Monday 26 September 2011

CANADIAN “QUEER RIGHTS” HISTORY BOOK TOUCHES ALL BASES – EXCEPT SEX GARAGE

 Author Peter Knegt has written pocket book about the history of Canada's gay civil-rights movement, About Canada: Queer Rights (Photo by Adam Coish)

First-time author Peter Knegt has written a slim pocket book about the history of the queer rights movement in Canada – and it’s pretty good. Part of Halifax-based Fernwood Publishing’s About Canada series, this book is simply titled Queer Rights and briefly but concisely explores how Canada became a gay-civil-rights world leader.

“At first I just kind of did everything I could possibly think of: scouring every single issue of iconic gay liberation magazine The Body Politic at the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Archives in Toronto; reading or rereading everything already written on the topic (most notably the work of Gary Kinsman, Tom Warner, David Rayside, Miriam Smith, Becki L Ross and Brenda Cossman); contacting any kind of authority on the issues I could think of – whether academics, artists, politicians or leaders at queer organizations – and trying to set up interviews,” Knegt tells Canada's Xtra newspaper.

“I ended up interviewing upwards of 70 people from across Canada, some on the phone and some in person. And that was a more important part of the process than I ever could have imagined. Hearing the stories of these men and women who had seen and done so much was intensely inspiring. I remember sitting across the table from Tim McCaskell or Kristyn Wong-Tam or Gerald Hannon and just feeling so floored by what they had to say.”

My one beef with the book is that Montreal’s July 1990 Sex Garage raid is not mentioned once. Without diminishing the importance of the 1977 police raid on Montreal gay leather bar Truxx, Sex Garage is arguably the most important queer event in the history of Montreal and Quebec. That night politicized an entire generation of queer activists who permanently changed the Quebec political landscape and led directly to the creation of the group Lesbians and Gays Against Violence.

"The Truxx raid never changed the attitudes of Montrealers towards gays and lesbians and it certainly didn't inject pride in the gay community," veteran gay activist Michael Hendricks - who has done more for gay civil rights in Canada than probably any judge or politician - told me. "That's why I believe Sex Garage was Montreal's Stonewall. It created community and brought us together in a common front. It also brought English and French together. We founded a group called Lesbians and Gays Against Violence and kept parading around the city for another two months."

LGV was the predecessor of La Table de concertation des gaies et lesbiennes du grand Montreal, the political-action group pivotal in lobbying for the Quebec Human Rights Commission's historic 1993 public hearings on violence against gays and lesbians.

Later, La Table was also key in lobbying for the 1999 passage of Quebec's historic Omnibus Bill 32, which extended benefits, pensions and social services to same-sex couples. That also led to Hendricks' 2004 Quebec Superior Court victory legalizing same-sex marriage in Quebec, a landmark ruling that also forced Ottawa's hand in the 2005 national debate over same-sex marriage.

Montreal publicist Puelo Deir produced the outdoor-stage show at Montreal's Parc Lafontaine following LGV's 1990 march from Montreal City Hall that, in tandem with other Sex Garage fundraisers, helped raise $5,000 to cover lawyer's fees.

That Sex Garage march also directly laid the groundwork for Montreal's Divers/Cite Queer Pride march that Deir co-founded with Suzanne Girard in 1993, a march that in 2007 morphed into the city's famed eight-day Divers/Cite queer arts and culture festival.

Sex Garage also inspired Bad Boy Club Montreal head honcho Robert Vézina to organize the BBCM's first Black & Blue circuit party in 1991. "We thought everybody needed a breath of fresh air," Robert told me years later.

Over the next decade Divers/Cite and Black & Blue would, ironically, transform Montreal into a choice gay tourism destination, pushing Tourisme Montréal to create a gay-tourism template since adopted by tourism authorities worldwide.

So a book on gay rights in Canada that doesn’t even mention Sex Garage can’t help but  fall short.

On the other hand, I was pleased to see The Montreal Manifesto – as it was read by activists who took over the opening of the 1989 International AIDS Conference in Montreal – made it into the book. As ACT UP founder Larry Kramer told me himself, “We made a difference at the AIDS conference in Montreal.”

Knegt admits it is impossible to include everything in a book as slim as Queer Rights.   

“My main goal – and honestly the greatest challenge – was to make this book as inclusive as possible,” he says. “Sure, I also wanted to make it as accessible as possible. This is really just an introduction that intends to lead readers into other educational directions. But it was important to make it as comprehensive as 150 pages could possibly allow. And that’s a significant challenge."


Sunday 18 September 2011

THE FAB GAY MAN BEHIND CANADA'S HOT NEW THEATRE WEBSITE, THE CHARLEBOIS POST

Award-winning playwright Gaetan Charlebois – who founded The Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia, the MECCAs (Montreal English Critics Circle Awards) and The Charlebois Post – is living proof you can’t keep a good bitch down.


(September 18) Alas, it’s true, my asshole is not the centre of the universe. It’s also true that lines like that will occasionally get me into trouble.

Just ask Gaetan L. Charlebois, publisher of Canada’s two new hugely successful theatre websites The Charlebois Post – Canada and The Charlebois Post – Montreal.

Charlebois – who used to write for both The Montreal Gazette and The Montreal Mirror – knows controversy.

