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6/29/2019

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Mythological Quest
Another column from the vaults

In honour of
World Pride in New York City and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots I dug out this old nugget... my Xtra column from 25 years ago on the 25th anniversary of Stonewall. That was my first-ever trip to NYC, an emotional and intellectual roller-coaster experience... which included being cruised by David Bowie outside the Walter Kerr Theatre! I was still a relatively new homo and seeing Tony Kushner's epic Angels in America, my first Broadway play, had an enormous impact. Twenty-five years ago AIDS was the leading cause of death of Americans 25 to 44. Reflecting the urgency of the LGBTQ2 movement back then, there was a renegade parade down Fifth Ave organized by ACT UP, in addition to the sanctioned one that marched down First Ave.

Plus ça change. There are two rival parades again this year in New York, and universal healthcare is still an unrealized dream. I don' know whether to delight or despair on how relevant this 25-year-old piece of writing remains. 
I love its ambition; as usual I'm trying to do too much in too short a space.

"[Canada's] benevolent Crown is as tarnished as Liberty’s torch. All national myths are bogus." The other thing I like is how the piece exemplifies one of the most important and appealing aspects of LGBTQ2 identities: Being queer is not a static identity; it's the repeated act of querying and queering, a questioning, a quest. We have many marches to go.

Happy Pride everyone.


“There She Is, Myth America”
Bent Dissent column
July 22, 1994, Xtra

I only had a few moments between Stonewall 25 in New York City and Pride Day in Toronto to write this column. As the homos parade pass my window with their free spirits and genitalia, I’m thinking big thoughts. (No, I’m not a size queen.) Problem is, I’ve got one brain cell left... too much fuel has spilled on this jet-setter. So please bear with me through this scribbled postcard.

Everything my friends and I did in New York revolved around the US mythology of the individual: the anniversary of Stonewall, the Broadway production of Angels in America, cheap drinks and the talk of geniuses.

It was exhilarating to be in New York for the first time. I’ve seen the buildings before, I’ve walked the streets. It all seems so familiar. This is the centre of one of the world’s greatest powers, the US media. This is the home of Myth America -- the Statue of Liberty with its grand exterior and hollow construction.

A land of immigrants; the home of the free. That’s the fundamental lie that Tony Kushner’s Angels in America holds up to the sky to twist slowly in the chilling winds of the US landscape.

The character Belize is an African-American nurse on an AIDS ward. In the second part of this magnum opus, entitled Perestroika, he has the line: “The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word ‘free’ to a note so high nobody can reach it.”

As Kushner and others have observed elsewhere, one of the highest prices paid for the myth of the free individual is the absence of universal healthcare in the US.

That was blatantly clear when my friends and I joined the renegade ACT UP march along Fifth Ave. In the US, the lesbian and gay civil rights movement is inextricably tied to healthcare reform. There’s no freedom if your only choice is between dragging your family into destitution to pay your medical bills, or going off quietly to die alone.

But I’m beginning to sound like the usual smug Canadian tourist listing the benefits of Canadian collectivism over US individualism. Our benevolent Crown is as tarnished as Liberty’s torch. All national myths are bogus.
Instead of debating specific strategies for real change, Angels presents a very US response, one also very familiar to any homo -- the personal is political.

The play is not about rights per se, it’s about responsibility -- not the responsibility of the state, but individual responsibility. Simply put, if you are able to love, then you are no longer a free individual. (Of course, love ain’t simple – that’s why both parts of Angels run seven hours.)

Eventually, the ACT UP march folded into the official international march. Both proceeded into Central Park. What a beautiful sight: dancing lesbians, nude rude boys in the bush, teenagers rollerblading backward down the steps to the Bethesda Fountain passed a queen giving them an Evita salute -- for a fleeting moment, a million queers of all persuasions created an enchanted forest.

I smuggled these images through Canada Customs because they are evidence of love, of people caring for one another, of countless individual acts of benevolence and grace -- the acts of angels, of faeries, in the woods.

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6/13/2019

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PictureGENERATIONAL & RACIAL DIVIDES LAID BARE. Bryan Batt, Stephen Spinella, Charlie Barnett and Murray Bartlett star in episode 4 of Netflix' Tales of the City.
Privilege & Pain on Tales of the City
Why a middle-age-versus-millennial meltdown is must-see TV

“The Price of Oil,” episode 4 of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City currently streaming on Netflix, is must-see TV.  It offers one of the most terrifying scenes in recent television history. A group of middle-aged, gay white men at a dinner party discuss their holiday exploits: well-known anecdotes, one-upmanship, exuberant hands, screaming laughter and a self-regard bordering on insularity. The performances are pitch perfect.

