Archive for January, 2012

Usu­ally we com­ment on things that make us un-sad, but there’s a fight going on between the Rio and the LCLB that’s mak­ing us sad and mad. For­tu­nately, the Rio’s Cor­rine Lea is not back­ing down, which is mak­ing us glad. As does rhyming but I digress.

On Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 26, the Rio was sup­posed to be cel­e­brat­ing their suc­cess in achiev­ing a liquor license, an achieve­ment which was an inte­gral part of con­tin­u­ing as a viable busi­ness.  Instead, the event became a fundraiser to off­set their losses and fund future resis­tance to the restric­tions out on the Rio due to that very license.

Lea has had to can­cel film screen­ings as venues clas­si­fied as “movie the­atres” can­not serve alco­hol. Lea main­tains they are a multi-media venue and so are mis­clas­si­fied. She also notes that her license only runs from 6pm to 1am, and she is not insist­ing that liquor be served at screen­ings, only that screen­ings be able to take place. After they screen the “Rocky Hor­ror Picture-less Show” on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 27th, when the sound­track will play and the film enacted by a  shadow cast, they don’t have any­thing sched­uled until Feb­ru­ary 4th. “As far as the blank days go, we’re just going to scram­ble and try to fig­ure out what to do. We might have an open mic night every night or a karaoke night…If the gov­ern­ment were to reverse their deci­sion I could have movies in those slots like that.” She snaps her fin­gers with the type of gusto required when going up against said government.

Since being told about the caveat on her license, there have been many state­ments issued — by Lea, by Solic­i­tor Gen­eral Shirley Bond, and by Liquor Con­trol and Licens­ing Branch gen­eral man­ager Karen Ayers — but lit­tle con­struc­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion seems to be hap­pen­ing.  Ayers has made many com­ments in the media about the var­i­ous rea­sons the Rio is in this predica­ment and not, say, Roger’s Arena. Ayers touts pub­lic safety and notes the arena’s secu­rity as a rea­son for venue’s such as that being licensed. Lea notes that she was never given the option to increase secu­rity as a means to secure the licens­ing she needs.

My opin­ion, and the opin­ion of groups like CAMRA, is that the province and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment are main­tain­ing pro­hi­bi­tion era statutes. I would add that even the LCLB’s ratio­nal­iza­tions seem out­dated, not to men­tion incon­sis­tent. It would bet­ter serve pub­lic safety to ban alco­hol at vio­lent sport­ing events than at the movies. I’d def­i­nitely put my money on not see­ing see any post-event riots at the Rio, screen­ings or oth­er­wise. While Ayers has been answer­ing objec­tions one at a time, there are easy fixes to these, which Lea is more than will­ing to put into place. For exam­ple, wor­ry­ing about minors hav­ing liquor in the dark could be assuaged if the Rio doesn’t serve alco­hol dur­ing film screen­ings. Lea notes she sim­ply wants to serve liquor at events, not movies.

Bond has issued a state­ment, picked up by sev­eral out­lets, that her office is “aware of the chal­lenges,” are “con­sid­er­ing what changes may be appro­pri­ate” and they “look for­ward to hav­ing more to say about this in the near future.” While this may sig­nal progress, the lack of specifics are wor­ri­some to Lea. As of Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 29th, Lea has yet to hear from the Solic­i­tor General’s office or the LCLB on any options she might have going for­ward. The Rio is con­sult­ing with the British Colum­bia Civil Lib­er­ties Asso­ci­a­tion as to whether their civil lib­er­ties have been curtailed.

The Rio is sched­uled to host films from the Van­cou­ver Island Film Fes­ti­val, which begins Feb­ru­ary 10th. This is just one effect the Rio oper­at­ing with­out screen­ings will have, and rep­re­sents a real dead­line for action. The Rio sup­ports a vari­ety of com­mu­ni­ties beyond film – music, com­edy, bur­lesque, dance and more – by being a unique and acces­si­ble venue. It also rep­re­sents a part of Van­cou­ver his­tory, as the Tyee points out, an archi­tec­tural and cin­e­matic his­tory that is being demolished.

