LGBTQ+

Pride Solidarity March celebrates freedom


Pride Solidarity March celebrates freedom

Pride Solidarity March celebrates freedom

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

Hundreds of people of a wide range of ages and backgrounds gathered in Place D’Youville on Sept. 1 to mark the 20th anniversary of LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations in Quebec City and call for vigilance in the fight to protect the rights of sexual and gender minorities.

The march was the marquee event of four days of Pride celebrations, which included drag performances, outdoor concerts (despite erratic weather), parties at Le Drague, Le Saint-Matthew and other queer-friendly venues, an artists’ market, a community fair and a “gender exploration” activity at the Palais Montcalm, where people could try on new clothes and appearance-altering prosthetics and get free haircuts, discounted tattoos and style advice from eager volunteers.

While the festival has undergone a rebrand in the past year, changing its name from Fête Arc-en-Ciel de Québec to Fierté de Québec and add- ing more activities for queer, non-binary and young audiences, the traditional Sunday afternoon Solidarity March has remained the same. Organizers are adamant that the march is not a parade. Although the odd political party, labour union or church banner or pin could be seen among the throng of flag- bedecked marchers streaming through Vieux-Québec, there were no organized delegations.

Participants chanted “Pride was a riot!” alluding to the first Pride celebrations in North America, which were protests against a lack of of- ficial recognition, respect and protections for gay, lesbian and transgender people. They chanted slogans in French and English in support of the rights of transgender youth, Palestin- ian sovereignty, the Black Lives Matter movement and boycotts of multinational corporations. A touching open-mic session at Place D’Youville, where people could read poetry or speak about whatever was on their minds, followed the march.

“That platform [at the Soli- darity March] is there for people in the community to express their views, and the only rule is that they do it respect- fully,” said British Columbia- born Johnson Bresnick, who celebrated his first Quebec City Pride in 2008 and recently became secretary of the Alli- ance Arc-en-Ciel, which organizes the annual celebration.

Jean-Yves Martin came from St. Lambert, near Montreal, with his partner, Pierre Poisson. The two men in their 60s, dressed in colourful butterfly outfits, drew admiring looks from the younger marchers. The admiration was mutual. “I love seeing this,” Martin said, gesturing to clusters of people in their teens and 20s with brightly coloured hair and colourful signs. “I have four kids and six grandkids and I raised them just like this, so they can be free.”

Quebec City resident Katharina Urbschat was attending her first Pride, in solidarity with gay family members and to see what it was like. “I love this–Ifeelsofree,likeIcanbe anyone I want to be,” she said. “I can finally say that I belong to this community, and I’m proud of that,” said Hortense*, a recent immigrant from Cam- eroon, where homosexuality is a criminal offence. “There are places in the world where you can’t make that choice, to live out your sexual orientation or your gender identity.”

“As a person who has had to come out a few different times … it’s important for me to have a world where our kids won’t have to come out, where they can just be themselves from the beginning,” said Alexandre Bédard, a father of two young children and Alliance Arc- en-Ciel board member who is transgender.

At the microphone, speakers emphasized the joy of coming together, but also the fragility of LGBTQ+ rights in an increasingly polarized political climate. A Quebec City resident named Dominic, who gave only his first name, stepped to the mic and drew the audience’s attention to his wedding ring. “I’ve been married for 15 years, and to get us to that point, there are people who have been through torture, who have been put in prison, who have died.” He concluded by adapting a quote from French feminist author Simone de Beauvoir: “Never forget that it will only take a political, economic or religious crisis for our rights to be called into question. These rights are never acquired. You will have to remain vigilant throughout your life.”

*last name withheld for safety reasons

Are you new in town and trying to get more involved with the LGBTQ+ community?

• Volunteer with the Alliance Arc-en-Ciel and make your mark on Pride 2025! Email info@arcencielquebec.com to learn more.

• Discover Roller Derby as a player or volunteer and let your competitive side shine through with Roller Derby Québec. “It’s a contact sport on skates with a lot of people – one of the first contact sports developed for women,” explains Élodie Drolet of Roller Derby Québec. “We have a nice bilingual community and a lot of the jargon is in English.” Although teams are only open to women, transgender people and non-binary people, cisgender men are welcome to get involved as officials or volunteers. Follow them on Facebook (Roller Derby Québec).

• Join a queer-positive, creative community with Toustes Doux, a Lower Town-based nonprofit which organizes all-ages, pay-what-you-can queer-friendly community events such as picnics and arts-and-crafts nights. Follow them on Instagram (@toustesdoux).

