Heritage Minute: Jackie Shane!

Bucket, meet list. I grew up in front of my parents’ old television set, watching hours upon hours of shows and commercials — to be honest, this largely informed my desire to write television.

I regret nothing. It was hard to make friends when you were a gay biracial kid in the suburbs.

But mixed in alongside the cartoons and procedurals were Historica Canada’s Heritage Minutes. These highly quotable nuggets of Canadian history were a mainstay of network television in the 1990s. Ask any millennial of a certain age about “I smelled burnt toast!” and they’ll know exactly what you’re talking about…

What an honour it was to write a Heritage Moment on *the* Jackie Shane! Love to the entire cast & crew, the folks at @HistoricaCanada, the awesome producers, and Jackie herself — whose music helped me through a particularly rough patch of life. ❤️ https://t.co/0H96esOKSk
— JP Larocque🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (@jplarocque) November 2, 2022

Well, I feel so incredibly grateful to have had a hand in creating a new Heritage Minute about soul singer and Black trans icon Jackie Shane. I’ve been following Jackie’s story since 2010, and always hoped to get a chance to work on something that celebrated her incredible (and largely forgotten) history. Her music also got me through some particularly difficult times in my life.

I feel intensely grateful to the whole team — Historica Canada, but also super producers Cait Brown and Vanessa Magic, star Ravyn Wngz, co-directors Ayo Tsalithaba and Pat Mills, cinematographer Gayle Ye, composer Murray A. Lightburn, narrator B. Glenn Copeland, production designer Nicole Simmons, and so many others.

But most of all, thanks to Jackie. Sometimes the world catches up.

I’ll also probably never work on something cited by the Prime Minister of Canada again:

2SLGBTQI+ Canadians deserve to be themselves and feel safe. We’ll keep building a country where that’s possible, and we’ll continue to follow the example set out by trailblazers – like Jackie Shane. Watch @HistoricaCanada’s new #HeritageMinute to learn more about this queer icon: pic.twitter.com/JfsMKdmJnm
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) November 2, 2022