Thus it’s not sur­pris­ing that peo­ple are rais­ing their voices not just in the street forums (which is what I call cof­fee shops and face­book com­ments), but in the press (sim­ply Google “the Rio The­atre Van­cou­ver” for a flood of sto­ries) and among politi­cians (Jenny Kwan and Heather Deal are both speak­ing out on the Rio’s behalf). It even tran­scends polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, with Leo Knight,  “Law and Order” opin­ion colum­nist, to agree on an issue with a Vision Coun­cilor “for the first time in liv­ing history.”

This issue is hot, not only because the Rio and Lea are so sup­port­ive of and beloved by Vancouver’s arts com­mu­nity but because, espe­cially to that same arts com­mu­nity, it rep­re­sents major issues in Van­cou­ver and BC. It’s a hard place to suc­ceed as a small busi­ness, and is full of demol­ished unique cul­tural venues, archaic liquor and pub­lic safety laws and a gen­eral dis­re­gard for what access to arts does for a com­mu­nity both socially and eco­nom­i­cally. The story at the Rio has become a point of ref­er­ence  the chang­ing of BC liquor dis­tri­b­u­tion, but it’s truly a point of ref­er­ence for the inter­sec­tion of arts, busi­ness and government.

On a pos­i­tive note, the Rio fundraiser née cel­e­bra­tion was a suc­cess. “We had 200 peo­ple attend  – it was a beau­ti­ful event. Pan­dora and the Lock­smiths made for a really classy evening with a lit­tle bit of tease. On a per­sonal level I found it really uplift­ing to see every­one face to face. It was really great to per­son­ally go around and thank peo­ple. It was a real good night for peo­ple to talk about the issue,” says Lea, sound­ing hope­ful despite her los­ing thou­sands of dol­lars every day her the­atre is closed.  MLA’s Jenny Kwan and Shane Simp­son were in atten­dance, as was Leonard Schein, the pres­i­dent of Fes­ti­val Cinemas.

Along with the return (kind of) of gam­ing based arts fund­ing, the con­tro­versy and sup­port the Rio’s lat­est bat­tle has drawn may her­ald change. But to win, Lea needs our sup­port. Here’s how you can help: raise your voice and write to your MLA, the Solic­i­tor Gen­eral and the LCLB; on Jan­u­ary 31 Heather Deal is pre­sent­ing a motion at City Hall to have the movie ban removed, and you can come and speak for the Rio; and sup­port the Rio finan­cially by attend­ing their amaz­ing upcom­ing LIVE events. Find the addresses and emails, up to date info, FAQs and next steps on Rio’s Face­book group.

The Rio may not be screen­ing movies right now – but there’s still amaz­ing events com­ing up. Let’s wrap up this chap­ter of the ongo­ing saga with a few events com­ing up. You can check out full details online includ­ing advance tick­ets, but Lea had a few extra tid­bits to share with Sad Mag readers.

Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 4: Patrick Mal­iha presents the Legion of Stand-Up Come­di­ans
Tick­ets: $10 Doors: 7pm Show: 8pm

“This is a really excit­ing night because Patrick Mal­iha is a well known come­dian about town and always puts on an excel­lent event. Gra­ham Clark will be a spe­cial guest, which is amaz­ing, peo­ple love Gra­ham Clark. He’s added some­thing like 23 bur­lesque dancers last minute, so it’s going to be fabulous.”

Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 10: Tongue N’ Cheek: Sex, Dance and Spo­ken Word
Tick­ets: $12 advance $15 door Doors: 8pm Show: 9pm

“We’re very excited about this show because it fea­tures my four favourite bur­lesque dancers in town, [Sweet Soul Burlesque’s Crys­tal Pre­cious, Lola Frost, Lit­tle Miss Risk and Cherry On Top].  This is kind of my baby, this par­tic­u­lar show, because I’m com­bin­ing two of my favourite things, bur­lesque and spo­ken word. C.R. Avery, Mike McGee and Jamie DeWolf are three really pow­er­ful spo­ken word artists and we’re get­ting them to col­lab­o­rate, it’s not ‘here’s a dance, here’s a poem’, we’re get­ting them to work together. [Plus] there’s 8 local poets who will be com­pet­ing in the Dirty Haiku con­test. … It’s com­ing up on Valentine’s Day week­end so it’s a good date night.

Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 14: The 2nd Annual Sweet Heart Ser­e­nade
Tick­ets: $10 advance, $14 at the door Doors: 8pm Show: 8:30pm

“Last year we attached it with a movie, and we had planned to show Shake­speare in Love but with the predica­ment we find our­selves in, we are not going to be allowed show it with a movie. So, now it will just be live music but it will be a spe­cial night because we’ve hand picked per­form­ers from some really great bands in town. It’s a more stripped down, inti­mate per­for­mance which makes it per­fect for a date night. It’s adults over so they can have some wine to enjoy dur­ing the evening.”

Other events com­ing up:

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 9: David Choi with Spe­cial Guests (Gen­eral Admission/All Ages Show)
Tick­ets $20 Doors:8 pm Show: 9pm

Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 12: The Rio The­atre & NightHeat Present: Chali 2na MC
Doors: 8pm Tick­ets: $18 + S/C advance

Friday, Feb­ru­ary 24: Com­edy Fest: Marc Maron (WTF) with David Cross and Bob Odenkirk
Show: 7pm Tick­ets: http://comedyfest.com/show/wtf-marc-maron

Comic by Monique Jeanne Wells

Do you miss read­ing the Sun­day comics every week­end, because you live in the 21st cen­tury and no one gets a phys­i­cal news­pa­per deliv­ered to their front door any­more, they just get all their news from Boing Boing any­way? And you don’t even have a front door, because you live in a base­ment suite, and you’re tired of being deprived of comics just because Van­cou­ver has an oppres­sive rental market.

Well, enough of that. Start­ing this week­end, Sad Mag will be bring­ing you an orig­i­nal web comic every Sunday!

This week’s web comic is by one of our very favourite illus­tra­tors, Monique Jeanne Wells! See more of her work at her web­site.

Do you know some­one whose work should be fea­tured on Web Comics for the Week­end? Tell us on Face­book or Twit­ter!

Gay in the Sub­urbs
By Adam Cristo­bal

This arti­cle appears in full in Sad Mag issue 7/8.

Every­one knows a Kurt Hum­mel story, a heart-felt or humor­ous story akin to that of Glee’s coiffed coun­tertenor. The sub­ur­ban ado­les­cent gay male is now cliché, and his tale a quin­tes­sen­tial part of high-school chron­i­cles. Such a tale’s tropes have been well estab­lished: It is usu­ally told as a tragic por­trait of an out­cast pro­tag­o­nist, brought to a dra­matic cli­max of homo­pho­bic con­flict, and pep­pered with awk­ward quips about some locker-room mis­un­der­stand­ing between said pro­tag­o­nist and some sul­try class­mate man­i­fest from hor­mon­ally charged pubes­cent dreams.You know that story, or at least a vari­ant of it.

But this—this is not that story. It is one thing for queer youth to grow up in the sub­urbs, but it is entirely another thing when LGBT fam­i­lies set­tle in the sub­urbs. Down­town Van­cou­ver and San Fran­cisco form two ends of one big West Coast rain­bow, but Vancouver’s vibrant LGBT com­mu­nity is vir­tu­ally nonex­is­tent in our city’s sub­urbs. Can LGBT fam­i­lies set­tle out­side the down­town core, in areas where the den­sity of queer indi­vid­u­als ebbs with the den­sity of other human beings? Is the rainbow-coloured picket fence pos­si­ble, and if it is, what are its impli­ca­tions for the LGBT com­mu­nity at large?

Three years ago, Nathan Pachal and Robert Bit­tner tied the knot in Lan­g­ley and have lived there ever since. Both hus­bands are in their late twen­ties, but nei­ther has lived in Van­cou­ver proper. Nathan works as a broad­cast tech­ni­cian; Robert is a Mas­ters can­di­date at the UBC Depart­ment of Eng­lish. The lat­ter com­mutes to cam­pus to study queer young-adult lit­er­a­ture. “Lan­g­ley doesn’t really have a dis­tinct LGBT com­mu­nity,” he tells me.…

Con­tinue read­ing in Sad Mag issue 7/8.

Photo: Laura Nguyen.

The near­est beach may only be a few blocks from my seat at Gastown’s Nel­son the Seag­ull, but with mid-January hang­ing heavy over Van­cou­ver, noth­ing feels so far away as sum­mer. How­ever, as I start to chat with Jody Glenham—local musi­cian and lead singer of newly minted surf rock combo Plea­sure Cruise—our con­ver­sa­tion turns away from the drea­ri­ness of winter.

