Three unspeakable observations

I think Pope Francis, who seems genuinely humble, is doing an impressive job at reframing the image of the Roman Catholic church. 

I think the Harper government, specifically Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, is doing a decent job on international human rights (let's go after Russia now, shall we? Perhaps Canada can host Pride House at the Sochi Olympics).

Closer to home, my garbage collection has been better (less mess on the street after pick up) since Rob Ford privatized it (I feel bad for the lost union jobs, but I'm speaking purely as a consumer).

Do these achievements affect my global view of these leaders? Not so much. Don't get me started on the Roman Catholic church's larger problems with sex, gender and social justice, the Harper government's job on international trade (or domestically--whoa!) or Rob Ford's vision, honesty, competence or mental health. But sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due, even if it doesn't change your vote.

When our shopping moves online, what takes the place of our favourite brick-and-mortar stores?

 Following on my griping about the Shoppersization of Canadian downtowns, this Economist article reminded me of the broader trends that have helped boost Shoppers’ ubiquity. We don’t really go downtown to buy things anymore.  

It’s not just that we’re buying more stuff online. It’s that many of those things that are best suited for online shopping—music, collectibles, books and periodicals—have also provided the best “third spaces” where enthusiasts can loiter and bump into other like-minded people—the reasons why people have loved shopping downtown. Bookstores, music stores, collectible boutiques and magazine stands are places where browsing without purpose can be a form of identity expression. Their disappearance (into the digital economy) is changing the character of our commercial streets, especially as more mission-driven shopping (hardware, household goods—stuff that can't be “dematerialized”) moves online and to big box outlets beyond our downtowns.

But wait—our downtown streets seem to be as lively as ever before. I think that’s because the rise of restaurant culture and burgeoning neighbourhood bar scenes have filled in the gap.

Storefronts where retailers used to sell "things" are now occupied by businesses offering experiences. The customers who produce “the scene” are as much the product as the food or beverages. Deprived of being able to loiter in the Heavy Metal section of a local music shop, we find a restaurant or bar that, through other means, puts us in close proximity with our demographic. We eat or drink together, rather than shop together.

Perhaps we’re looking at a world where there is little downtown retail other than convenience and food shopping. Thus the rise of Shoppers as a place to buy things you won’t travel any distance for (toilet paper, shampoo) or can’t wait to be delivered (drugs, a soft drink on a hot day).

What will keep our downtowns fun is discovering the next hot food trend, not hanging around in Sam the Record Man all day. It's a tastier pastime  but, compared to the browsing the CD bins, a pricier one.

Prefab leak

Exhibiting symptoms of Internet-distraction-itis, this week I went from watching the Stars video “Hold on When You Get Love and Let Go When You Give it” to co-lead singer Torquil Campbell’s voluminous Twitter feed. When I read Campbell's tweet, “All thats left online of the prefab album which recently surfaced and vanished. I've heard it though....,” I went on a frenzied mission to see if I could dig up the alleged album, employing nefarious means if I had to.

I found it. It’s been dubbed The Devil Came A-Callin’ which is also the name of one of the tracks. For Prefab Sprout fans, it’s manna from heaven. Devotees ascribe band leader Paddy McAloon with legendary song-writing powers, though his output has been minuscule since the early 1990s. So the fact that the leaked album is also very good—and very satisfying for fans—is enough to make me delirious.

It’s hard to tell when the 10 songs were written and recorded. The band's last release, Let’s Change the World with Music, came out in 2009 but was comprised of demos recorded in 1993. That album had a grand self-important sound that came across as bit stilted and surprisingly sentimental for a band that built its reputation on being anti-romantic (One of their best known songs, “Cars and Girls” from 1988, was an attack on Bruce Springsteen’s supposedly limited view of matters of the heart). It didn't have much humour.

This new mystery album channels the looser, raw quirkiness of the early albums, though the song craft is some of Paddy McAloon’s best. There are no breathy vocals from Wendy Smith, so we have to assume that the material is, at the very least, more recent than 2000, when Smith reportedly left the band.

Is it real? Of course it is. There’s the exuberant glee of “The Best Jewel Thief in the World,” the soulful “Mysterious” and the heartbreaking “Grief Built the Taj Mahal,” where McAloon chases Gershwin as doggedly as he ever has.

No word on if and when the album will be released—no word acknowledging the thing at all—but some of us will certainly will be raking the sky, “listening for smudged echoes of the moment of creation” until it appears.

Amazing Race Canada: Are we by nature hammier than Americans or do our TV shows just make us look that way?

You could complain that a trip across Canada is not even close to a trip around the world—no culture shock, no money-changing confusion, no unfamiliar signage and, for the most part, no language barriers (we'll see what happens if the race goes to rural Quebec). It should be easy sailing for the teams on Amazing Race Canada.

But what struck me most about the show’s debut was how the transition from US to Canada revealed the format’s cracks and crevices. And not just in the slightly less dynamic camera work and the slightly slower editing.

