Between Québec And Toronto

I’ve lived in Vancouver for over eight years, having moved here from Ottawa—where I was born and spent all my life—and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. In fact, I believe moving out here was the best thing that happened to me since I came out of the close twelve years ago. I’ve changed a lot in that time and, looking back, I feel very far away from Ottawa, and the me who lived there.

I’ve lived in Vancouver for over eight years, having moved here from Ottawa—where I was born and spent all my life—and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. In fact, I believe moving out here was the best thing that happened to me since I came out of the close twelve years ago. I’ve changed a lot in that time and, looking back, I feel very far away from Ottawa, and the me who lived there. From where I’m sitting it sometimes feels as though very little changed for me in those first four years after coming out, and even less in the two decades that came before. As though the only important decision I made in Ottawa was to eventually get the hell out, and find a place—the only place—where I could be who I needed to be. I have to force myself to remember there was a lot more to those four years than coming out and dreams of the West Coast.

I remember my graduation, in June of ’92. I’d come out to myself less than two weeks before, and still felt completely lost. The ceremony wasn’t helping, either. All the other graduands seemed so sure of themselves, what they wanted, where they were going. But me? I had no clue, and no confidence that I could handle it all. Nothing I’d gone through so far had prepared me for this. My life—safe, routine, familiar—was being turned upside down and for the moment I had no one to talk to. I was alone.

At some point in the following weeks I got the idea to go on a short trip by myself, to shake up my routine and hopefully give me a bit of perspective and confidence. After some thought I decided on Québec, a few hours away by train. Familiar enough—I’d been there a couple of times when I was much younger—but still far from my everyday life. So I travelled there in early August, staying at the Université Laval residences. I did the tourist thing by day—the Zoo, the Aquarium, Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Île d’Orléans, exploring the narrow streets of Vieux Québec—and wrote in my diary by night. There was a lot of self-doubt, confusion and loneliness in those entries… but also joy at this new adventure, and hope (or at least wishes) for the future. When I came home I felt a bit more relaxed, a bit more sunburned, a bit more confident, a bit more determined.True, I wasn’t changed as much as I would have liked… but I’d taken that important first step.

That fall I came out to Ottawa’s gay community, and my immediate family. And then, one by one, to some of my friends and classmates. I was nervous as hell the first few times, but with each person I told the fear got a little weaker and I got a little stronger.

And I became politicized. I read up on queer issues, got in touch with my anger and joined activist groups. Tentatively, at first; for a long time after coming out I lacked the confidence to pull my weight and be more than an observer.

I stopped going to church; for years I’d been going more or less out of inertia, and I suppose it was only after I came out as gay that I could also come out as a non-Catholic. For a while I flirted with Wicca, then began a gradual slide towards atheism.

And I stayed in school. For the first year after coming out I took higher-division Physics courses, thinking I could go on to a Master’s. Then I realized Computer Science was more my thing, and began a new degree in the fall of ’93.

I don’t remember exactly at what point I thought of moving to the West Coast, but the more I thought about it, the more appealing it seemed: the mountains, the sea, the unknown… and, just as importantly, it was far away from Ottawa. By late ’95 I was feeling a growing need to leave, make a fresh start somewhere else. I’d changed a lot, grown, and made friends I’d miss, but Ottawa held too many painful memories, of loneliness and need and failure, both before and after coming out. I also wanted to do graduate studies, but preferably not in Ottawa. I applied to a number of universities and, to my delight, was accepted in the Master’s program in Comp Sci at Simon Fraser University.

At the end of June ’96 a bunch of us from Outlook (Ottawa U GLB group) went down to Toronto for the Gay Pride weekend. Until then I’d only seen Ottawa’s relatively modest Pride parades, so I was really looking forward to this. The weekend started off with a trip to Canada’s Wonderland on Saturday. Great fun, and another first for me, though I was too afraid of heights and motion sickness to go on the wilder rides. The weather turned to rain in the middle of the day, but it was warm enough that after a while I didn’t even feel it. That night we took a walk through the gay ghetto—there were Pride flags everywhere—and made a brief stop at an incredibly crowded club.