Instead, in the hours before Plea­sure Cruise’s PuSh Fes­ti­val Club PuSh per­for­mance, which will find the band along­side local insti­tu­tions like Bend Sin­is­ter and CBC Radio 3 per­son­al­ity Lisa Chris­tiansen, we end up dis­cussing (maybe per­versely, over hot cof­fee) the hazy warmth of low-fi gui­tars, the excite­ment of new hori­zons for the still-nascent project, and redis­cov­er­ing the fun of performance

Plea­sure Cruise, which Glen­ham describes as “the Ramones meets the Ronettes,” came together, rather by chance, in the sum­mer of 2011. “Dustin [Brom­ley] and Quinn [Omori] were look­ing for a female singer. At the time, I had an injured hand, so I wasn’t play­ing. And the way they were look­ing for a singer was on Twit­ter. They were actu­ally tweet­ing back and forth, and I hap­pen to fol­low both of them.” Glen­ham stops and jokes: “So I was on the inside track. And I half jok­ingly tweeted back at them ‘I sing, just saying.’”

Before the night was out, Glen­ham had a series of “bed­room demos” in her inbox; a col­lec­tion of sweet, sum­mer pop songs fea­tur­ing Quinn Omori—Shindig vet­eran, music jour­nal­ist, and pro­pri­etor of From Blown Speak­ers—on vocals. From those hyper­me­di­ated begin­nings, the trio (now a four­some with the addi­tion of bassist Kyle Bourcier) began tak­ing steps in the oppo­site direc­tion, towards a low-fi, sun-drenched aes­thetic, rem­i­nis­cent of con­tem­po­rary acts like Best Coast and Cults, and for Glen­ham, the 50s’ pop and girl group revival of the 1990s.

“I think our first band prac­tice was actu­ally on the beach,” Glen­ham recalls. “I just started join­ing them dur­ing their Third Beach after­noons and talk­ing with them, and that started click­ing. So we decided to get into a jam space with no idea what to expect.” This rough-shod hap­pen­stance, the kind that only sum­mer after­noons can offer, is imme­di­ately appar­ent on the band’s first EP, Busi­ness, or…, which jan­gles and echoes through tracks like “Sum­mer Fling” and throw­back piece “I Really Wanna Know.”

In a city where sun is scarce, Plea­sure Cruise has quickly become a bright spot, catch­ing the eager atten­tion of fans and jour­nal­ists alike. Before they had even played their first show, Wes­t­En­der had chris­tened the combo “Vancouver’s newest super­group” and sin­gled them out as one of five acts to watch for in 2011, along­side 2011 Polaris Prize longlist nom­i­nees Yukon Blonde and 2012 Polaris short­lis­ters, The Pack A.D.

Asked why she thinks Plea­sure Cruise’s par­tic­u­lar brand of “sum­mer beach music” seems to have con­nected so quickly with lis­ten­ers, Glen­ham offers a fairly sim­ple and extremely con­vinc­ing answer: “It’s fun! Doing your own solo stuff, you can get caught up in being so seri­ous all the time, and this is just so fun! I think peo­ple rec­og­nize that and respond to it in a gen­uine way.”

I have to agree. There’s some­thing about Plea­sure Cruise that recalls the do-it-yourself, do-as-you-will punk her­itage on which Van­cou­ver sits; that com­pul­sion to make music that just works, and to do it joy­fully, along­side friends. And that’s exactly what Plea­sure Cruise does—a jour­nal­ist, a singer-songwriter, and a for­mer punk musi­cian mak­ing slap-happy surf rock that audi­ences love.

The com­ing months, Glen­ham says, include a pos­si­ble vinyl release, some poten­tial fes­ti­val dates, and sink­ing “fish­ing lines” into record label inboxes. But for the most part, the future of Plea­sure Cruise seems to be as indul­gently casual as its past. In Glenham’s words: “what are you plan­ning? I’m plan­ning on doing what­ever the uni­verse hands me.”

You can down­load Plea­sure Cruise’s debut EP Busi­ness or… for free on Band­camp. The band will be play­ing Feb­ru­ary 3rd at Lucky Bar in Vic­to­ria and Feb­ru­ary 14th at The Biltmore.