Firstly, there’s the over-the-top product placement. Air Canada, Interac and Chevrolet commercials interrupted scenes where Air Canada, Chevrolet and Interac were the main drivers of the action--we got a better look at their debit cards than the Blue Bear. Who says Canadians are more reluctant to sell their souls than our American neighbours?

Then then was the contestant selection: A Canadian Forces sniper who lost both his legs below the knee, a dad with Parkinson’s, twin sisters, gay cowboys, actress/model sisters, former PSA stars—each team seems to have been chosen for a larger-than-life signature attribute, a marker that sets them aside from an average Canadian, perhaps in the hopes of making the teams memorable in the muddle of bland niceness that was exhibited in the debut. CTV takes Amazing Race’s approach to diversity and turns it up to 11.

If the handy labels don’t work in differentiating the teams, then excessive coaching might. Many of the teams seem louder and cockier than I bet they are in real life. The one thing about the US Amazing Race is that the teams tend to be amazingly unguarded—they bicker and sabotage like no one is watching. Perhaps it’s the way contestants are selected, perhaps the exotic locations are suitable disorienting, perhaps it's pure American guilelessness. The way the American contestants talk seems exactly the way they might talk to their friends and co-workers.

The Canadians, by contrast, seemed almost theatrical. The expressions on their faces when they were being told about the prizes seem to have been drawn from some high school musical they once starred in. One gay cowboy clutched his pearls. The "dudes" high-fived in a staged manner. Many of the teams are behaving as if they’re doing impressions of reality show contestants, not participating in a reality show themselves. Oh, Canadian self-awareness. Our blessing and our curse.

Who will win?

Obviously the dating BC hippies. Not because of their paddling skills or eco-awareness. But rather: “We wear the same clothes all the time,” says hippie Darren.

The hippies seem more concerned about winning than making a good impression. How un-Canadian of them.

Why the Loblaw takeover of Shoppers won't make downtown life any better--and will probably make it duller

The hegemony of Shoppers Drug Mart in downtown life took a sharp left turn this week with the announcement that Loblaw intends to buy the pharmacy chain for $12.4 million. 

While optimists are hoping for savings though cost-cutting and perhaps loyalty reward synergies between the PC Plus and Optimum programs, the merger will likely speed up the Shoppersization of urban life—big generic chain stores gobbling up prime commercial space, squeezing out the variety and whimsy that makes city life great.

Throughout Toronto’s condo boom, it’s been clear that Shoppers Drug Mart is one of the top choices for anchor tenants in new buildings. (Winners or Marshalls might also do in a pinch.) Of course, why not? A pharmacy is a safer, quieter and less risky choice for storefront space than, say, a nightclub, independent café or niche boutique. But safe choices in retail tenants makes for bland and banal streetscapes. A 25-minute streetcar ride down Queen West from Roncesvalles to University—Canada’s most vibrant shopping street—showcases no fewer than four Shoppers Drug Marts.

Grocery stores aren’t particularly exciting either, but they’re usually in oddball parking-lotted places or, in the case of the two new flagship Loblaw—Maple Leaf Gardens and Queen West at Portland—imaginatively tucked away into larger developments. Target—again, not a retailer known for its beautiful properties but let’s do our best to muster some choices here—has so far only opened stores on the fringes of the city. The chain remains virtually invisible to downtowners. You can complain that Walmart hurts small independent shops, but you can’t complain the stores are eyesores. So far, the retail giant’s only central location is in a mall, though plans to open a new location near Kensington Market are enough to send a chill up the spine of any flaneur.

Shoppers Drug Marts are much more in your face. Small enough to eat up the best most high-traffic locations, big enough to squeeze out three or four small boutiques once they set their sights on a property. Shoppers drug Marts can make even the most unique neighbourhood feel like nowhere at all.

Surprisingly, Pharma Plus and Guardian drugs have done little to take advantage of all the new retail space that’s come available in central Toronto; the expansion of the Pharma Plus at Church and Wellesley seems almost uniquely futile. Which means that the city is not merely awash in new brightly lit pharmacies, but awash in a single pharmacy brand.

A Loblaw/Shoppers merger can only increase the homogenization of our urban landscape. Unless other major retail chains push into downtown—or unless landlords start making it easier for independent stores to get leases—our corridors will be awash in red and white façades, retail spaces that offer a little of everything except personality.

Bad habits are not malice (or: Why I’m pretty sure Pride Toronto didn’t sabotage the world’s biggest Trans March)

I found this piece on Vice.com about Toronto’s Trans March, which resulted in this response from Toronto Pride, to contain much more than its fair share of conspiracy theory. The discussion I've heard around it has been interesting, but many of the allegations don't quite ring true.

Historically, activists will argue, Pride Toronto’s enthusiasm for increased trans visibility at the week-long festival has been less than stellar. I accept that. But there’s a big difference between institutional lethargy and the kind of malice Nicki Ward ascribes to Pride Toronto. Misdirection and underhandedness? Sabotage? Let’s not get hysterical here.