When one of the group uses the word “tranny” in a less than flattering connotation, he is taken to task by a younger, gay, African American man. “I don’t think that we use that word…. Tranny, it’s offensive.”

The older gays get their hackles up. “I just don’t really appreciate that we have to be policed,” says one guest. “At a fucking gay dinner party,” adds another. The younger man refuses to back down. The rest of the party desperately wants to avoid going there: they ignore the brewing confrontation, they change the subject, say anything to avoid a middle-age-versus-millennial meltdown. To no avail.

The younger man’s sense of timing might be off, but his argument is bang on. He presses the case. “What you call someone is important,” he says, “It’s about dignity. It’s about visibility. I think we owe that to people, especially when you are coming from a place of privilege.”

The room explodes. The blow-up is worth quoting at length because it produces a passionate enunciation of struggle and survival, a cri de coeur for a generation of gay men who might find themselves at odds with the politically correct activism of today.

“So you look at me… and see what?” asks the main antagonist. “A rich white man… is that what you mean? Is that my privilege?”

The younger man, 28-year-old Ben (played by Charlie Barnett), agrees.

“Let me tell you about dignity and visibility,” continues the older man (Stephen Spinella). “Any so-called privilege that we happen to enjoy at this moment was won. Okay? And by that I mean clawed tooth and nail from a society that didn’t give two shits if we lived or died… and, indeed, did not care when all our friends started to die. When I was 28, I wasn’t going to fucking dinner parties. I was going to funerals, three or four a week. All of us were.”

“I understand,” Ben begins to say.

“Oh, you do? Really? Why? Because you saw Angels in America? Fuck that. Fuck that! You have no idea. This world that you get to live in, with its safe spaces and intersectionalities…”

“Gay marriage,” offers another guest. “Fucking without condoms,” adds another.

“… all of it,” continues the older man. “This entitlement you now have… to dignity and visibility as a gay person. Do you even know where that came from? Do you know who built that world? Do you know the cost of that progress? No, of course not. Because it would more than your generation could ever bear to comprehend. So if a bunch of old queens wants to sit around a table and use the word tranny,” his voice trails off. “I will not be told off by someone who wasn’t fucking there.”

Is your heart beating faster? Are you shaking your head in agreement... or dismay?

If you find that scene cutting, the next one twists the knife. Ben confronts his lover Michael (Murray Bartlett) for not supporting him during the argument, for tacitly agreeing with the rest of the white men at the party. “A society that doesn’t care whether we live or die,” says Ben, tearing up. “Really? Really? You are going to say that to a black man?”

Devastating.

Why do I find this terrifying? Because every character is right, in their pain and in their righteousness. Because I see myself in both “sides.”

“I think it’s a conversation we don’t get to have,” Tales of the City showrunner Lauren Morelli told me recently while I was on assignment for the LGBTQ2 publication Xtra. “I came in thinking there was a lot of resentment in our community, and we don’t get to talk about it. A lot of the resentment is because a generation of men didn’t get to grieve.”

This brief moment on Tales of the City encapsulates the incredible ambition of the series: to encourage different generations, different communities, to see each other, to empathize with each other’s pain… and forgive.

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1/28/2019

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PictureThe author, circa 1986.
Game Changing Play
I grew up in a football family in Winnipeg — well, it was an immigrant family, so my folks had no clue about the game, but both my older brothers were fantastic players, both eventually drafted by professional teams. As a fat, brown sissy-boy, it took me a long time to get into sports in general and football in particular, but once I did, I excelled (though I only went as far as the rather scrappy junior league in Canada). The eight years I played football form a crucial part of my younger life. I still love the game.

So in honour of the Super Bowl, I thought I’d haul out this 26-year-old (!) article of mine on football (see below). It’s one of the first pieces I wrote for my “Bent Dissent” column in the ground-breaking LGBT publication Xtra. 


"I don’t know if repression is ever good for you, but sometimes it can be lots of fun, twisting passion into fantastic shapes...." Revisiting my early columns can be a tricky affair. Sometimes the writing makes me cringe; sometimes I’m amazed at how well a piece holds up. This one...? Well, see what you think. One thing I remember about this piece is that it got people’s attention. I got letters. I even got a date proposal “sight unseen.”