Valentine’s Day is a time to cry, whether it’s because you have no one to swap roman­tic sen­ti­ments and/or body flu­ids with, or because your swapping-partner gave you a box of choco­lates with the best ones already eaten. What­ever your rea­son for resent­ing the hol­i­day (just a lit­tle, you’re not bit­ter) join us for Sad Com­edy to laugh and drink away the pain!

Hap­pen­ing at our favourite hang­out (The Cobalt), the show fea­tures a stel­lar line-up of come­di­ans and is hosted by Ghost Jail’s Caitlin Howden.

If that isn’t awe­some enough, a full-on dance party is hap­pen­ing after the show, with DJs Jef Lep­pard and Robo Santa spin­ning tunes until close. We’ll have a cry­ing booth and a kiss­ing booth set upfor photo ops all night.

The $10 cover gets you a year’s sub­scrip­tion and admis­sion to the show and dance party! So gather up all your Valen­tines and get your cry­ing face ready for Sad Comedy!

Sad Com­edy: Valen­tine Edition

The Cobalt (917 Main St)

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 9th, 2012

Doors at 8:00PM, show at 9:00PM

Cover $10 (includes subscription)

RSVP on Face­book

To Serve and Col­lect
By Jeff Lawrence

From Sad Mag issue 7/8.

Ron Dut­ton glides over his bed­room floor and slides open a wood panel with the ele­gant pre­ci­sion of Vanna White reveal­ing a vowel on Wheel Of For­tune. Light floods the shelves to illu­mi­nate the most com­pre­hen­sive library of Van­cou­ver queer his­tory avail­able in the city, con­tained within his home on Har­wood Street in the West End.

An alpha­bet­ized, time-sorted col­lec­tion of books, mag­a­zines, video­tapes, over­size posters, and pho­tographs, all chron­i­cling this city’s LGBT his­tory from the mid-century onward, lead me to believe Dut­ton is much more of an Alex Trebek.

Within sec­onds he pulls up a file on Vancouver’s gay clubs, then flips through some pho­tographs of The Cas­tle pub from the ’70s—the decade in which the archives were born. As a young gay man in a time of great polit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion, Dut­ton found his calling.

“It was a very inter­est­ing time in that the civil rights move­ment in the States had been going on for 30 years, the women’s move­ment for 20 years, and there was this huge sense that the world was in tran­si­tion,” he says. “Every­body was protest­ing, tak­ing up activist roles. They were busily doing the work of trans­form­ing soci­ety and there was nobody who was doc­u­ment­ing this, and of course as an archivist and a librar­ian, it’s my trade.”

Since then, he’s stashed away every­thing LGBT-related he can get his hands on, from the first half of the century—when even a sliver of infor­ma­tion about gays was extremely hard to come by—to today.

“My job has been twofold: to doc­u­ment that social change as it occurs, and sec­ondly, to recover the his­tory of gays and les­bians going back to the begin­ning of this province,” he says.

That his­tory, when com­pared to other parts of Canada, is as dif­fer­ent as the geog­ra­phy across this country.

“His­tor­i­cally, Van­cou­ver has been much more laissez-faire in terms of mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple than has been the case in say, Toronto, where to this very day the rela­tion­ship between the gay com­mu­nity and the police has been poi­so­nous,” he says.

That wasn’t the case in here, Dut­ton explains. Once a fron­tier, wooden-shack town with broth­els on every block, “There was a tacit agree­ment between the city’s fathers, the police depart­ment, and the gay com­mu­nity that if peo­ple don’t get too out­ra­geous and don’t rock the boat, every­one will pros­per from this.

“We were pretty oppressed, but less so. That really goes back to the found­ing of Vancouver.”

Accord­ing to Dut­ton, doc­u­ment­ing social change is impor­tant ammu­ni­tion against the pos­si­ble recur­rence of past injus­tices and vio­lence. “We have gained a mea­sure of free­dom, but we have to guard against it being taken away from us through our own inat­ten­tion or our own com­pla­cency,” Dut­ton cau­tions. “There isn’t the level of activism there was in the 1970s. How­ever, many of the rights have been gained and it’s a mop-up oper­a­tion now.”