(Background note: I used to work with Nicki at (now defunct) fab magazine. I worked in editorial, she in advertising. I found her to be a friendly and supportive colleague, so I have no axe to grind and no horse in this race.)

As someone who mostly experiences the front end—not the planning itself, though I do hear some of the scuttlebutt—of Pride trans programming, I can say that it’s gotten dramatically better year over year and has drawn a much wider audience and a much higher level of public engagement. This year’s efforts made a genuinely impressive impact—I agree with Nicki that it was a watershed year. Did I see all the messiness of how it came together? No. But there’s a point when grievances and missteps need to be left behind in order to celebrate the good will that’s been building.

As a layperson, I saw the Trans March given equal billing to the Dyke March, the Pride Parade and the Street Festival on the cover of the Official Pride Guide, on the map and within the guide itself. Considering the parade's starring role (whether you like it or not), that's not the action of an organization that wants to downplay trans programming. The parade’s international grand marshal—which seems to have become an even higher honour than regular ole’ grand marshal—was Marcela Romero, director of the Argentine Association of Transvestites, Transsexuals and Transgender People. Trans artists made up a notable part of the mix at three of the four Pride stages I visited (the Central Stage remains the almost exclusive domain of gay men who want to dance with their shirts off and the straight couples who love them).

As a spectator, Friday night’s Trans March blew me away with its size, energy and inclusiveness. It must have taken 15 to 20 minutes to pass; this year’s Dyke March took less than 40 minutes to pass. Based on pure population statistics, LGB will pretty much always outnumber T, so that’s an impressive comparison. The large number of trans allies in the march helped give it the heft it deserved. If such a march is about building bridges and showing community-wide unity against oppression—mission accomplished.

Would a corporate sponsor—which comes with built-in media attention and cash—have made the Trans March better? I’ll bet money nobody wants to go there.

It was certainly disappointing that the march got only one lane of traffic. It seemed to require a higher number of police officers (presumably because of the obviously increased safety risk) than otherwise necessary. But thinking back to the small group—maybe a couple of hundred people?—that scurried down a pedestrian-filled Church Street three years ago, the whole thing was inspiring. I’m sure the size of the march also surprised the city, which will have to rethink such one-lane closures.

I’ve emphasized my outsiderness to the Trans Pride issue for a reason. In her piece, Nicki’s core complaint is about visibility and media coverage. She blames Pride Toronto for nobody hearing about this watershed Trans March. I’m not sure the premise is true.

But even if it is, as any journalist who’s covered Pride knows, Pride Toronto organizers basically just stick a media pass in your hand and let you get on with your work of deciding for yourself what you want to cover. There was no “gushing” about the march because, during the Pride weekend, organizers don’t usually gush about anything. They answer questions lobbed at them by reporters in between running around, putting out fires. It’s in the lead-up to next year’s festival that you’ll hear Pride Toronto gushing (hopefully about how great the trans programming was this year). That's the way the news cycle works.

So if the question is: Why wasn’t there the media coverage of the Trans March that Nicki wanted? Then the answer is: Ask the media.

Mainstream Pride coverage has become hackneyed and predictable. New elements—in the case of the Trans March, newly prominent elements—don’t fit into the template. Since the 1990s, it’s been about hot guys on floats, colourful drag queens, excited tourists, Toronto’s welcoming attitudes and the revenue generated for the city. Plus a few personality profiles. Blinded by the sexy skin and riotous colour, it can take mainstream media editors years to register a change in the body politic.

Maybe this successful Trans March will make the mainstream media pay more attention next year. More likely it would take a perfect storm (like the 2003 Ontario Superior Court decision on same-sex marriage, which cranked up coverage of Pride that year) to grab headlines and draw major mainstream attention. Changing policies and procedures, tough as it is, is easier than changing long-ingrained attitudes.

It’s true that Pride Toronto itself can be a bit too enamoured of its own template. There are Pride DJ lineups—the simplest possible thing to shuffle—that haven’t changed in years. The template has carried Pride through tumultuous times, but the tension between predictability and reinvention is never as taut as it should be. It’s easy to imagine activists presenting Pride Toronto with new ideas and getting “Where are we going to put that?” as the first reaction. (Actually, that’s a scenario that’s easy to imagine at any small not-for-profit community-based organization.)

But it would be unfair to interpret excessive pragmatism as something meant to thwart trans activists. Sometimes the weight of habit is more difficult to fight against than malice. Sometimes a misprint is just a misprint.

What’s amazing is that, despite it all, Toronto pulled off what seems to have been the world’s biggest trans march. I’m betting that record will be broken soon—hopefully during Toronto’s own WorldPride in 2014.

That didn't take long

Called it. Now it's serious.

