Archive for December, 2011

Mega­phone, Van­cou­ver’ street paper, has repub­lished an arti­cle from Sad Mag’s Queer His­tory Issue. The arti­cle, Tough in Tran­sit by Daniel Zom­par­elli, fol­lows Char­l­ize Gor­don and Suzanne Kil­roy as they nav­i­gate gen­der and sex­u­al­ity in one of Vancouver’s tough­est neighbourhoods.

Sean Con­don, Mega­phone’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, had this to say on the magazine’s website:

The Down­town East­side may be home to our city’s most mar­gin­al­ized res­i­dents, but that doesn’t mean it’s always accept­ing of peo­ple who live on the fringes. Just ask Char­l­ize Gor­don and Suzanne Kilroy.

Char­l­ize, a recently-transgendered woman, and Suzanne, who’s two-spirited, have bravely faced down myr­iad chal­lenges rang­ing from sim­ple homo­pho­bia to phys­i­cal abuse while find­ing their places as proud mem­bers of the DTES’s LGBTQ com­mu­nity. The diverse social makeup of today’s DTES owes much to the strug­gles and tri­umphs of peo­ple like Char­l­ize and Suzanne, as uncov­ered in this story from Sad Mag’s Queer His­tory issue.

You can buy the issue now from one of Mega­phone’s ven­dors for a sug­gested dona­tion of $2.

Rain­bow Reels
By Esther Tung

From Sad Mag issue 7/8.

Just before the rise of AIDS, Canada’s—and pos­si­bly the world’s—first gay and les­bian cable-access show, Gay­ble­vi­sion, thrived on West End Cable 10. Any­one with enthu­si­asm and an idea could cre­ate or con­tribute to the hour-long show, which aired weekly from 1980 to 1986. The pro­duc­tion team was will­ing to train and develop new, inex­pe­ri­enced tal­ent, and there’s no doubt that the show’s acces­si­bil­ity con­tributed to its longevity.

One of the co-founders of Gay­ble­vi­sion, Mary Anne McEwen, was a UBC alum­nus who was booted from her soror­ity in 1965 for being a les­bian. When Gay­ble­vi­sion was first estab­lished, McE­wan, who had a half-decade stint as Cre­ative Direc­tor of Cre­ative House, was the only staff mem­ber who had any expe­ri­ence work­ing in media. McEwen passed away ear­lier this year, but she spoke about putting together Gay­ble­vi­sion at the 2010 Van­cou­ver Queer Film Fes­ti­val, where select episodes of the ground­break­ing pro­gram were screened.

The first episode of Gay­ble­vi­sion cap­tured the open­ing of the infa­mous Ham­burger Mary, a gay-friendly burger joint that was one of the first estab­lish­ments to open along Davie Street in 1979, and is still open today. Other notable seg­ments include an inter­view with out-of-the-closet Amer­i­can play­wright Ten­nessee Williams, as well as a doc­u­men­tary on another pop­u­lar gay venue of the time, a shady bar called Vanport.

Gay­ble­vi­sion once held a dear place in the heart of the ’80s queer com­mu­nity, and it is one of many gen­e­sis sto­ries of Vancouver’s queer culture.

Illus­tra­tion: Monika Koch.

Editor’s note:  Gay­ble­vi­sion is archived at VIVO Media Arts. Thank you to the help­ful staff for their assis­tance with this article.

A Long Walk
Vancouver’s First Pride Parade
By Derek Bedry

From Sad Mag issue 7/8.

Vancouver’s pride parade today is a daz­zling, splashy spec­ta­cle of throb­bing bass, rain­bow glit­ter, top­less les­bians roar­ing down Rob­son on mus­cu­lar motor­bikes, and shirt­less studs lob­bing Mardi Gras beads into a crowd of more than 500,000 giddy spec­ta­tors. Along with the vis­i­bil­ity of queer peo­ple in this city, the parade has cer­tainly grown from hum­ble beginnings.

Vancouver’s first offi­cially sanc­tioned gay pride parade took place on August 1, 1981. The route began in Nel­son Park and pro­ceeded to Alexan­dra Park via Thur­low, then Beach and Pacific—and instead of com­pletely occu­py­ing these streets, the parade was given one side of each, while traf­fic pro­ceeded oth­er­wise unin­ter­rupted. An esti­mate by the Van­cou­ver Sun puts roughly 1,500 par­tic­i­pants at the parade.

Bill Sik­say, for­mer Burnaby-Douglas MP and the orga­niz­ing committee’s UBC rep­re­sen­ta­tive in ’81, says it was more of a demon­stra­tive march: “It was about claim­ing our place in the streets of Van­cou­ver for the first time. The spirit of it was we’re here, we’re your neigh­bours, we’re part of the com­mu­nity and we’re not going away.”

In years prior, pro­pos­als to estab­lish offi­cial pride cel­e­bra­tions were deftly struck down by coun­cil­lors’ votes. In 1981, Mayor Mike Har­court signed a procla­ma­tion nam­ing the week of August 1–7 Gay Unity Week, ful­fill­ing an elec­tion promise.

Sik­say says the abil­ity for queer peo­ple to announce them­selves in broad day­light was a major step for­ward for Vancouver’s LGBT population.

“[Before 1981] you often felt iso­lated, like it was a long slog to do the work you wanted, have the rela­tion­ships you wanted, to be the per­son that you were. You felt like every place you turned there was a chal­lenge, and I think hav­ing that moment of pride really made a lot of other things pos­si­ble for folks,” he says.

The march­ing queers were not entirely embraced by onlook­ers. Sik­say recalls some strange looks and com­ments from vehi­cles dri­ving by, and one group of young men in par­tic­u­lar who shouted at Sik­say, his part­ner Brian, and their Great Dane.

“They said, ‘Is the dog gay too?’ And I think it was the only time in my life I’ve ever had a retort for some­thing like that. I said, ‘Why, no. She’s a lesbian.’”

How­ever, Sik­say says more peo­ple were sup­port­ive or curi­ous than hos­tile. The cel­e­brants were so happy, noth­ing was going to dampen their spir­its on the sunny day they marched for diver­sity on the streets of Vancouver.

“That work isn’t done yet,” says Sik­say. “I think Pride is still about claim­ing our place in the life of the city, the cul­ture of Van­cou­ver. [Today’s Pride parade is] broader, much broader than it was back then, but the root of it remains the same. I think every­body who goes to Pride today has that kind of feeling.”

Image: Cour­tesy the B.C. Gay and Les­bian Archives.

Give the gift of Sad Mag for just $12, and remind your friends and fam­ily of your good taste the whole year through. Or maybe it is time to “treat yo self.”

Order before Decem­ber 17, and a hol­i­day card will be sent to the recip­i­ent that noti­fies them of their new sub­scrip­tion, in time for Christ­mas. Mean­while, gen­er­ous Van­cou­verites that place an order before Decem­ber 17 will also earn an entry into a draw for a $100 gift cer­tifi­cate to Burcu’s Angels vin­tage cloth­ing store. Visions of vin­tage furs and sequins dance in our heads!