The archives, he hopes, will remind peo­ple today and future gen­er­a­tions about what has been achieved, and where we’ve come from. Despite the free­doms we enjoy today, Ron Dut­ton and his archives are a reminder of why LGBT activism remains more impor­tant than ever.

Start­ing today and run­ning for the next two weeks, Canada Line rid­ers can check out orig­i­nal art by Sad Mag Issue 5 cover star Dou­glas Cou­p­land, in the form of colour­ful QR codes. His work, enti­tled Van­cou­ver Codes, is part of the 10 Sec­ond series, one of 15 pub­lic art projects com­mis­sioned by the city as part of Van­cou­ver 125.

Accord­ing to the press release, “Van­cou­ver Codes is the eighth in the 10 Sec­onds series of com­mis­sioned works for the Canada Line video screens as part of a year­long project cel­e­brat­ing Van­cou­ver 125.” The 10 Sec­onds series was curated by Paul Wong and pre­sented in part­ner­ship with On Main and InTransitBC.

Cou­p­land cre­ated QR-code paint­ings last year, two of which (“Live Long and Pros­per” and “Every­thing Beau­ti­ful is True”) are dis­play­ing on Canada Line video screens until Jan­u­ary 31st.

Van­cou­ver Codes link to sites for var­i­ous Vancouver-related videos, art works and sites includ­ing “pho­tographs of var­i­ous sites such as Grouse Moun­tain and Van Dusen Gar­dens; pub­lic art­works includ­ing Coupland’s Dig­i­tal Orca and Terry Fox Sculp­tures” and more.

After Coupland’s tran­sit exhi­bi­tion wraps, new work will be fea­tured for the months of Feb­ru­ary and March. To see the pre­vi­ous art works exhib­ited on the Canada Line, visit the On Main website.

Van­cou­ver Codes

Jan­u­ary 16 — 31, 2012

Canada Line Stations

Free!

Note: A fab­ri­cated image from a con­struc­tion site in South Sur­rey Helma Sawatzky, The Phoenix Com­plex (2012) c-print. Cour­tesy of the artist and Elliott Luis Gallery

Art lovers: check out Beyond Vague Ter­rain: The City and the Ser­ial Image, which opens at the Sur­rey Art Gallery this Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 14th.

Show­cas­ing the way Metro Van­cou­ver is always chang­ing and simul­ta­ne­ously offer­ing “beauty and banal­ity” in its sprawl­ing sub­urbs and mer­cu­r­ial neigh­bour­hoods, the exhibit includes 13 artists and fea­tures video, pho­tog­ra­phy, paint­ing and drawing.

High­lights include “a grid of shim­mer­ing graphite rub­bings of eroded date-stamped side­walks on Vancouver’s West­side, a 109 foot long light box pre­sent­ing a panorama of Metro Van­cou­ver as seen from a mov­ing Sky­Train, and an inter­ac­tive pho­to­graphic data­base of every bus stop in Sur­rey.” A depar­ture from postcard-perfect views of down­town Van­cou­ver, much of the work focuses on “street inter­sec­tions, indus­trial dead zones, and sub­ur­ban sprawl,” to chal­lenge our ideas about urban­ity, mar­gin­al­iza­tion and history.

Beyond Vague Ter­rain: The City and the Ser­ial Image

Sur­rey Art Gallery

13750 88 Ave, Sur­rey, British Columbia

Jan­u­ary 14th– March 18th, 2012

By dona­tion

Open­ing recep­tion: Jan­u­ary 14th, 7:00PM-9:00PM

Denis, Every­one
By Dave Deveau

From Sad Mag issue 7/8.

The first time I met Denis Simp­son, I hap­pened to be wear­ing an ironic T-shirt that read “Raised on Cana­dian TV” and was embla­zoned with a pic­ture of Polka­roo from the famed Cana­dian children’s series Polka Dot Door. Denis, a renowned per­former, hosted the show for the bulk of my child­hood. That hip­sters wear shirts depict­ing a char­ac­ter from a show he hosted shows the sig­nif­i­cance Denis had within the arts com­mu­nity. As a per­former, he inhab­ited mul­ti­ple, often con­tra­dic­tory worlds: children’s enter­tain­ment as the host of Polka Dot Door; adult con­tem­po­rary music as the orig­i­nal bass singer in The Nylons; the­atre, in which he pro­duced overtly queer and sexy work (his solo show Denis, Any­one? had tremen­dous suc­cess at Arts Club); musi­cals aplenty; and even news pro­gram­ming (who can for­get his stint as the Live Eye Guy on CityTV?).