If we want Rob Ford to deal with the crack cocaine allegations, the place to start asking questions is not City Hall, but the high school where he coaches football

If Toronto had a normal mayor, we might be able to write a script of what will happen now that Gawker and the Toronto Star have reported seeing a video of someone who looks like Rob Ford smoking something that looks like crack cocaine.

If the allegations are false, Ford would offer evidence—or at least an argument—why what the reporters thought they saw isn’t what they saw; he’d quickly correct these incorrect perceptions. If the allegations are true, Hollywood has prepared us to expect a remorseful resignation and a stint in rehab.

But Toronto does not have a normal mayor and, based on past experience, it seems entirely possible that Rob Ford’s simple “ridiculous” dismissal  (What’s ridiculous? The allegations? His crack use? That people care? The fundraising campaign to buy the video? The fact that, accused of calling Liberal leader Justin Trudeau a "fag," he was going to take refuge in a ceremony commemorating the International Day Against Homophobia?) might be his last word on the subject. His critics at Toronto City Council has not yet found the wherewithal to leverage Ford’s private shenanigans in the political sphere—even Rob Ford’s legal/judicial shenanigans have done little to erode his voter base. There’s no reason to think his opponents—and even his more nervous supporters—will be more capable this time.

But what about Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School, where Ford coaches football? Just because city councillors should be expected to work with a colleague who might have a substance abuse problem doesn’t mean the parents of high school students should tolerate their kids being exposed to such a controversial figure. Adults working with minors should always be held to a higher standard.

And so I predict that Don Bosco is where Rob Ford’s epically bizarre mayoral rule might start to unravel. Can the high school principal leave these allegations uninvestigated—that its football coach might be using illegal drugs and, while doing so, might be belittling the team’s players? I don’t think so. Even if city council has learned to work around Rob Ford’s erratic behaviour, a high school principal should not. While there may never be enough evidence against Rob Ford for criminal charges based on the alleged video, there might already be enough evidence to ask him to resign as football coach. No matter how great a coach he is, the toxicity of the allegations—and his failure to address them—are much too damning. Any serious educator knows exactly what has to happen next.

Is this a side note to a larger political scandal? Considering how much time Ford spends on the football field—and considering the footballers he surrounds himself with at City Hall—the loss of his position as football coach might be a far bigger reality check than anything that could happen to him in his role of mayor.

If Toronto wants Ford to seriously deal with the allegations in the Gawker and Toronto Star stories, the issue will have to be raised in the principal’s office, not the council chambers.

Built Ford Tough

Progressive Torontonians are freaking out about the election of Rob Ford as mayor, not just because they're worried about what he'll do to the city. They're also disturbed by how many of their fellow citizens voted for a man with track record of bigoted speech about gay and lesbian people and Canadian newcomers--or just about anybody else who is not a car-driving, home-owning middle-class straight married person. Is this what my neighbours/people in the 'burbs think of me? they wonder.

It's true that these attitudes are part of the Ford package. But I think other less worrisome (though no less desirable) factors played a part in Ford's election.

The biggest factor is star power. Torontonians love to vote for a strong, sharply defined character. Exhibit A, Mel Lastman. Rob Ford ran as himself, a classic love-em-or-hate-em character, right out of The Family Guy. Even David Miller, with his stylish hair and upright appearance, had a Soccer Dad/Dudley Doright persona that was immediately understandable on an emotional level. Ford's main rival, George Smitherman, had been a "character" in the past, but ran a campaign where he tried to quash his established persona of Furious George and failed to adopt a new persona along the lines of "gay dad." Voters wondered who Smitherman was and, ergo, if he was hiding something. Torontonians will vote for a big, authentic personality, no matter what policy it's offering them.

As well, David Miller's mishandling of the 2009 garbage strike meant that even moderate voters were keen to punish anyone who seemed gutless in seeking efficiency and, especially, seeking efficiency from the unions. They wanted guts. Pantalone was too closely associated Miller--and too pro-labour--to answer this need. Smitherman, bizarrely, considering his past track record, wasn't able to position himself as someone who could be a tough bargainer. The one thing you know about a loose cannon like Ford is that he won't back down (even when he should). Will it he be effective? I doubt it. But voters wanted someone who acknowledges the problem and will try to solve it.

For better or, more precisely, for worse, it's shallow perceptions, not what runs underneath them that will win or lose you an election in this city. Ford ran a great one-note campaign that capitalized on voter frustration: stop the gravy train, stop the gravy train, stop the gravy train. Ford's specifics--tearing up the streetcar lines or defunding Pride celebrations--were not, I think, a big part of why people voted for him.

Fingers crossed.

Ennui Blanche

So many of the complaint about Nuit Blanche are hard to remedy.

The biggest one--the crowds and their increasing obnoxiousness--could only be solved by something vaguely fascistic. A survey might be distributed: "Which do you care more about: art or getting drunk on the street?" and those who chose the latter might be imprisoned inside their homes for the duration of the evening.