Back in the early 1990s, when this article was published,  gay voices discussing football were seldom heard; out players were even more scarce. I think David Kopay was it — a pro player who came out years after he retired. Things have changed... and they haven’t. There are a handful of out players at the NCAA level, like Jake Bain, Wyatt Pertuset and Xavier Colman, while in 2014, Michael Sam came out  just prior to short stints in the NFL and CFL. And just last year, Donovan Hillary wrote a heart-breaking account of his struggles being gay while playing football for Queen's University. He quit the team and started playing with, and slowly coming out to, a new team — ironically, a junior team in Winnipeg called the Rifles. The openness of these young men of strong character marks a sea change. Of course they still had to battle prejudice, but they also got tremendous support from teammates and others.

In addition, today there are organizations like You Can Play, now headed by former pro footballer Wade Davis, which combats homophobia in sports. And on a related front: more women than ever are finding their footing in football organizations. Shout out to women like Sarah Thomas, the first to officiate an NFL playoff game, and San Francisco assistant coach Katie Sowers (who’s s also an out lesbian).

​Incredible changes. Meaningful changes. And yet the number of out players is miniscule relative to the thousands playing at the college and pro levels. We still have a long way to go.
​

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“Repression Can Be Lots of Fun”
Bent Dissent column in Xtra, November 13, 1992

Okay sports fans, here’s a quick rundown on today’s starting columnist. At age 8, he was the fattest boy in the neighbourhood. He knew he was gay when he was 12. At 13 he forgot. At age 15 he started his eight-year career in football – high school city champs, junior conference champions three years in a row, captain, defensive most valuable player, all-star, presented with Winnipeg’s prestigious high school sports award, the Harry Hood. He had a dismal season in the heterosexual leagues when... 


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3/8/2018

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Ambitious Twists (repeat post)
The Mysterious Package Company is an entertainment company like no other, offering a range of genre narratives — Lovecraftian horror, for example, or Victorian murder mystery or zombie apocalypse — that are deconstructed and retold through custom-designed objects and ephemera. These obsessively researched materials are packed into a series of “mysterious packages” that are delivered by mail, most often as gifts to unsuspecting recipients. It is the job of whomever receives these packages to figure out the connections among the items and hunt for telling details in the hopes of reassembling the narrative. “Stories you can touch,” is the MPC tag line.

After a year freelancing with the company, I was hired at the start of 2016 to devise and enact a wholesale revamp of the MPC’s quixotic quarterly publication called Curios and Conundrums. As editor in chief, I was to up the ante in terms of the publication’s weirdness and quality, to broaden its appeal among the company’s eccentric and discerning membership.

See below for samples of my work with the MPC.
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Getting a Big Bang out of Research
Time is luxury. Any writer will tell you that having enough time to properly research a story is invaluable — and increasingly rare. Wrapping my mind around the complexities of Einsteinian physics was a challenge, but a delightful challenge because I found myself with time to research. (It did take some effort to get up speed. I seem to recall that physics and calculus were my best subjects as an undergrad!?!)

Over the two years I was editor in chief of Curios and Conundrums, every issue had on the cover a fact-based feature story illustrating how truly weird the world can be: the horrific Colney Hatch asylum fire of 1903, the Maryland pumpkin patch that launched McCarthy’s Red Scare, Key West’s terrifying Robert the doll…. (And each story featured a Victorian engraving-style illustration by the amazing Michael Custode.) 

My cover story for Clockwork Mutineers, our time-travel issue from 2017, explored Einstein’s theory of relativity — how Einstein came to envision it, and how it underpins most theories of time travel. It’s a story humming with bewitching music.

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2/13/2018

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TV Times Travel
One of the descriptions I came up with for Curios and Conundrums​ was "
National Geographic meets Mad magazine by way of McSweeny's and H.P. Lovecraft." This posting features some silliness worthy of Mad.

As editor of Curios and Conundrums, I was always looking for ways to clearly but subtly segregate the factual essays from the fictional elements (such as the alternative reality in which the mag and its contributors existed). My thinking was: the less we messed with facts, the more unsettling our fictional elements would be. It was a way to increase the verisimilitude of the made-up weirdness without undermining the true weirdness of the essays.

