WELCOME TO QUEERMONTON, VRIENDBERTA, CANADA
TED KERR / ted@vueweekly.com
In my last article I suggested that there have been three waves of queer activism: standing up/standing proud, gaining our rights and living our rights. I think we are currently at the beginning of the third wave, which I see categorized by the personal being recognized as political in regards to queer lives, animating the rights gained during the second wave through everyday living, and expression being used and recognized as a form of activism.
This week I want to discuss how Edmonton became an illustration, if not a thriving example, of the third wave in action.
Edmonton is the perfect storm; it is North America’s only Human Rights City and it has a creative, connected queer community working both independently and collectively on rigorously created work and events that are inspired or informed by an authority to rail against (the provincial government) and a supportive local community to work and live in (Edmonton).
The last few years Edmonton has been home to a silent queer renaissance that is beginning to be heard. It is no coincidence that it has happened when the city has a forward thinking, informed, if not strategic-minded, mayor.
Being a fan of Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class, Mayor Mandel has embraced Florida’s hypothesis that a city flourishes when brimming with creativity and diversity. He has put Florida’s ideas into action by being a champion of the arts and the queer community. His endorsement of these not-mutually-exclusive communities has created stability and a sense of esteem that has allowed both to be bold, feel supported and think long term.
Edmonton is increasingly becoming home to artists who are queer that feel able to show their queer work, and institutions like Latitude 53 and Northern Lights Theatre that feel confident to program queer work.
Last year saw the arrival of Exposure: Edmonton’s Queer Arts and Culture Festival, which aims to bring queer artists to new audiences and new audiences to queer work. In the process they are raising the bar of queer art in Edmonton and casting Edmonton as a leader in queer expression on the Canadian art stage.
Edmonton is also home to Camp fYrefly—Canada’s largest LGBTTQA art-centric youth leadership camp founded by the University of Alberta’s Dr Andre Grace and PhD candidate Kris Wells. They are also behind the newly announced Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services, which within two years will be offering North America’s only minor in sexual minority studies. All this just reinforces the national rumour that the U of A’s english and film studies department is the queerest in Canada.
Being an artist myself, I don’t subscribe to the notion that artists have to be tortured to create. But as Edmonton-based writers and actors Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow, concede, “living in Alberta adds more fuel to the fire.” And that fire leads to award winning, politically and emotionally charged work.
Last month their hip-hop musical Bash’d received a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding NY Theatre. Their show, which debuted at the Roost and will soon begin its commercial run in New York City, is set against the backdrop of the same-sex marriage debate in Canada, during which hate crimes against homos spiked in Alberta.
Compared to the liberal, open atmosphere the Edmonton municipal government provides, the Province of Alberta has been unsupportive and judged by the highest court in the land to be legally negligent of queer human rights.
The historic Vriend v Alberta case had its home in Edmonton when Delwin Vriend was fired from his job for being gay. Seven years of legal battles later, and a decade ago last week, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the case that the province let down its population by not protecting Vriend from being fired, and decided that sexual orientation should be covered in human rights legislation across the country. Many provinces have already begun to rewrite legislation as a result of the ruling, but Alberta still has not.
By not changing the legislation, the government is allowing a culture of discrimination to fester and is communicating to the people of the province that the rights of the LGBTTQ community don’t matter—and so the rights of minorities in general don’t matter.
Lindsay Blackett, the new Conservative culture minister, would only comment that before action was taken he would need to review the entire act. While I do respect that he is a new minister who deserves the benefit of a doubt, this kind of “possibly” rhetoric is what queers have been hearing in this province for decades. The PC’s unwillingness to write protections for sexual orientation into legislation shows a lack of leadership on equality and has cultivated a culture where hatred is tolerated. It has also created tension, and thus fuel for artists to work both against and towards.
As the third wave develops, we see that having rights granted and rulings written in are only one part of activism. It is how queer people exist in culture and impact the world around them that has an affect on attitudes and actions towards queers.
“All this talk of rights won’t necessarily stop you from getting a punch in the head,“ says Edmonton writer and musician Marshall Watson, a member of the gaysian invasion band Spreepark. “Laws can only do so much, they don’t change social behaviour the way we can on a personal level.”
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