One of the charms of the early days of Nuit Blanche was to look around you and see a panorama of Torontonians exercising their curiosity about their city and what was happening artistically in it. Some of those people were even drunk, but they were engaged. Now one looks around and sees people delighted only that the streets are closed and that there's food for sale on the rutted asphalt.

There's something sad about people so disconnected from their city--so shut out of urban spaces--that they'll turn up in droves to eat corn on a stick in the middle of Yonge Street. You have to wonder why we don't have more permanent pedestrian streets, period. But that desperation is not their fault. And so, as annoying as they are, I would never deny any peaceful folks the pleasure of doing whatever they want to do in the middle of major downtown intersections. In this, Nuit Blanche felt something like a G8/G20 healing session, though my heart did skip a bit when a posse of masked all-in-black young people went by. It took me a moment to realize that there outfits were too tight to do anything but writhe and gyrate.

There have also been complaints about the art, that it was dull. Personally, I keep my expectations low. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised by paper swans hung from trees behind the Eaton Centre than spend all night looking for the "big thing." Nuit Blanche needs to creep up on you, not slap you in the face. Besides, the bigger the "thing," the bigger the crowds. Jeff Koons could land a spaceship on the roof of city hall and any non-masochist would know the most pleasant place from which to watch it would be eight blocks away or some inaccessible perch in the sky like Canoe.

What got me frustrated was the incredibly high percentage of "stuff on screens." I know that there are lots of people doing video art who should not be denied access to Nuit Blanche's exposure. And not all of it was inappropriate--the Holt Refrew "smile" thing was okay, partly because of the irony of the luxury store hosting images that were so folksy. But we live in a culture where so much of our quotidian existence is dominated by screens: our computer screens at work and home, the information screens in the subway, our television screens at home, our phone screens in our pockets. When the goal is reshaping our perceptions of the city--of life--I want something physical, I want something that's real, even if I can't touch it. I want something that has gravitational force.

The moment that just killed me is when we broke from the crowds on Yonge Street and went down McGill to a little parkette, perfectly sized for a perfect surprise. The piece, "Meeting Point: After a planner whose search for new forms pays tribute to existing and familiar places, 2004," by US artist Iman Issa was described as an installation. The image in the program shows a large platform-like object on the grass in a park-like space. We come around the corner and see, not a platform-like object or any "structure" at all, but a screen with an image of a "structure." The screen probably took much more effort to set up than the structures depicted would have taken. I wanted to move around something, to feel it change the world around it. Instead, I got a picture on a screen. They might as well have emailed it to my BlackBerry and saved me the trip.

Give me paper swans in trees, giant clown heads between buildings, loops of tape held aloft by fans (much freakier to see than it sounds reduced to mere prose). If the pieces aren't crowd friendly, put them behind a fence, if you must. But don't give me anything I could easy get on the interwebs.

Ideas and their enactment

Attending theatre festivals like the Fringe or SummerWorks, which is on this week, I usually focus my attention on the ideas behind the plays, what they might become rather than what they are.

Now, a lot of festival shows are fantastic. But even great festival shows (especially great festival shows) are often on their way to something else, like a main stage full-evening mounting. So there can be times when you have to let your imagination fill in the gaps of what might be under more optimal conditions. The creators are often trying things out, seeing what works within the limits of the festival's time frame (usually an hour) and logistical constrains (limited tech time, limited rehearsal time, limited time to erect and strike a set). The bells and whistles that come with a long theatrical run are denied festival productions. To watch (some of) these shows fairly, you have to accept that the intentions and spirit of the production are more important than their execution.

And then you see blow-you-away performances like Atomic Vaudeville's Ride The Cyclone and Edwidge Jean-Pierre's Even Darkness Is Made of Light. You realize there's no reason to handicap festival shows.

With Ride the Cyclone, a young cast sing and dance their way through numbers that personify the lives of their (dead) characters. The electricity coming off the stage is amazing. Each song crackles with bravado when it's not pulling at your heart strings.

It feels weird to describe a play about suicide as a tour-de-force but that's exactly what Even Darkness is. Harness up Jean-Pierre to the grid and we could pretend nuclear energy was never an option. She covers ever inch of the stage (and much of the theatre), taking her character from self-pity to joy to depression to silent redemption in the blink of an eye. She finishes the show bathed and sweat and, inside our heads, so does the audience.

Exceptional performances can happen anywhere at any time. How was the lighting and the sets? Who noticed?

Look familiar?

Maybe it's just me, but the new Blackberry looks eerily like Palm's Pre, which floundered on release last year?

Who cares about young people?

Ontario's new law that prohibits drivers under 21 from drinking any alcohol at all before driving reminds me of something an old friend said years ago.

