NJN Network

Myrtle is a plot

Nothing on TV could rival the Myrtle Jenkins Smith story

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, February 21, 2009

I was up way to early and tired of writing so I went into the TV room, yup that’s what we call it. Mostly a place for Hannah and Natalie to hang with the door closed and their friends over. I go in late at night – like 1 am when it may be free. Law and Order came on so I watched this complicated plot about a couple arguing, a woman gets shot, there’s a stripper, her photographer boyfriend, a lawyer with a dead wife, two ex-cons and a 22 caliber pistol. The thing was so complicated then I realized no less strange and complicated than our our Myrtle Jenkins Smith story.

I’ve known Myrtle for decades mostly because Vaughn, her husband, and I were business associates. He’s a pretty easy going guy. Myrtle was always pushing somewhere. When I ran into her as the lead consultant on the Disability Services Review Committee I thought it would be pleasant. She has a good way with people, getting things organized. We seemed to get along but there was something wrong.

I would go to meetings and she’d blind-side me with something that wasn’t planned. So I asked for a core planning group to meet in advance. We did that and it was all pleasant but a whole new agenda would appear out of no-where a week later. I couldn’t keep up with Myrtle, Kathy Jones from Social Services and Seniors and the Deputy Minister Sharon Cameron.

Then it dawned on me. They were running a parallel planning session they kept me away from, scheming to write a whole different story on the process. They had me working on one thing and then would spring another. One week they did that on 4 items and by the time I got to the Committee meeting they just sat and smiled at how dumb I looked. One of the Ascent consultants demanded the Chairperson give him the agenda item on risk analysis that I was presenting, during my presentation no less. I was basing my work on the meeting 2 days earlier and Myrtle and her little band of schemers had shifted everything behind my back.

I came to the conclusion she was a double-dealer of the worst kind. They smile and say the right things but behind your back, it’s all lies and deception. Politics can be like that.

When I resigned, they carried out an elaborate plot to pretend I was fired and fed it to the ever-willing Guardian. You can count on the Guardian to take stories from Myrtle. One week in August 2008, they printed her press release about the Old Home Week Freak Show twice. Myrtle’s a high society person in Charlottetown and the Guardian gives her good press.

So now it’s all coming out in the open. Myrtle is connected to UPEI and we lost accessible parking. Myrtle is connected to Sandy MacDonald and we’re losing rural schools. Myrtle is connected to Social Services and Seniors Minister Doug Currie and the DSP reform is off the tracks. Myrtle is behind the new aging report – I’ll have to study it to find out what lies she’s telling us now. Myrtle is everywhere, with her finger in every pie, taking a piece of the action all the time. Myrtle is Premier Robert Ghiz go-to-girl. It’s worse than a TV plot except no one got shot, yet.

Myrtle is one of those phony people who make your skin crawl. I still remember the day at the Legislature with Myrtle arranging the big $240,000 cheque from Binns for Rick Hansen. Hansen had pulled up in a long limousine with a blond, bimbo girlfriend who kept whining to security “How long is this gonna take.” We were with Doug Roper who is grown man with CP, no longer Easter Seals material. Poor Doug missed the Upper Room that day and was starving. On the way out, Doug spied this big table of hors d’oeuvres and his eyes widened. Rick Hanson security pushed Doug aside. “The food is for guests.” Myrtle was within earshot hob-nobbing with wine glass in hand chatting up someone “important”. That’s a Myrtle Jenkins Smith party about the disabled – all pomp and circumstance.