On Sunday, Church Street was a riot of colour and noise, with people in all sorts of costumes, everyday clothes, or no clothes at all. Toronto is a different world; back in Ottawa I never saw more than one or two pairs of breasts a year at the parade. But here there were topless women left, right, and centre, as well as a few naked men (or just about naked; but really, what do you call someone wearing only (a) a leather harness, or (b) a translucent gown and cock ring?). The crowd was so thick I only caught a few glimpses of the huge, elaborate floats as the parade looped around the neighbourhood. That was fine, there was plenty to see. Church Street was closed off for a street fair kind of thing, and I spent the afternoon people-watching, checking out the booths, and trying to keep hydrated under the blazing sun.

In a way this weekend trip to Toronto felt similar to my earlier trip to Québec, both being preludes to something big and intimidating: my journey out of the closet, and moving across the country. Part of me was still worried that I wouldn’t be able to live on my own and it was nice to be reminded that, yes, I could handle it. These two nights in a youth hostel could be seen as a bit of a test, that I passed with flying colours. Then again, in hindsight I’m sure I was looking for patterns in all the wrong places. Though there was a nice superficial symmetry between the two trips, the differences far outweighed the similarities. I didn’t go to Toronto to reflect or work up my courage—though that was a nice side effect—but only to have fun, and connect with the greater community I was now a part of. Most importantly, I was different. For all my doubts and insecurities—still there after four years—I finally knew I had the strength to make it on my own.

And Vancouver was only five weeks away now! Over those five weeks I ping-ponged between excitement and terror as I said my goodbyes and packed and dreamed about my new life. I was massively nervous and insecure, but I never considered not leaving. I was doing the right thing: Vancouver was where I belonged now, not Ottawa.

But moving thousands of kilometers across the country wasn’t some kind of magical rebirth. It didn’t immediately remove all my issues and insecurities, no matter how much I would have liked it to. Just like I had before, I grew up and changed one step at a time. And I’ve only just come to wonder if maybe it didn’t matter where that happened. There was nothing special about Vancouver, or Ottawa, for that matter. I was doing pretty well by the time of my second fateful trip, and I think now I could have built a fine life pretty much anywhere, or continued to build it if I’d stayed in Ottawa.

That’s not to say I made a mistake eight years ago. It felt like the right thing to do then, and I don’t regret it one bit. Vancouver is my home now. But the truth is that I didn’t have to move here. At some point between Québec and Toronto I made a choice. Maybe it didn’t feel like much of one, but there it was. There were any number of roads open to me, not just the one that led to Vancouver. There’s not much point in playing what-if games and wondering how my past could have been different, but I can think about the future. And I can choose where the road out of Ottawa will lead me.

Four More Years

Well, that’s just fucking great. The chimp gets a second term and eleven anti-gay-marriage ballots passed. I guess Americans are happy electing (note: “electing”, not “re-electing”) a half-wit warmongering religious whackjob as long as it keeps the queers from getting married.

Well, that’s just fucking great. The chimp gets a second term and eleven anti-gay-marriage ballots passed. I guess Americans are happy electing (note: “electing”, not “re-electing”) a half-wit warmongering religious whackjob as long as it keeps the queers from getting married.

You know, before last night, I was all set to go like Stewie Griffin from Family Guy, in the episode where Meg pretends he’s her son and he gets sent to an aggressively multicultural foster home, and be all “Oh, Hosannah! It’s the lesser of two evils!” (That line always cracks me up.) But… yeah. The lesser of two evils conceded. And I don’t have the words to express how angry and depressed I am. Well, I guess I do, but that’s already been done. So I’ll just link to a much more eloquent blog, let out a Stewie-style “Blast!”, and sign off for now.