Call it coin­ci­dence that when I first had the chance to pick the brain of this leg­endary Cana­dian enter­tainer, I was sport­ing the iconic image he was so closely asso­ci­ated with. But as we con­tin­ued work­ing together, I wore it to every one of our cof­fee dates and meet­ings to see if he’d notice. I spent my youth watch­ing his smil­ing face, and wanted to acknowl­edge the effect he’d had on who I became. But how do you actu­ally say that with­out becom­ing a bum­bling fanatic?

Denis was a very pub­lic pres­ence whose con­tri­bu­tions to char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions entrenched him as one of Canada’s queer crown jew­els. His work as a com­mu­nity mem­ber con­tin­ues to inspire queers and artists alike: Despite the numer­ous tri­als he faced in life, Denis was the utmost believer in grat­i­tude. Ever gra­cious and grace­ful, Denis took many a way­ward the­atre fag under his wing and gave his time gen­er­ously, relay­ing sto­ries about a gay Van­cou­ver that had changed dras­ti­cally since his first West Coast foray in the 80s. Despite being a big name, espe­cially in the local the­atre scene, Denis always made time for any­one and every­one who needed it.

Though his pass­ing last year left an open wound in both the queer and arts com­mu­ni­ties, Denis leaves behind his per­se­ver­ance, ded­i­ca­tion and open-heartedness. From the babyfag see­ing his first instance of cross-dressing in an early Christ­mas pan­tomime to the the­atre vet­eran telling a joke that makes the tallest man in the room throw his head back and guf­faw, Denis is remem­bered by many as some­one who knew how to cre­ate com­mu­nity. He was com­mu­nity. And the count­less sto­ries he told over cof­fee, under the polite super­vi­sion of Polka­roo on my T-shirt, will not soon be forgotten.

This Mag­i­cal Place
As told to Jeff Lawrence.

From Sad Mag issue 7/8.

At 21, Ghas­san Shanti left behind a life of fear in Jor­dan because of his sex­u­al­ity and claimed refugee sta­tus in Canada to begin a promis­ing career as a makeup artist.

My par­ents are Pales­tin­ian, but I was born in Jor­dan. So I guess I’m from Jor­dan, but I spent a big chunk of my child­hood in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia in a small town called Torrance.

We moved there when I was five, in 1990, and we lived in Cal­i­for­nia until I was 14. In 1999, we moved back to Jor­dan. It was the most hor­ren­dous, trau­matic expe­ri­ence of my life, prob­a­bly. I spent the next seven years there until I turned 21. High school is dif­fi­cult enough in any part of the world, let alone being a lit­tle Amer­i­can­ized, angsty teen in the Mid­dle East.

For the first cou­ple years of high school I always thought that I would just some­how move back to the States—I didn’t know how. Then 9/11 hap­pened and it became vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble for an Arab to travel between the Mid­dle East and the U.S. It was just incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult, and I fig­ured that it would be years before the anti-Arab cli­mate would cool down.

I wanted to go to Canada because I fig­ured it would be a bet­ter option than the U.S. I chose Van­cou­ver because it was the least cold part of Canada. I guess I was right. The sum­mer that I moved here was per­fect: July 2006. It was magic, the best sum­mer the city has had in ages.

I don’t know that I would be alive today if I were liv­ing in Jor­dan. It’s a Mus­lim coun­try. But I hon­estly don’t think that Islam is any more anti-gay than any of the other major reli­gions, specif­i­cally Chris­tian­ity. I think that they both man­age to be as spite­ful in their vit­riol against homo­sex­u­als. But there’s no leg­is­la­tion in Jor­dan pro­tect­ing me, and anti-homophobia leg­is­la­tion in Canada is super exten­sive. Unlike Jor­dan, where being gay is a crim­i­nal act, vir­tu­ally any dis­crim­i­na­tion against gays is a crim­i­nal act here. I feel safe.

Photo: Daphne Chan.