• Open Zoom and join the Violet Hour Book Club, a bilingual, mainly English-language hybrid book club hosted by Montreal author Christopher Di Raddo. Email him at diraddo@gmail.com to learn more.

• If you enjoy French-language poetry and performance art and want to discover some new venues in Lower Town, follow the Collectif RAMEN on social media.

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Bisexuality is community

Callan Forrester – LJI reporter

Of all the letters in the 2SLGBTQIA acronym, one of the more misunderstood is the “B”: bisexual. Bisexuals are often the recipients of large amounts of skepticism, along with a lack of understanding of what a bisexual identity looks like.

Rachel Patenaude is a bisexual person who grew up in Hemmingford. She explains bisexuality as “experiencing attraction to same/similar and different genders to yourself, including all kinds of genders. The ‘bi’ isn’t a count of genders, it’s a count of types of attraction: ‘same’ and ‘different’ … I like the phrase ‘Love is a many-gendered thing.’” 

There’s a misconception that bisexual people only experience attraction to cisgender men and women, leaving trans and non-binary people out of the equation. However, bisexual people have a more expansive definition of who they are attracted to. Patenaude adds that when you take into consideration the identity of each bisexual person and the identity of who they date, “No two bisexual experiences are the same,” and adds that “There isn’t a clear guide of how to date people when your dating history may not look like theirs. You’re not always coming from the same social communities.”

For a long time, the term “bisexual” was used differently from how we use it today. Patenaude explains that historically it was used for what we now call “intersex.” Bisexuals often fell under the gay or lesbian umbrellas. There were moments in history, like the radical feminist movement and the AIDS pandemic, that stigmatized bisexuals for not “picking a side,” and often left them ostracized from their own communities.

There are many other misconceptions that come with being bisexual. The obvious ones are that bisexuals are greedy, cheaters, or experiencing a phase that will pass. But there is also the notion that bi folks are not as involved in the political action of the queer community. 

Patenaude refutes this, sharing that she herself has been an organizer and participant in many political activities for the queer community and beyond. Most recently, she was one of the organizers for the 2024 Montreal Dyke March, where she shared that half the team was bisexual. “We’re just as much a vital part of the heartbeat that is the queer community,” she says.

Bisexuality also creates a unique relationship to gender identity. Though gender identity and sexual orientation are two different experiences, they can often be quite linked. “To be a queer person, even a cisgender one, is inherently gender non-conforming,” she says, explaining that it is a societal expectation that women are cisgender and heterosexual and they date cisgender, heterosexual men, and vice-versa. Being queer breaks those expectations. Patenaude defines her own relationship with gender as “genderqueer” or “woman and other.”

One of the most valuable parts of Patenaude’s journey has been learning queer history, and specifically the history of bisexuals. She notes, “The mother of Pride, Brenda Howard, is a bisexual woman. She put together the first march to commemorate the Christopher Street riots (better known as Stonewall) … We have Pride parades because of her.”

For folks who may be newly questioning their sexuality or new to their bisexuality, Patenaude encourages them to learn queer history. For her, it has helped her feel connected to a community that has spanned across generations, which is a feeling easily missed if you are the only queer person within your family or friend group. “I’m proud to be standing in the legacy of so many incredible people,” she states. She recommends the writings of bisexual activists Brenda Howard, Lani Ka’ahumanu, Robyn Ochs, and Loraine Hutchins as great jumping-off points.

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The reality for over one million queer people

Callan Forrester – LJI reporter

June is Pride Month: a time to celebrate the 2SLGBTQIA+ (Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, plus) community, and to remember the fight it has taken the get to where we are, and how much fighting there is still left to do.

Statistics Canada has released some information about the realities of queer people in Canada. The wage gap between queer folks and straight folks is quite wide. Heterosexual men earn an average yearly salary of $61,400 compared to gay men ($51,400) and bisexual men ($39,400). Lesbian women and heterosexual women had a similar average income ($48,600 and $47,300 respectively); however, bisexual women only made an average of $38,500. This could partly be due to the fact that the average age of a bisexual person in the workplace is younger than that of straight people, gay men, and lesbians.

The queer community is a growing population in Canada. Data from 2019 to 2021 shows that approximately 4.4 per cent of Canadians (1.3 million people) identify as queer. That being said, one in ten youth aged 15 to 24 years (10.5 per cent) identified as queer, making them the demographic with the highest percentage of queer people. About one per cent of people in this same demographic identify as transgender or non-binary.