A Moment of Patriotism

Fall is in full swing. Trees are reddening (and browning and yellowing and orangeing, and is that even a word? Orangeing? Orangening? I could look it up, but it’s more fun to speculate). I felt like writing something here, but it all came out so generic. The leaves are falling and the days are getting shorter and the birds are flying south and something about the changing seasons and maybe the circle of life, and then a rousing rendition of Turn! Turn! Turn!

Multicoloured Cocoon

Fall is in full swing. Trees are reddening (and browning and yellowing and orangeing, and is that even a word? Orangeing? Orangening? I could look it up, but it’s more fun to speculate). I felt like writing something here, but it all came out so generic. The leaves are falling and the days are getting shorter and the birds are flying south and something about the changing seasons and maybe the circle of life, and then a rousing rendition of Turn! Turn! Turn! Gah. Maybe I wasn’t that inspired after all.

(Problem: if I’m going to have a more bloggish feel to this Web site (ie: shorter, but more frequent, updates), I can’t just write something for the sake of writing. It has to have… substance. Or at least, style. Or a point. Or something. It can’t just be about what I had for lunch, or cleaning the appartment, or talking about people you don’t even know, stuff that would be boring to anyone but me. But on the other hand, I can’t keep writing these big long essays with deep insights and stuff that take months or years to finish (depending on how disciplined I feel). There’s got to be a happy medium; I just have to find it. But then I’ll probably have to rename that section. “Essays” sounds too… stuffy. Unspontaneous. I don’t know if that’s a word either. Making up words is doubleplusgood.)

So, fall. This weekend I went down to Como Lake Park to add to my Fall Foliage gallery, and got some gorgeous pics of a young maple tree showing off its red leaves. Wow. I ask you, is there anything more spectacular than a maple leaf’s unique fiery orange-red? And even though the colour actually has nothing to do with why it was picked for the Canadian flag, for just a moment, it made me feel all… patriotic.

O Canada, terre de nos aïeux
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux

(Second aside. I only knew the first stanza of the French and English versions. Then I looked up the rest of the lyrics, and they’re even more fiercely royalist, nationalist and Christian. Oy. Although I did get a giggle out of the first line of the third stanza: «De son patron, précurseur du vrai Dieu» Heh. The original version was French, after all. English Canadians, not so big on the Saint-Jean-Baptiste.)

Maple Fire

The days are getting shorter, and the sun’s lower in the sky. No more outdoor volleyball at work. But when you’ve got spectacles like this, I really can’t complain.

Left, Right, Left, Right

So. 51 days into the redesign, and where am I at?

It’s going pretty well, actually. I’ve converted all of the pages except the photo galleries to the new (provisional) design, and even those should be done very soon. That’s the easy part. Now that I’ve got the styles in place, I’ll be able to shuffle things around much more easily. CSS-based layouts are a godsend, they are. I’ve still got a lot to learn (no duh), but it doesn’t look so intimidating anymore.

So. 51 days into the redesign, and where am I at?

It’s going pretty well, actually. I’ve converted all of the pages except the photo galleries to the new (provisional) design, and even those should be done very soon. That’s the easy part. Now that I’ve got the styles in place, I’ll be able to shuffle things around much more easily. CSS-based layouts are a godsend, they are. I’ve still got a lot to learn (no duh), but it doesn’t look so intimidating anymore. At first, I was going to stick to my trusty old table-based layout; but when I tried to get a little fancier I ended up with massively nested tables, so I said “Fuck that noise!” and took the plunge. CSS all the way, baby. Haven’t looked back since. In fact, a while later, I decided to move the sidebar from left to right. All it took were a few changes in the stylesheet, and boom, all my pages had their sidebar on the right. Seriously, how awesome is that? If I hadn’t been enlightened before, that would have done it for sure.

But like I said, that’s the easy part. CSS and HTML, that’s just… coding (I always code my pages by hand). The real struggle will be designing graphics, because it means using a side of my brain that just hasn’t gotten much exercise. Left brain—analytical, logical, language oriented? No problemo. Right brain—intuitive, emotional? Ah. That’s a problemo. I’ll need to learn a whole new language. No, not even that (just showed my bias, right there), but much more basic—primal, if I may use the word—ways to express myself.