He used to do market research, focusing particularly on young people, what attracts them to particular brands, what values they wanted to see in consumer products, etc. He pointed out that nobody cares about youth issues except youth themselves. Teenagers might rail about not being able to vote or drink or how their schools treat them or how they are targeted by the police. But then they turn of age, leave school and they don't care about those issues anymore. In fact, young adults often put a great amount of distance between themselves and "youth" issues. I know there are adults who advocate for young people and they do great work but they are an exception, and usually paid for their advocacy.

Which is why governments can get away with clearly unconstitutional laws like these. By the time someone gathers up steam to launch a proper court challenge, which can take years, their age makes them stop caring; they move on to other things. There is not enough continuity to create a genuine movement.

Imagine if this law was applied to any other group that's protected by the Charter, which protects people from discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. For "under 21," imagine "men," "Protestants," or "Irish-Canadians." It could never happen. That's because these characteristics are (mostly) permanent and the affected individuals would stay affected for a long time, long enough to lobby against the law.

Youth is fleeting. Governments exploit that fact every time they take away young people's rights. It's politically pragmatic but it's hardly fair.

Is Pride more important than a high school prom?

As someone trying to figure out what the current imbroglio around Pride Toronto means for the future of Toronto's LGBT community, I found Douglas Elliott's excellent speech at the Law Society of Upper Canada's Pride reception this week especially helpful.

In his assessment of the tone of the debate over whether the phrase "Israeli Apartheid" should be banned from the annual Pride parade, Elliott was bang-on. Even setting aside the name-calling, negativity and assumptions of ill-will I've heard from both sides, the language of "otherness" has played much too big a part in this debate. There have been some very eloquent, consensus-building and compassionate voices, too. But I haven't heard so much "us" versus "them" rhetoric since the Christian Right showed up to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage. Elliott's emphasis on "we" is vital.

When Elliott set out to define the key issues, though, I lost the thread. "Pride is about our LGBT community. It is the one time of the year when it is all about us." That's true, but I was immediately reminded of another institution about which you could say the same thing: high-school proms. A few of them, here and in the U.S., have been placed in jeopardy over LGBT issues. A student wants to bring a same-sex date, the school forbids it, the conflict escalates and the school or a court threatens to cancel the prom until the matter is settled. Elliott himself is very familiar with this narrative.

You only get one graduating prom in your life. The (mostly straight) students who suffer from the same-sex date controversy did not set the policy--it's not their issue, really. Why should they be made worry if their corsages will be left to rot in the fridge? Can't LGBT students do their own thing elsewhere? Isn't their choice of date a distraction from more serious education issues? Shouldn't the issue be decided somewhere offstage, so (mostly straight) students aren't pulled into it?

I don't agree with these complaints--I do indeed think equality issues are important education issues--but I suggest them here to demonstrate how rhetoric, rather than reality, frames how we decide what issues belong where. When Elliott was fighting for the right of Marc Hall to take his male date to the prom, I'm not sure he would have accepted a "not the right venue for this kind of thing" argument.

LGBT activists like Elliott have (rightfully) supported and celebrated these teenage same-sex date-takers (there must be a more elegant expression for that) as heroes. If one particular prom suffers in the larger fight for LGBT equality, then it's a small price to pay. But you certainly don't feel that way if you're an 18-year-old straight student and it's your prom. You might be angry with your school, but you might also just want the gay boy or lesbian girl to go away or, at least, tone it down. LGBT haven't traditionally settled for the "please go away and tone it down" option.

Then there's the issue of timing. Pointing out that the federal government withheld $400,000 of expected funding this year, Elliott says "I felt that this was a time when we all needed to rally behind Pride to cope with this financial squeeze." This quote reminded me of the Bruce Cockburn song "The Trouble with Normal." According to Cockburn, the trouble with normal is "it always gets worse."

Yes, the federal funding cut was a pain, probably motivated by homophobia. Yuck. But I look at Pride 2010 and see an organization as big and as rich as it's ever been. In the words of not-for-profit types, Pride has built a lot of capacity in the last few years. The budget looks to be more than $3 million, up from $2.7 million last year. There are 10 people on staff and a crew of able, smart and dedicated volunteer coordinators. I'm sure they would have all liked to have had this discussion done with 10 months ago--or 10 years ago--or 10 years from now. But if 2010 is not a year when people can--compassionately--discuss the meaning of Pride, how it relates to the community, how it relates to the mainstream, the compromises it's prepared to make to be well-funded and who should or shouldn't be allowed to participate in it, then I'm not sure when a time for that discussion would ever come.

Why not now? Would the middle of Toronto's World Pride in 2014 be better timing?

Nationally, it's fair to say that the court-driven queer activist agenda of the last two decades is almost at an end. We won. Yay! (Add an asterisk or two here; trans people should add several.) If we want to move ahead as a community, to manifest a form of activism and collective identity beyond the courtroom walls, we need to figure out who we are and what we want to do next. The current discussion about Pride's handling of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is extremely pertinent to those questions. Well, it is if it can shake off the personal attacks, the lack of compromise, the unwillingness to admit mistakes, the broad sweeping generalizations, the paranoia and the snark.

