{"id":3244,"date":"2018-06-04T17:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T17:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/06\/04\/queen-of-the-oil-patch-portrait-of-a-different-ace-conqueror\/"},"modified":"2018-06-04T17:00:01","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T17:00:01","slug":"queen-of-the-oil-patch-portrait-of-a-different-ace-conqueror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/06\/04\/queen-of-the-oil-patch-portrait-of-a-different-ace-conqueror\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen of the Oil Patch: Portrait of a different, ace conqueror"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>John Doyle\/ The Globe and Mail<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">A lot of Canadian-made reality-TV is unwatchable. This one isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\"><i>Queen of the Oil Patch<\/i>\u00a0(Tuesday, APTN at 10:30 p.m.) presents a Canada that is simultaneously unrecognizable and familiar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">\u201cHewers of wood and drawers of water.\u201d Yeah, that\u2019s still us to a good extent. The disparaging shorthand for Canada as a country obdurately dependent on natural resources might not be in vogue these days, but it applies. The federal government buying an oil pipeline is the defining story of this year so far.<\/p>\n<div id=\"\" class=\"u-wrapper pb-feature pb-layout-item pb-f-commercial-dfp-ads\">\n<div class=\"\">At the centre of the series is one Alberta business person. That\u2019s Massey Whiteknife, an Indigenous entrepreneur from the Mikisew Cree First Nation who built successful companies in Fort McMurray, a place we are made to believe is the toughest town in Canada. It\u2019s where Whiteknife succeeded with ICEIS Safety Consulting. Thing is, the company is named after the owner\u2019s drag-queen alter ego.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Whiteknife is a formidable character, ideal for the format of reality TV. Tough, articulate, charismatic and passionate, he\u2019s got a lot of irons in the fire. A fierce advocate for his Indigenous community, he has a continuing anti-bullying campaign and his company\u2019s \u201cGet Ready\u201d program aims to help aboriginal, Inuit and M\u00e9tis people with pre-employment training, career placement, coaching and mentoring to get their careers started.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">On the one hand, Whiteknife is a very recognizable type. He\u2019s a guy in a parka driving a pickup truck in Fort McMurray, worried about keeping his business going in the battered oil-patch economy. Those businesses he launched, after many false starts, flourished and then suffered. The drop in the price of oil and the fires in Fort McMurray almost crippled his companies. Contracts dried up. In dealing with a tough year, Whiteknife made a decision. He was going to embrace his other spirit. That would allow him to conquer everything.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">We meet him in the bath as he\u2019s Massey, shaving his legs. Then he\u2019s Iceis Rain, a \u201csexy, aggressive, dominating woman\u201d as he describes her. His status is what he decides it is, he makes clear. \u201cI don\u2019t wanna say that I\u2019m transgender or a drag queen or a crossdresser, or I\u2019m gay. Because I\u2019m not. I\u2019m two-spirited. I\u2019m a male and a female.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Over a year, he plans to transition into Iceis Rain. \u201cThat would be like a two-spirited female,\u201d is his own conclusion. People tell him he\u2019s crazy and he admits to being scared. His mom is seen telling him that she doesn\u2019t want him to get any surgery. She\u2019s scared for him, too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">He knows all about the being-scared part already. This is one resilient person. And his tactic for changing and surviving is radical.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">There is the matter of clothes and toning his body to fully become that female spirit who is in charge of sales and strategy for Whiteknife\u2019s company. \u201cI need to feminize my body more,\u201d he says while shopping for vitamins and supplements and clothes. But he does go out for a final night of being outrageously feminine and flirty in a bar before he settles into his role as a slick, professional sales executive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">In the second of the half-hour programs, he\u2019s back in the tiny community of Fort Chipewyan, where he was raised. He talks without anger about a childhood being bullied and scorned. In a chat with his mom, he decides that she doesn\u2019t really know what \u201ctwo-spirited\u201d means, but she supports him and that\u2019s all fine. Also, people who bullied him now shake his hand and congratulate him. At the same time, he gets the details about one member of his extended family, a teenage girl who took her own life, and the negative forces inside the community hit him like a terrifying blast of cold air.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">\u201cI want to be happy,\u201d he tells his mom. Things are left unsaid, but soon, he\u2019s back in Fort McMurray giving a talk at a local school about \u201cSurviving Homophobia and Building Community.\u201d He\u2019s unstoppable. You believe he can conquer anything.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">A lot of Canadian-made reality TV is unwatchable because it\u2019s pointless and usually a second-rate copy of an original.\u00a0<i>Queen of the Oil Patch<\/i>\u00a0is, in contrast, truly distinct, about a true original. And truly inspiring. This is wonderful TV.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Doyle\/ The Globe and Mail A lot of Canadian-made reality-TV is unwatchable. This one isn\u2019t. Queen of the Oil Patch\u00a0(Tuesday, APTN at 10:30 p.m.) presents a Canada that is simultaneously unrecognizable and familiar. \u201cHewers of wood and drawers of water.\u201d Yeah, that\u2019s still us to a good extent. The disparaging shorthand for Canada as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/06\/04\/queen-of-the-oil-patch-portrait-of-a-different-ace-conqueror\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Queen of the Oil Patch: Portrait of a different, ace conqueror - Thunderbird Entertainment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/06\/04\/queen-of-the-oil-patch-portrait-of-a-different-ace-conqueror\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Queen of the Oil Patch: Portrait of a different, ace conqueror - Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Doyle\/ The Globe and Mail A lot of Canadian-made reality-TV is unwatchable. 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