I think I got that particular revelation while visiting Web sites on Paleolithic art a couple weeks ago. The people living 20 or 30,000 years ago had no written language, and maybe not much of a spoken language, but they still produced some seriously kick-ass art. I have to watch myself here; can’t fall in the trap of thinking “Ooo, Cro-magnons were primitive and brutish, they had no left-brain thinking at all.” Which, well, is certainly very condescending and probably very wrong. But they must have had a very different mindset, and that’s something I need to explore.

My Coming Out Story

It happened in late May of 1992 and became official on May 28th, the day I started my diary to come out to myself on paper; I was seven weeks away from my 21st birthday, having just finished my first undergrad degree. Suddenly, without warning, denial took a permanent holiday and I accepted the simple truth: I was gay. Had been all along.

It happened in late May of 1992 and became official on May 28th, the day I started my diary to come out to myself on paper; I was seven weeks away from my 21st birthday, having just finished my first undergrad degree. Suddenly, without warning, denial took a permanent holiday and I accepted the simple truth: I was gay. Had been all along.

Of course, it wasn’t really “without warning” and looking back, I’m amazed it took so long for me to come out. I’d liked boys for years, fantasized about them with every spare neuron. It’s true that I’d never actually done anything about it… and denial is a powerful thing. Since I understand how pointless it is to obsess about wasted years, and even though I wish I’d done it earlier, I can only say I just wasn’t ready to face the truth.

So I was out to myself. but now what was I supposed to do? Who should I talk to? Where should I go to find other gay people? Too many questions. Internalized homophobia was really the least of my worries: I felt lost and confused, full of fears and self-doubts, and not just about this particular issue. In the first week of June I attended my graduation ceremony; though I was proud and happy to have completed my degree, everything intensified my insecurities. All the other graduands seemed so sure of themselves, of where they wanted to go, what they wanted to do. Me? I didn’t have a clue. Only that I was staying in school, postponing any major decisions about my life for as long as possible.

When classes started again in September, I decided it was time to get off my butt. I’d spent the summer getting my head together, and felt a bit more confident about things. I remembered seeing posters for a gay/lesbian/bi group at Ottawa U, but that had been a couple of semesters ago, so I didn’t know if they were still active. Of course, back in those days, there was no centre or Web site. However, the student info guide was helpful in other ways: I found out about GO-Info, Ottawa’s G/L monthly paper (now defunct), and several gay or gay-friendly bookstores. And in GO-Info, I learned about various discussion and support groups held by local queer organizations. That was exactly what I needed.

In mid-September I came out to my twin brother Martin. I’d been working up the nerve to hell him for a couple of months… and as I expected it went perfectly well. I told him, and that was that. I’d been hugely nervous before, needing to tell somebody, and here I was with a totally anticlimactic coming out.

A week later I went to my first gay discussion group. I’d chosen one that took place on Sunday afternoons, since all others were on weeknights and I wasn’t ready to come out to the rest of the family. I told my parents I was going to study on campus—a plausible lie, since I sometimes did do this.

I took the bus to the ALGO Centre, at 318 Lisgar just off Bank Street. As I walked up those stairs (stairs that would become very familiar), I knew I was entering a different world. A world where I could be myself; where I could spill my guts; a world of people like me, who knew what I was going through because they’d been there too.

We went out for coffee after the meeting. Later, at home, I explained the smell of cigarette smoke on my clothes by saying I’d gotten together with friends—this time, not a lie. I kept my excitement and brand-new optimism to myself. Partly it was habit… and partly, I didn’t think even Martin would understand.

And so began my life out of the closet. Over the next few months I came out to my immediate family, read quite a lot (and especially got interested in queer history), and very gradually became politicized. It was slow going—change only came one small step at a time—but at last I was on my way.