With that in mind, in the second year, I was happy to stumble upon satirical TV listings. We could slip in all sorts of made-up "facts" without detracting from the essays. And we got to show off some comedy chops. This example is from the time-travel issue, and was written by myself and Ryan Creighton, a mad puzzle genius, game designer and comic — a multi-lane car crash of talents. 

So set your PVR to DV8 and check out this batch of listings. There's comedy gold in there... well, maybe fool's gold.




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2/5/2018

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Fishy swish
The magazine I edited for The Mysterious Package Company is called Curios and Conundrums, so it’s about time I mention one of the curios. 
Pictured is a simple paper craft, a tunnel book, that readers could assemble, built around one of
Gottfried Franz's beautiful illustrations from a tale about Baron Münchausen.

One of the common phrases bandied about the office of The Mysterious Package Company was, “I didn’t think I’d be doing this today” — a reflection of the peripatetic nature of our work. I ended up being the lead on this curio: researching tunnel books, sourcing the illustrations, assigning original art to our in-house artist (the multitalented Meg Sullivan, painter, drawer, sculptress, macabre baker) to flesh out the framing panels and negative spaces, and cheering on the designer who was not convinced that the whole thing would come together. Of all the crazy things we made, it’s one of my favourites.

It accompanied a wonderfully topsy-turvy feature on the real and fictional iterations of all things Münchausen, written by our resident fairyologist Jenn Orme. (Doesn’t your entertainment company employ a PhD in fairyology? If not, why not?) The story elegantly juggled the original Karl Friederich Hieronymous, Freiherr von Baron Münchhausen, the writer Rudulf Erich Raspe and the ever expanding narratives, adventures and tales of Baron Münchausen. The feature included one of Raspe’s stories, as well as mentions of the planet Münchhausen, the illness Münchausen Syndrome and other astonishments. (Yes, the wandering “h” is on purpose.) Witty, informative and, accompanied by the tunnel book, decidedly pretty.

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1/30/2018

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Graphic violence
The 2016 version of Curios and Conundrums came in a deliciously large format, and I mean large — an old-fashioned broadsheet newspaper, running 14 by 23 inches per page (resulting in more than a two-foot-wide centre spread). That’s a lot of real estate to fill. Eye-catching features were essential. Most issues contained at least one feature told wholly or in part through infographics. 

Any good infographic is trickier than it looks. It is not just an adjunct to a story; it is a story in itself. As such, it requires all the elements of a story, like narrative structure and point of view. And the form should add something to the telling. A timeline, for example, is a common and basic form of infographic. You see them everywhere. But without a compelling point of view — a strong rationale, whether visual, design or content-driven, for what information is included — a timeline is just a list. Why bother?

One of my favourite infographics was devised by the excellent designer Kris Forge for the “From Death and Dark Oblivion” issue of Curios and Conundrums, an issue exploring the concept of hubris. To my mind, as editor, that meant at least one story had to delve deep into ancient Greek theatre where so many famous tragedies examine humankind's arrogance, folly and self-destruction. But an academic parsing of the Greek notions of hamartia, hybris, ate, and nemesis might not be the most accessible of stories. But you never know. Research leads the way.

I decided to focus on the Oresteia, Aeschylus’ trilogy exploring the multigenerational curse inherited by Orestes, son of Agamemnon, hero of the Trojan War. It doesn’t end well.
​
From the start, I knew I wanted something of a genealogical chart to illustrate the story. That’s easier said than done. There are countless competing and contradictory myths and dramatic traditions. Identifying a clear through line was a tricky business. 

While showing who begat whom was important, how they did the begetting — and undid the begetting  --- was much more germane. After many false starts and blind alleys, I think the infographic we settled on powerfully communicates the web of violence and weirdness ensnaring six generations of one family. And that graphic crystallization of melodramatic depravity, in turn, changed how I wrote the final piece. The story ended up a bloody-tongue-in-cheek entry to Soap Opera Digest. (Hat tip to my colleague, Jennifer Orme, for suggesting I commit the piece fully to that idea.)

I hope you enjoy your visit with The House of Atreus.
​

Our paranoia issue from 2016 had all sorts of creepy crawlies t
hroughout, just to get our readers itchy with runaway thoughts. It featured a gorgeous full-page infographic titled "The Swarm.” I sourced most of the imagery and did reams of research. The math at times was devilishly difficult, but understanding what the story communicates shouldn’t be.

