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| The Right Honourable Charles Lapointe (Photo courtesy Tourisme Montreal) |
Bugs' story originally ran in Daily Xtra.
Charles Lapointe was just 17 years old when he stepped into
his first gay bar, La Rose Rouge, in Montreal
back in 1961.
“There were no gay bars in my hometown of Tadoussac, and I
didn’t think there were any gay bars, so this was a very big discovery for me.
I wanted to meet other gay men, and I discovered a vibrant gay scene in Montreal,” says Lapointe, the president and CEO of Tourisme
Montreal, which put Montreal on the international gay map when he
spearheaded a trailblazing gay ad campaign in 1994.
Today, Montreal
is widely hailed as a pioneer in the multi-billion-dollar world of gay tourism.
New York, London and Tel Aviv have all copied Tourisme
Montreal’s gay-tourism template.
