, “it's one of the most evil things you can do to a mourning family, making us draw lots to say goodbye.” These policies, she says, were “devastating to families.”

Zexi and Sheila. A 21-year-old media darling who, after being inconvenienced by government-imposed COVID measures for two years, demands millions in compensation from protesters who inconvenienced her for a few weeks.

And an Alberta journalist whose sorrow at the loss of her mother was cruelly exacerbated by heartless health officials. Sheila is from western Canada, is politically conservative, and works for Rebel News. Her existence is therefore barely acknowledged by fellow Canadian journalists.

The child gets taken ever so seriously and is portrayed in a ridiculously flattering light. The accomplished adult is ignored. Something’s not right here.