'A lady who loves gowns but talks like a trucker': Meet Winnipeg drag queen Prairie Sky

Prairie Sky is just one of the many fabulous subjects featured in Canada's a Drag, a docu-series from CBC Arts that showcases drag artists from across the true North strong and fierce. You can watch all 21 episodes here.​

Who is Prairie Sky? Ask Levi Foy, the Winnipeg drag performer who created her, and he'll give you a pretty straight up answer: "Prairie Sky is this semi-polished, meaning semi-pretty, lady who loves gowns but talks like a trucker. That's pretty much it. She's kinda gross. She's fun. You want to party with her...She's basically a well-rounded gal with a foul mouth."

As you'll see in the latest episode of CBC Arts's docu-series Canada's a Drag, there's more to Prairie Sky than that — but it's an appropriately sassy introduction.

​Expanding on his initial proclamation, Foy explains that for him, Prairie Sky is a "connection to the queer worlds."

"The unsettled persona of Prairie Sky allows me to interrogate the space I occupy, the world I live in and my own personal power," Foy says. "When I paint or get into my zone nothing exists in the periphery I am focused and intent on creating a beautiful temporal disaster and then unleashing that however necessary."

Through the growth and development of Prairie Sky, Foy has has learned to be vulnerable, to be confident and about the importance of humility.

"Prairie Sky is my direct connection to worlds I do not know, memories that are not exclusively mine and moments I do not own," he says. "Without her, I don't think I would love and accept Levi in an honest way."

Prairie Sky started for Foy about eight year ago, when he "started by fucking around with gender and the way I present myself."

"There's drag in everything," he says. "Anytime someone puts on a costume of any kind to make some sort of statement or something performative in that way, that's drag to me."

One of the aspects of drag that has always appealed to Foy was its ability to let him be "a rockstar for even 10 minutes." 

"Being able to be that showgirl you've always wanted to be — you know, when you're lipsyncing to Madonna when you're nine years old," says Foy. "I just have so much fun with it. When I'm in heels I'm seven feet tall, so I don't get to ever enter into a room or enter into a store and not be seen. I'm pretty visible."

"I had this dream one time of my funeral, and all of my drag sisters and my drag community were there and they were all in drag. And I feel like that's just the way I'm gonna go."

Stream seasons 1 and 2 of Canada's a Drag now on CBC Gem.