His glory years at Montreal’s much-lamented Hour magazine were marked by two citywide uproars: The first happened in 1997 when Gaetan called out, "C’est d’la merde!" following the premiere performance of Koltès’ Quai Ouest at Espace Go.

Then in 1998 he was denied ticket privileges by that city’s Centaur Theatre when Charlebois panned then-artistic director Gordon McCall‘s Gone With the Wind Twelfth Night.

What a turbulent era that was.

But over the past year the openly-gay Charlebois launched the incredibly successful websites The Charlebois Post – Canada (CPC) and The Charlebois Post – Montreal (CPM or CHarPo, as I like to call it).

CharPo was set up to cover Montreal English-language theatre. “It seemed that during my six years as a pop culture columnist at The Montreal Gazette that theatre coverage had fallen off,” Charlebois explains.

[Disclosure: I worked with Gaetan at HOUR mag, I write the POP TART blog for The Montreal Gazette and I am a CPC columnist and CPC Editor-at-Large. My CPC column – called “The Abominable Showman” – tackles theatre, art and culture. Click here to read today’s column about hot actors stripping buck naked on the stage!)

Gaetan continues, “People like [CHarPO Editor-in-Chief] Estelle Rosen and [Mirror theatre critic] Neil Boyce – via the MECCAs, for instance – had worked hard to keep theatre front and centre but were being insulted (sometimes quite publicly) for the effort. I was recovering from an illness, had the time and joined the fray. And I lucked into a working relationship with Estelle that is one of the great ones of my career.”

But Charlebois says the establishment media’s lack of theatre coverage isn’t unique to Montreal. “The same problem that exists here exists all over the country. I was being told [that] when CharPo took off, so Estelle and I studied the possibilities [of launching CPC] for over six months before diving in.”

So just how desperate are Canadians for comprehensive theatre coverage?

“CharPo Montreal has been amazing – [after nine months] we have about 6000 regular unique readers each week,” Charlebois says. “CPC is growing steadily,  slightly slower than Montreal but that is also because we launched during the [slower] pre-Labour Day period to give us a chance to get the kinks out before the season rolled in. CharPo Montreal was launched right smack in the middle of the theatre season and so exploded right away, warts and all.”

Adds Charlebois, “I think our success means theatergoers in this country are starved for theatre discussion. We used to get that in magazines and radio and TV but many of the specialized magazines and specialized mass media shows have gone under.”

As for CharPo’s print competition – the weeklies and dailies – Charlebois notes ruefully, “The British national daily The Guardian is truly brilliant in all respects – columns, bloggers, commentary, discussion with readers – and their site is lively! The closest thing we have [in Canada] is The Globe and Mail's Kelly Nestruck who, no coincidence, is also a Guardian blogger. And now Kelly also writes for us.

“Kelly really blogs, really FBs and really tweets. Most of the rest of the papers and their people are sad. They don't get the immediacy of blogging, many are not on FB and the ones who are on Twitter often Tweet the dullest and most useless information. Simply: they don't engage.”

In addition to knowledgeable media contributors who have been covering theatre in Canada for years,  some of CharPo’s recent name contributors include Brad Fraser, Jacoba Knaapen (executive director of The Toronto Alliance For The Performing Arts), Arden Ryshpan (Actors Equity boss), Rick Miller (who is doing a run of three of his solos at the Factory) and Kelly Nestruck.

“Now that those are up, some terrific alternative theatre artists are stepping up for the next weeks,” Charlebois says. “But the trend all began at CharPo Montreal where virtually every artist we approached loved the idea of discussing their work: Gabrielle Soskin, Andrew Cuk, David Sklar, Johanna Nutter (who wrote a gorgeous blog for us) - the list goes on and on.”

Of course this being Three Dollar Bill, I ask Gaetan how gay is the theatre world. (Yeah, yeah…)

“It is the gayest art and yet, too, the straightest,” Gaetan replies without missing a beat. “Where else will you find a football player with six kids and a mortgage sitting in an audience bawling his eyes out when he hears Bess, You Is My Woman Now!”

Friday 16 September 2011

MICHAEL MUSTO LAUNCHES NEW ANTHOLGY - AND DISHES ROSIE O'DONNELL!

Michael Musto launches his new anthology of columns and essays Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back (Vantage Point Books) on September 19 in New York City


(September 16) Ab-fab Village Voice gossip columnist Michael Musto launches his new just-published anthology of timeless star-studded anecdotes and essays Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back (Vantage Point Books) at NYC's Copacabana on Sept 19.

I chatted with the famed columnist this week for my POP TART blog in The Montreal Gazette, about everything from outing celebrities to having sex with groupies.

“Believe it or not, years ago, when Rosie O’Donnell wasn’t out, I was writing week after week that she needed to more than announce herself as Lebanese,” Michael recalls. “She needed to say the real L word.  And it obviously got to her. She hosted the Tonys one year and during the commercial break, just for the live audience, she made a remark about how she was allowed to costume Raquel Welch for Victor/Victoria. That was a saphically-tinged remark and later at the after-party Rosie came up to me sand said, ‘Well, that remark was for you. Maybe now you’ll stop writing about my private life.’ Obviously I’d gotten her goat and it was a step in her explosion like a cannonball out of the closet. We’re all friends now. Today she’s even gayer than I am!"

Gayer than Musto? Uh, I don't think so. Congrats on the new book, Michael!

Read more Michael Musto in POP TART.

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