Is it a pain for Pride Toronto that it has become a principal actor in this debate? Totally, yes. I bet they're much rather be blowing up balloons, booking talent and training parade marshals--or having a root canal. But they should also find it flattering. Pride celebrations, more than any other LGBT institution, are a repository of the struggles and dreams of our community. Even its harshest critics care what Pride does. That's not hate, that's love. I just wish it sounded more like it.

What's really been in and out of the parade

There's been so much vigorous (acrimonious?) debate over whether the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) should be allowed to march in Toronto's Pride parade, there's been little I felt I could add. But it's dawned on me today that both sides have been making not-quite-right statements about the parade's history.

As someone who's watched every parade since 2000 from beginning to end (Oy! I know! I'll never get those hours back!), I wanted to add some facts to the mix.

Several times I've read city councillor Kyle Rae implying that the content in the parade has historically been queer-specific. "What they were doing is bringing in another issue into a queer community event," he told the Globe And Mail.

Well, in past parades, I've seen anti-meat signage, anti-fur signage, "Free Tibet" signage, anti-Catholic signage and anti-Pope signage (more on the Pope in a moment). Is it true to assume Pride messaging is always positive or, if negative, aimed only at those who oppress LGBT people? Tell that to the Latin American Coalition Against Racism that marched in 2000 or the people from Gays Liberation Against the Right Everywhere who, with Rae, founded Pride Toronto in 1981. Or the marchers in 1999 who chanted "Homelessness is a national disgrace."

The 2001 parade included Jewish Women Against The Occupation and people with signs stating "Bi Babes say screw the FTAA!"

All of these causes are debatable, some of them controversial. None are queer-specific. Neither is nudism, really--I've heard that even straight people are naked under their clothes--but nobody has questioned the desire of the group Totally Naked Men Enjoying Nudity (TNT!MEN) to march in the parade, even as they've questioned their right to. (As an aside: One of the criticisms I've heard levelled against QuAIA is that they're nothing but attention-seekers. Uhhh, it's a parade. Everybody who wants to be in a parade is an attention-seeker. It's the single common denominator of parade participants.)

The Toronto parade I've witnessed (endured?) has historically operated with the assumption that queer people who have what I'll call "generic" interests are permitted to, er, expose them in the parade. I haven't done a statistical breakdown, but I would bet that at least 25 percent of parade participants are queer people expressing generic interests, from their religion to their admiration for CBC radio to their distaste of the current government, whoever that might be. It's understandable that Councillor Rae has missed this; he's spent more time in the parade--and in the early days organizing the parade--than watching it. But the parade I've watched glide down Yonge Street year after year has never been a single voice speaking with a single unified message; it's a cacophony. If something in it doesn't make you uncomfortable, you're not paying enough attention.

Now, although the gayness of TNT!MEN's exhibitionist tendencies have not been questioned, their right to participate in the parade has. When Pride's executive director Tracey Sandilands talks about the words "Israeli Apartheid" making attendees "uncomfortable," she seems to be forgetting or ignoring the discomfort TNT!MEN's weenies have caused over the years. In the early 2000s, there were complaints about them almost every year. Prior to joining in the parade in 1999, then mayor Mel Lastman reportedly tried to pressure Pride organizers to get TNT!MEN to cover up. In the early 2000s, there were times when volunteer marshals at the staging grounds encouraged them to do so. Around that time, Pride adopted a semi-official hands-off policy with regard to nudity: organizers would pass on warnings from the police and inform participants that illegal behaviour would not be condoned. In 2002, police did arrest parade nudists, leading seven of them off in handcuffs, their asses still hanging out. The charges were eventually dropped and, as far as I know, neither the cops nor organizers have interfered with nudists in the parade since then. The nudists were never banned, but they have often been discouraged and, at the very least, were left to fend for themselves.

Which brings me to a not-quite-right claim I've been hearing from critics of Pride: that "Israeli Apartheid" is the first time Pride Toronto has censored something in the parade.

Actually, the kooky cult the Raelians were censored in the 2004 parade. They had brought signs that I believe criticized the Roman Catholic Pope, John Paul II, but I can't say for sure because the words on their signs (and they had a lot) were covered up with black tape and other makeshift coverings. The signs you could read said, "Not Allowed By Pride."

You could argue that the QuAIA case is the first time Pride has voted to censor a group, but, in a way, that's preferable to a last-minute crackdown because it opens debate prior to the event and allows the group time to challenge the decision. Also, at that time, Pride's board members, rather than paid staff, ran the festival. I don't know who called for or who approved the Raelian censorship, but I'm sure board members were either involved or close by. Nowadays, volunteers and paid staff can't be confident the board members will be on site to give such advice--the organic connection between community and organization has been severed by the professionalization of Pride, by money, so to speak--so the hands-on people obviously want these things settled before the event.