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1/20/2018

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Ambitious twists
The Mysterious Package Company is an entertainment company like no other, offering a range of genre narratives — Lovecraftian horror, for example, or Victorian murder mystery or zombie apocalypse — that are deconstructed and retold through custom-designed objects and ephemera. These obsessively researched materials are packed into a series of “mysterious packages” that are delivered by mail, most often as gifts to unsuspecting recipients. It is the job of whomever receives these packages to figure out the connections among the items and hunt for telling details in the hopes of reassembling the narrative. “Stories you can touch,” is the MPC tag line.

After a year freelancing with the company, I was hired at the start of 2016 to devise and enact a wholesale revamp of the MPC’s quixotic quarterly publication called Curios and Conundrums. As editor in chief, I was to up the ante in terms of the publication’s weirdness and quality, to broaden its appeal among the company’s eccentric and discerning membership.

(In the future, I'll post additional forays into, and samples of, my work with the MPC.)

I hear dead people

It was an exciting challenge to bring my 25-plus years’ experience in journalism and media to the weird and wonderful publication Curios and Conundrums (C&C) and to look for opportunities when to twist the content and infuse it with the C&C’s off-kilter vibe.

One of the more unusual and ambitious innovations I 
concocted was a series of interviews, in Q&A format, of artists and thinkers where I, as the interviewer, took the voice of a real person from the past, someone who had had a profound influence on the interviewee, someone the interviewee admired. Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, for example, chose to be interviewed by Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga (who died in 1937). Canadian artist Kent Monkman, in the guise of his alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, chose to be interviewed by French painter Eugène Delacroix (who died in 1863). A third in the series switched it up a little, with British industrial designer Thomas Thwaites, author of GoatMan: How I Took A Holiday From Being a Human, choosing to be interviewed by the god Pan.

The choice of interviewer was made after much back and forth. You can’t just call up people and say, “Ya, I want to interview you in the voice of a dead person.” Actually, I did; I know both Maddin and Monkman. Thwaites, on the other hand, didn’t know me from Adam; he’s just a goer. I was lucky. I am very grateful to have been granted these individuals’ trust to collaborate on such a wacky conceit, to have them play along.
Researching an artist in tandem with their inspiration was great fun: understanding the artist’s connection, finding the voice of a person from the past, searching for intersections. Wherever possible, I used the actual words of the “interviewer.” In the case of Delacroix, Monkman directed me to Delacroix’s journals; they are a continuing source of insight for Monkman. It's plain to see why, for they are a fantastic record of Delacroix’s thoughts on both the art and craft of painting.
​

I had an unstated hope for this series of Q&As. Often I find that people are much more forthcoming when discussing the work of others rather than their own. Through some special alchemy, these semi-fictional interviews result in truthier truths.
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2/18/2015

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Square pegs
After writing a wrenching, somewhat angry piece about race relations for my first-ever published article in 1992, I felt compelled to write something more positive as a follow-up, an article that was published also in the pages of Xtra.

The piece, "Immigrants of the Soul," is a poetic rumination on the unique perspective of queers, people of colour and immigrants of all stripes. This perspective is invaluable, even threatening. But as I get older (and older) I recognize more and more how most people are square pegs in round holes, how we are all immigrants through time and place and culture. 

Perhaps that's what connects artists to their subjects and what connects artists to their audience. Perhaps it's what connects us all.

It's not that I'm diluting the uniqueness of queers, people of colour and immigrants, rather, I'm emphasizing the universality of our experience.
​

“Immigrants of the Soul”
Xtra, June 26, 1992

Immigrants of the soul. These are my favourite people, my friends.

There exists in this country a large number of people who have been forced to leave their homes, forced out of the cohesion of one culture and into another. From then on, they can never go back. Home is never so clear, coherent, convincing ever again. But who would want to stay in a place so boring anyway?

People are forced out of their cultural homes because they are different. Difference is not the reason. Fear is. Fear in the eyes of the majority.... 


Continued
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12/11/2014

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The more things change...
Over 48 hours in 1992, I attended a rally protesting the raid of an LGBT bookstore and a rally protesting the acquittals of white police officers in the beating of a black man in LA. The experience inspired my very first newspaper story.


Below is the very first newspaper article I ever wrote. (My only previous published piece was a poem.) 

