I love a girl in uniform

Finding the heart of Saturday night at the Legion Frontenac

by SARAH MUSGRAVE

Past the blue-collar taverns, past the trannie hookers, past the pawn shops and piercing parlours of Ontario street east, is the brightly lit entrance of the Legion Frontenac. It's 9 p.m. on a Saturday night and as I approach the pock-marked doorway, a car with tinted windows cruises by, bleating the Vengaboys' "We Want to Party!" into the cold of the night.

Inside, I'm anticipating tables of men with faded tattoos, reminiscing about the horrors of Dieppe and the signed photos of pinups they carried overseas in their satchels. Instead I'm greeted by Rose Lebeau, president of the establishment, who yells over the ear-popping music in the nearly empty hall, her grandmotherly face lit up by a flickering TV set.

"I was number W4405," she says. "W for women, 4 for the Montreal district and 405 because that's the number of women who'd signed up ahead of me." Rose grew up in the area and enlisted when she was 17, leaving behind a job at Macdonald Tobacco and the recent death of her mother. She spent most of her duty on ships, transporting soldiers back and forth between England and Canada. It was the first time she'd been on a boat, and the first time she realized that she was seasick. "I threw up a lot, but overall it was a good experience," she laughs.

Tonight, Rose is overseeing a sparse crowd at the Legion. A handful of patrons are line-dancing between cafeteria chairs in a wood and stucco room. Labatt 50 and Molson Ex clocks battle it out on opposing walls. The bar is stocked with an arsenal of alcohol--the usual beer and rye, but also Pernod, Cognac, wine and treats like sausage, tongue and "eggs."

When I ask about this last menu item, Rose shimmies over to the bar to show me a jar of pickled eggs--a bargain at two for a dollar. On her way back to our table, she joins the line-dance for a number, cutting up quite a rug, though she claims, "I don't know many of the steps."

I hear a familiar melody and turn to see that one of the younger patrons has taken the mic in order to regale us with a song, accompanied by the Casio action of volunteer Jean Guy Renault. "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" echoes through the room, climaxing in a crescendo that draws considerable applause.

Transvetites and rockers

It's a quiet night, Rose tells me. "You've got to come back for the transvestite show," she confides. "They're really good." Images of 50 drunken Mrs. Doubtfires spring to mind. "You mean the vets dress up as women?" I ask. "No, no, it's a show. There's one who goes as Celine Dion, with the boat--the Titanic!" What else have these Legion walls seen, besides a bunch of drag queens acting out their fantasies of entertaining the troops? "Well, we also had a Rockathon," Rose says. Rockathon? Legionpalooza? Not quite, she explains, it was more a question of rocking chairs in an attempt to set a record. The contest was won, she tells me, by a 94-year-old woman who rocked out for 30 hours.

But the Legion has suffered dark days of late, fallout from the previous administration having resigned en masse over political infighting ("we have a lot of subcommittees," Rose says, arching her eyebrows slightly) and the increasing death toll among its members ("he's alive, he's dead, he's dead, she's dead, she's alive," she enumerates, pointing to photos adorning the walls).

Nevertheless, the weekly schedule is jampacked with activities. On Mondays, it's "poche baseball"--where you throw sandbags for home runs. On Wednesdays, it's sandbags--almost exactly like poche baseball except you're playing for points not runs bagged in. Thursdays is darts, Saturdays is pool and Sundays are reserved for cards and bingo.

And it seems the Frontenac Legion is party central after parades and military events, playing host to the intriguingly named Old Bastards, young cadets and the Scottish regiment--"Oh god, can they drink!" Rose herself belonged to CWAC, the Canadian Women's Army Corps. "They'd tease us--'quack! quack!'

"It gave me character," she says. "Before that I couldn't speak a word of English. I became a secretary in the military and an MP--military police. When I came out, I passed all my tests to become a police officer. But, like so many of us, I decided to get married. You know what they say, love is stronger than the police."

"That's not an expression I'm familiar with," I say.

"Oh, we had a lot of sayings--'marry an airman, you married a pigeon; marry a navyman and he has a girl in every port.'

"And I married a soldier," she adds meaningfully.

After some mutual eye-rolling over the foibles of mankind, Rose invites me back for the Legion's Remembrance Day party. This year the flags will be lowered for two minutes of silence--instead of the cursory one--in honour of the millennium, giving people a whole 120 seconds to reflect on these Saturday night heroes of the last 50 years.

Main: Legion hopping

Sidebar: Bingo battles and a shot of Bailey's in Verdun

Sidebar #2: The secret lives of Legionnaires

Sidebar #3: An encounter with Popeye, the downtown Legion Man

Sidebar #4: Looking for new blood at Legion #106 in NDG

Sidebar #5: I love a girl in uniform