Regardless of whether a vote for censorship is better or worse than impromptu censorship, the bald fact of censorship has reared its head at Pride before.

Most of this information is available in the pre-2005 archives of Xtra.ca; my memory isn't that good.

What Adam Giambrone needs to do next

Take a break from electoral politics, Adam. You've worn your heart on your sleeve about your political aspirations for a long time and it's not too late to still become prime minister (or perennial NDP leader as the case may be). At 32, you have plenty of time to pursue this goal, and maybe even become premier of Ontario along the way.

But now is the perfect time to catch your breath. Resign as TTC head and don't bother running for councillor in the next election. In your ward, you are not the most popular person right now (for pesky issues, I know, like the Queen Triangle debacle, the narrowing of Lansdowne, for parking on Dundas, but these are issues dear to the hearts of voters). Losing the next election would add insult to injury. Step away from the ballot box.

Your early fresh-faced entry into electoral politics proves the maxim about power corrupting.

(Disclaimer: I don't think a promiscuous person is a corrupted person. My qualm is cultivating the public image that you're single and available (how else was Now able to mistakenly presume you're gay?), then parading a quasi-wife figure when you announce your candidacy for mayor--as if that's even necessary in this day and age--then, when confronted with the facts of a sexual relationship with somebody other than your quasi-wife, lying about it. Toronto could have easily handled--perhaps even celebrated--a swinging single mayor. It's the role the women were cast in that's off-putting. If, with the support of your quasi-wife, you could have replied to The Toronto Star allegations with a confident "So what?" you wouldn't be hiding out in Italy this week.)

So here's what to do. Spend the next three to five years doing something else. Something that will make a difference but is somewhat under the radar. Run the United Way. Get involved in some green-energy company. Do an academic fellowship for some kind of centre for innovation. Show that you're not just a smarmy politico but someone who has the smarts to solve real problems and deliver real tangible results. We can debate forever whether the TTC would have been better off or worse without you; it was a major mess and remains a major mess. Grab hold of a project that will show success within five years, something manageable enough that the success will show your signature. Pick something close to your heart that shows you really care about the work, not the public attention it gets you. If you're out of the headlines for a few years, so much the better.

After people have all but forgotten your time as city councillor, run for provincial or federal politics with a campaign that demonstrates how much you've learned from your time in the private/not-for-profit sector. Tap into that newfound wisdom for political problem-solving strategies.

Hey, it worked for former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray (who admittedly wasn't trying to leave behind any taint other than being non-Ontarian) who just became an MPP at Queen's Park. His time as president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute was not wasted. Yours won't be either.

Blaming the victim

I was going to post a rant about the police response to a dramatic increase of pedestrian-vehicle fatalities (and we all know which side of that equation suffered the fatalities), but the Star's Christopher Hume beat me to it, articulating what is most galling about the cop's propensity to blame the victim. When we have a traffic system that never ensures the safety of pedestrians (and cyclists, for that matter), whether they obey the rules or not, any incentive to obey the rules is removed.

People wonder why there's been such a rash of accidents. My theory: drivers are more cautious when there is a certain threshold of pedestrians around. Drivers have to see a decent number of human beings to register, "Hey, there are people around I have to watch out for." (As a cyclist, I've learned that the most dangerous time to bike is spring, just as biking weather hits. Drivers have to re-learn how to navigate us.)

Un-vehicled people are scarce on many streets and neighbourhoods in the winter so drivers become more cavalier. Our warm snap brought pedestrians to places where motorists weren't expecting them, but not enough to make them more careful.

Regardless, any response that treats pedestrians and people zooming around in 5,000 pound worth of fast-moving, gas-guzzling armour as equally responsible is a response that's out of touch with reality.

Bright young thing

I have also been doing work lately for Yonge Street Media, a weekly online magazine that spotlights innovation and creativity in Toronto. Having focussed so much on theatre lately, I often feel like I'm applying arts-style coverage to business and community-building projects, which is kinda fun.

Link to 'This' article

When out came out in the fall, my piece on queer politics was paper-only, but, ever slow to catch up, I just realized it's now online.

A clever balance

The uproar over how Prime Minister Stephen Harper has prorogued Parliament has focussed mostly on how it helps him escape the controversy over the allegations that Afghan detainees under the care of Canadian troops were handed over to be tortured.

But the strategy is also effective for a minority PM who has struggled with not looking too scary to moderate Canadians. People talk about how legislation dying on the order paper must be a disappointment to him. But perhaps some of it--copyright, the end of conditional sentencing and the overhaul of the national sex offender registry--was introduced to keep his core right-wing supporters happy without Harper caring if the laws ever passed. You introduce legislation to please the core and kill the legislation to please the moderates. The result is that nobody hates you and you can wield the powers of a Canadian prime minister, powers that are much grander than the lowly enacting of legislation.

And the fury over the proroguing? Name me somebody who lost an election due to the abuse of Parliamentary procedure.