The Quebec government has also released some information about the mental health of the queer community. It says that queer folks are “at greater risk of having suicidal ideations or attempting suicide because of the isolation, stigmatization, discrimination, homophobia, or transphobia that they may face… Moreover, cases of mood disorders (in particular, depression) or anxiety disorders are more common in the LGBTQ+ population.”

Statistics Canada backs this up by sharing that “Transgender or non-binary people (54.7 per cent) were over five times as likely as cisgender people (9.9 per cent) to consider their mental health to be fair or poor. The likelihood of reporting fair or poor mental health was also higher for bisexual (36.8 per cent) and gay or lesbian (16.9 per cent) people than for heterosexual people (9.1 per cent).”

It should also be noted that folks who live at different intersections of marginalization (race, gender, socio-economic background, etc.) experience these realities at a much higher rate.

With the population of queer Canadians growing each year, it’s important to recognize the reality of how people’s lives are affected based on their sexuality and gender identity.

The reality for over one million queer people Read More »

Performer ‘plays with expression,’ flourishes on TV documentary stage

Sarah Rennie – LJI reporter

“Telling a story in drag is very different from telling a story out of drag,” says Callan Forrester, who stars as one of five artists featured in season four of the award-winning hybrid stage workshop/documentary series, Drag Heals.

As an actor and producer working in Toronto’s musical theatre scene, Forrester was already quite comfortable on the stage, but drag is relatively new to their performance repertoire. With just over a year of dabbling in drag as Ana Spiral (a self-confessed anxiety queen), Forrester was thrilled to join the cast of the acclaimed series.

“Over the four seasons, they have had people who have been doing drag for decades, and they have had people who have never done drag once in their lives,” says Forrester, who first auditioned for the show in May 2023. “I submitted a tape the day after I had been broken up with, my car was broken into, and my identity was stolen. It was one of the worst weeks of my life.” When the casting call came a few months later, the performer admits it was a huge surprise.

The program follows each artist as they work through a series of intensive workshops to craft a one-person stage show from deeply personal stories and transformative moments. In doing so, the drag artists work and interact with host Tracey Erin Smith as well as several guest coaches, including dancers/choreographers, other drag artists, costume designers, and writers. There are no eliminations; “The goal is to celebrate queer art and to give a platform to queer artists,” says Forrester.

The fourth season culminates in a showcase performance at the Paradise Theatre in Toronto, where the cast shared their one-person shows with a live audience.

For their performance, Forrester uses a lifelong comparison to Jo March, the boldly outspoken dreamer of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women, as a lens through which to tell their story. “I focus on a lot of different things, but I also talk a lot about grief, and how grief shifts your perspective.”

In a press release issued by series producer Border2Border Entertainment, director Charlie David refers to the cast of drag artists as being “fearless in their honesty and vulnerability,” which he says makes every episode captivating. He suggests viewers can expect “inspiring resilience, and a celebration of self-discovery unlike anything we’ve showcased before.”

Forrester says there are several aspects about the series that make it unique. “It has become a really cool space where you have drag queens, drag kings, drag things, and monarchs, clowns, and all sorts of drag creatures!” they exclaim. “I think often when people think of drag, they only think of queens, or men dressing as women; whereas I was raised as a girl, but I do hyper-femme drag. That causes people to raise eyebrows, sometimes,” they admit. “For me, it is a place to play with gender, and play with expression.”

The reality series is also one of very few that offers participants final approval in the editing room. Forrester says some programs in this genre exist in a moral or ethical grey zone where people have no creative say over how they are being portrayed. “It felt like an environment where we could take risks and be honest and open and vulnerable in a lot of ways, because we knew that at the end of the day, we got to say what went and what didn’t.”

The series has been nominated for two Canadian Screen Awards including Best Lifestyle Program or Series. Forrester notes their participation has been cheered by family and friends, but also by complete strangers who have reached out.

As a burgeoning drag artist, Forrester says they hope to move into the cabaret drag scene and plans to transform the 15-minute solo performance created during the series into a one-hour routine.

As for the potential for a documentary like Drag Heals to dispel some of the beliefs that are often unfairly projected onto drag artists, Forrester says the show is open to everyone. Whether you are part of the queer community, whether you are a fierce ally, or just curious, “Drag can be for you.”

The series is currently being streamed around the world and can be viewed on Apple TV and Amazon Prime platforms.

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