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“And then he started to tell this joke. And— well, he called it a joke. It really was totally inappropriate, and it was crude and it was vulgar.”

McCrimmon wouldn’t repeat it, but it’s not an original. It’s about a man who wins a toasting competition at a bar with a joke about having sex with his wife, and then goes home and tells her he won for a toast about going to church with her. The humour arises when the wife runs into one of her husband’s buddies and remarks on the husband’s reluctance to go to church and her efforts to get him there. MacLaren, by multiple accounts, inserted McCrimmon’s and her husband’s names as he told his version.

“When I looked out into the crowd, and saw the people in the middle of the hall who could really hear — you should have seen their faces. They were mortified,” McCrimmon said.

She was stunned herself, she said, and used a turn at the microphone to say her husband should be invited to the upcoming Ladies’ Night for a right of reply. When she went back to her work at the bar, she said, literally dozens of people came up to her one at a time to share their dismay at MacLaren’s performance and apologize.

“And I thought, ‘This is the best. It’s not me calling him on his behaviour, it’s them’,” McCrimmon said. As word has gotten around West Carleton, she said, calls and emails and letters have come in with the same sentiment. Wednesday morning, MacLaren sent her a direct apology, which she believes is heartfelt.

Also at the front of the room that night were Murray and West Carleton-March Coun. Eli El-Chantiry, both of whom said they were paying attention to other things and didn’t hear exactly what MacLaren said. El-Chantiry said he caught the tail end, after the crowded hall had fallen completely silent. As chairman of Ottawa’s police board, which is struggling to do a better job fighting violence and sexual aggression against women, witnessing this kind of thing is “very disappointing” to him, he said.

He and MacLaren don’t get along. Nor do MacLaren and next-door Tory MPP Lisa MacLeod, who sympathized with McCrimmon publicly on Wednesday. “I’m very sorry you had to endure that,” she tweeted, and McCrimmon thanked her.