Jaylene Tyme is a drag legend making the world a better place for us all

Jaylene Tyme is just one of the many extraordinary subjects featured in the fourth season of Canada's a Drag, a docu-series from CBC Arts that shines a light on some of this country's drag heroes.

Jaylene Tyme is an absolute legend, full stop. She has been a community leader and a drag icon in Vancouver for some 32 years — the last 25 of which she's been sober from drugs and alcohol.

"In recovery, they tell us we're like onions," Tyme says. "You pull back the layers and more will be revealed. A lot of the people that I was in community with in the early 1990s, they're no longer here. So the fact is that I'm 52 and I'm considered like a trans elder now."

Jaylene says she didn't see herself becoming a senior. 

"But for whatever reason, I am here," she says. "I'm out and I'm very public because this is medicine for people."

It was our honour to extend this medicine to folks who have not been lucky enough to meet Jaylene in person or see her perform via the finale of our new season of Canada's a Drag:

Jaylene Tyme is a proud two-spirit, sober Indigenous trans woman and a survivor of the Sixties Scoop.

"That means that I was adopted into a settler family and removed from my Indigenous home," she says. "I was separated from my brother when I was three. I was in five homes before I was four. I'm trying so hard to find the words here, because it's heartbreaking. When you think about it, it's like erasing culture. My parents, the ones who raised me, were super well-intended and really lovely people. But I learned to keep things really private. I had to create my own world."

Jaylene was eventually able to leave the farm where she grew up with her settler family and find her first queer space. 

"It was in Calgary, Alta., and I went in and there was a drag show and I looked on stage and saw the performer with the music and with the feathers, and something opened up in me," she says. "It just felt like I was at home."

Jaylene ultimately headed further west and found a home in Vancouver, though that was not without its deep challenges.

"I got really quickly involved with drugs and alcohol and went down pretty quickly to where I was without a home," she says. "I was in situations that were life-threatening a few times. But even in the darkest of that, being part of the street community taught me how beautiful community is. If you get in there, if you actually look around, there's all these pockets of people taking care of each other."

Jaylene says that experience has shaped the core of who she is. 

"When I'm on stages, when I'm in drag, people listen to me, so I use that platform in a good way," she says. "And if I'm working in talking circles and healing circles, it's the same thing. That's when I feel that fire. I'm here to make sure that I'm creating community spaces for people to be themselves."

What a world this would be if we all were a little more like Jaylene.  

Follow Jaylene Tyme on Instagram and watch all of our released episodes of Canada's a Drag on the CBC Arts YouTube channel.