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11/30/2013

Quilts, Complacency & Crime

To mark the 25th anniversary last year of the AIDS Quilt I ran a two-page spread of Canadian panels in the December issue of In Toronto magazine published to coincide with World AIDS Day. The quilt now contains more than 94,000 names on more than 49,000 panels, covering 1.3 million square feet and weighing 54 tons. Amazingly, the entire quilt is viewable online, here. It’s a stunning, startling document when viewed as a whole, but its real power is felt when you zoom in and really look at individual panels.

This year I was very proud to contribute to Sarah Liss's wonderful cover story on AIDS in the current issue of The Grid. The story is told from the perspective of two different generations of activists as represented by the amazing Christian Hui and Tim McCaskell. One shocking stat: One in 120 adult Torontonians are living with HIV. I wrote a companion piece on the increasing number of criminal prosecutions brought against HIV-positive people in Canada, and a timeline of AIDS advocacy in Toronto. Thanks to deputy editor Rachel Giese for the assignment.

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11/25/2013

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‘Risk, grow, grieve’

Photograph by Sheila Spence

When Jane Rule finally got her groundbreaking lesbian novel Desert of the Heart published in 1964, she offered a lifeline to women across North America unaccustomed to seeing their lives and loves portrayed so sympathetically. November 27 marks the sixth anniversary of the celebrated author’s death. The outspoken advocate for gay and lesbian rights and free speech received the Order of Canada in 2007, dying later that year at the age of 76.

Back in 2001 I commissioned Rule to write an essay on love and grief. This was less than a year after the death of Helen Sonthoff, Rule’s lover of 45 years. At the time, I was editor of an ambitious project at Pink Triangle Press, Go Big, a national glossy supplement that was inserted into the three Xtras published across the country (in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver and distributed as a stand alone publication in Montreal). I think it still ranks as the largest LGBT publication in Canadian history. And Ms. Rule took a cold call from me; I was looking to see if she would be open to contributing something to the fledgling publication. Ever generous and supportive of the gay press, this is what she offered, an incredibly moving, concise piece of writing (story / PDF). A little gem — it’s one of the pieces I’m most proud of as editor.

When Rule died, Marilyn Schuster, author of Passionate Communities: Reading Lesbian Resistance in Jane Rule’s Fiction, wrote for me a beautiful obituary that appeared in Xtra. The concluding paragraph references Rule’s essay on grief: “Privately and together we grieve the loss of our friend who helped us know that clarity and candour are far more important than uncritical sentimentality to build and nurture our communities. Her like will not walk this earth again, but we will all continue to learn from her courage and her eloquence.”

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This is not a (b)log

Gordon Bowness is a Toronto-based writer with more than 35 years' media and entertainment experience. Apparently, he still has a few more things to say.

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Quilts, Complacency & Crime

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‘Risk, grow, grieve’

This is not a (b)log

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