May 1992. Within the span of 48 hours, I had attended a protest over the raid on Toronto's LGBT bookstore Glad Day, with obscenity charges being brought against owner John Scythes, then I attended the rally outside the US Consulate to protest the acquittals of four LA police officers in the violent beating of Rodney King (a horrific event caught on video). That second rally turned violent, an event that came to be known as the Yonge Street Riot.

It's a little terrifying how contemporary this article feels. It could be ripped from today's headlines: The failure of Canada's criminal and judicial system with regards to Aboriginal Canadians, the ongoing tensions between police forces and black communities....

But for all that has stayed the same, there are crucial differences 
between then and now. 

1
992 marked a low point in relations between the black community and Toronto police. While more work still needs to be done, there have been considerable improvements. And, of course, the biggest change since 1992 has been the level of legal protections and social acceptance afforded the LGBT community across Canada. Again, it's not perfect but the difference is night and day.

For all the legitimate grievances being aired these days that's one crucial piece of the puzzle that we need to hold onto: Activism, protest, reform, engagement... they work.  The world, your city, can change for the better. 
​
“What a Riot” 
Xtra, May 15,1992
By Gordon Bowness

A cold wind blew through the streets of Toronto and sent chills down my brown spine. But then, this city has always been cold.
“There’s a riot, did you hear?” A preppy fag at Woody’s squealed his question to me as I waited for him to finish with the phone.


“Yes, I know… I was there.”

“Is it dangerous?”

Before I could answer, he said, “I phoned the police and they told me to stay inside.”

He proceeded to phone every one of his friends to tell them the big news, swallowing the media hype and relishing his role as on-the-ball gossip. He did not give a second thought, a human thought, to the dramas unfolding one block away.
I didn’t argue; I was too tired and too upset from watching the angry arc of bricks smash windows and the angry arc of truncheons smash hopes. All I wanted to do was find my friend so he could give me a hug. I didn’t find him.

I dreaded the coming days. I feared more trouble, more indifference. I knew everyone would be taking about the riot and that I would have to rise to the occasion and respond to the usual ignorance, laziness and fear of my co-workers  almost all of whom are white. I resented this responsibility. How would I explain a mob? How would I explain anger? 

When was the last time any of them felt it necessary to explain, justify or even comment upon the violence of their community? How would they explain eight young black people shot by police? Or the Donald Marshall trials. Or why the Native Canadian percentage of prison populations is 10 times larger than their percentage of the general population? How would they explain the judicial system’s behaviour, its irrationality, incoherence and anger? Would they fear a legitimized mob, operating under the pastel colours of authority?

But I must speak of what I saw in the shadows. There was a most beautiful man with pain welling up in his eyes as police let a group of racists approach a rally in front of the US Consulate. I saw fags, familiar from the Raid on Glad Day protest, hang a sign above the entrance to City Hall which said: “Stop the violence. Stop the hate.” The crowd chanted, “Leave them alone!” when the cops tried to have them moved. I saw someone with a Spanish accent warn a Chinese cop that his white partner, despites his hugs and back-patting, couldn’t really like him. I saw a white punk break a corner store window and many black arms extended to grab cigarettes; then a number of blacks helped the terrified and angry Asian shopkeeper pick up what was left on the sidewalk; blacks argued with blacks. I saw more blacks putting out a fire in Holt Renfrew [I got that wrong: I should have written Stollery's] five minutes before the fire department got there.
I saw hundreds of laughing, smiling suburban spectators enjoying a carnival. I saw a line of mounted police repeatedly charge into the crowds, wielding two-foot clubs. 


I did not see one professional politician.

A friend asked whether or not the presence of hundreds of non-rock-throwing non-punch-throwing protesters, like me, legitimized the actions of the small number of more violent individuals. Maybe. But did his absence from the protest legitimize inaction and the deadly status quo?

So there you are. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Now it is time for everyone to get to work. The myths of this country are falling apart. The heterosexual white male middle class knows this, but they dare not believe it. We do.

As fags and dykes, we know that straight sexual and emotional repression is projected onto the perverts that they so terribly hate with envy.

As people of colour, we know that social inequality and thwarted ambition throughout the country means that a beastly other must be constructed by whites.

As Native Canadians know, whites were lost in this wild land, so they projected the evil of the stranger onto the rest of the world.

The time has come for new storytellers.

God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time.
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    This is not a (b)log

    Gordon Bowness is a Toronto-based writer with more than 30 years' media and entertainment experience. Apparently, he still has a few more things to say.

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