It’s been an interesting few weeks for Pride and Church Street. An article in The Grid that used a small and isolated hipster perspective to declare Church Street and Pride irrelevant and unnecessary was nearly universally condemned as being dead wrong. Coming after a year where the biggest gay-related stories were bullying and suicides, it was certainly an odd and sweeping claim. Yet like a lot of things happening in Toronto right now, it caused people to think about what really does matter to them, and stand up and say why (and boy howdy, they certainly did). Then, last week, when Mayor Rob Ford said he wasn’t going to be attending Pride, it set off another riot of controversy (if Pride was indeed irrelevant and unnecessary, nobody would care if Ford was there or not). Here on Spacing our John Lorinc explained why this snub matters, as does Ivor Tossell over at the Toronto Standard. And yesterday in the Globe, Marcus Gee showed the darkest part of all this: the hate that still bubbles just below the surface of our tolerant and peaceful Toronto.
Want more reasons why this part of Toronto is still a most vital part of the city? In 2008 and 2009 we installed two iterations of the [murmur] mobile phone oral history project in and around Church Street with a whole bunch of stories told by Torontonians with attachments to the place. This weekend you can walk around and call the numbers on the signs, or listen right now online by clicking the red dots on the map (which you can purchase from artist Marlena Zuber if you want a copy of your own).
You’ll hear people like Helen Rykens at the 519 Community Centre talk passionately about how the AIDS memorial in Cawthra Park came about during the epidemic in the 1990s. They’re still adding names, over 2700 now. Then at the intersection of Church and Wellesley there’s Suhail Abual Sameed explaining how the street was a refuge for him as a gay Muslim immigrant, and how quickly that safety can disappear, as it did during 9/11. At Yonge and Wellesley, Toronto journalist Gerald Hannon talks about the 1981 bathhouse raids and the response. Then outside Maple Leaf Gardens the Reverend Brent Hawkes — the guy who wore a bullet proof vest when he performed the first same-sex marriages in Canada — talks about holding Pride-day services at the arena and the death threats they got in 1994. Bomb sniffing dogs, body guards — all the things we don’t think are Toronto. There’s lots more, keep listening.
Church Street and Pride don’t matter? Not according to these folks, nor the nearly 1 million people who will head to the neighbourhood over the weekend. Happy Pride indeed.
9 comments
As with graffiti-gate, the mayor’s (negative) attention with respect to Pride has reinvigorated the Week’s significance while putting a welcome end to last year’s tedious bickering over QAIA. I’m guessing this weekend’s parade will be better attended than ever. In Ford’s Toronto, Newton’s third law of motion seems to apply to politics: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Doesn’t the brouhaha surrounding the Mayor’s decision essentially validate the Grid article? If bullying and suicide were issues for the Pride community surely it would have escaped the 24 hour news cycle and drowned out something as trivial as the Mayor’s location this week. Also worth pondering – what message is being sent by the community when skipping Pride is equated with bigotry?
Joe> Not sure I get the link you’re trying to make. The huge reaction to the pride snub suggests it isn’t trivial, and it being an issue has nothing to do with suicides and bullying.
And if Ford didn’t have a history of saying homophobic remarks, he probably could have got away with not going to Pride.
> Shawn
“An article in The Grid that used a small and isolated hipster perspective to declare Church Street and Pride irrelevant and unnecessary was nearly universally condemned as being dead wrong. Coming after a year where the biggest gay-related stories were bullying and suicides, it was certainly an odd and sweeping claim…”
The quote from the above article made reference to bullying and suicides as a counter to the Grid’s claim that Pride and Church street have become irrelevant. My point was that those issues are not what was front and centre this week – rather media coverage was dominated by the mayor’s choice not to attend. Attention does not equal significance and in my view any choice Mayor Ford might make is trivial in big picture of LGBT rights and issues.
Pride is so much bigger than Rob Ford and the fact that it can indulge itself by focusing on him rather then the struggle for rights as it has in the past does lend credence to the Grid’s claim that its relevance is waning.
There is an ability to keep one issue really important for a sustain amount of time, and still focus on another important issue at hand. There’s been media coverage of the suicides/bullying all year….and now there is this…
I agree Pride is bigger than Rob Ford the dude, but as the Chief Magistrate of Toronto, it matters….especially if Rob Ford the dude has said homophobic remarks in the past. I still don’t understand you’re connection between the Grid saying Pride is waning, and Ford etc. You should have been on Church tonight for the very political Trans march. Lots of human rights stuff….also some upset people about Ford. These are not mutually exclusive.
@JOE and other “Pride-no-longer-matters” folks
An Imam who has organized a Muslim conference in Toronto this says it is not wrong that he has invited a particularly hateful conference speaker who believes gays should be killed, since Mayor Ford himself evidently holds similar views: “Why are you guys making issue of this one and not that one?” http://bit.ly/l6eyTo
Happily, unlike the MTCC, the crown corporation hosting this gay-bashing hate-fest, the Sound Academy has refused to allow dance-hall closet case Capleton perform this week. Capleton regularly advocates the killing of gays in his songs. His management company blames the cancellation on “batty Man Parade & their one side ways,” as if there was “another side” of killing gays that needs to be explored in Canada. EGALE has alerted the hate-crimes unit.
Last word goes to Marcus Gee, who nails what is at stake: “Toronto mayor’s snub of Pride Week gives bigots cover to spew their bile” Ford is emboldening homophobes. He needs to shut this down.
John the article says the exact opposite of what you are saying it does. There is zero evidence that the Mayor wants to see any harm come to the LGBT community and no amount of tortured arguments will change that fact. While this might blow your mind most of us have known for a few years now that radical Muslims want us all dead. What I am saying and I believe the Grid article is saying as well is that the LGBT community has achieved broad acceptance, which obviously does not include everyone.
Joe> If the grid article said just that, nobody would have care about the cover story.
Joe, I said the Imam wrongly believes that the Mayor’s views are similar to that of the speakers who advocates killing gays (and the Star makes it clear that Ford has never advocated harm against gay people, which I fully acknowledge). I don’t know or care what Ford believes in his heart. But right now there are homophobes and bigots who rightly or wrongly believe the mayor is on their side because of his Pride stance, and if he is any kind of leader he needs to shut this down. Because it matters what the mayor does or doesn’t do.