I wrote a piece for today’s Toronto Star on the annual Pride celebrations and the impact of COVID-19 on the city’s LGBTQ+ community. I appreciate Dean Odorico (of popular bar Woody’s) and Jaymie Sampa of The 519 taking the time to discuss the Church-Wellesley community, the challenges the neighbourhood is currently navigating, and some of…
Category: Toronto
This Magazine: “Memories on the Margins.”
I wrote a piece for This Magazine on processing the end of a romantic relationship against the backdrop of a gentrifying city. It acts as a bit of a companion to last month’s clocktower piece for The Toronto Star, but focuses less on the history of the tower and more on my emotional headspace during…
Toronto Star: “I’ll Miss the Old TTC Streetcars.”
With the TTC decommissioning the old CLRV streetcars, I got a bit nostalgic about them and wrote a piece for The Toronto Star. I’ll miss those old lumbering beasts, if just because they were such an important part of Toronto’s iconography (like Honest Ed’s, RIP) and my own childhood memories of navigating the city streets….
Huffington Post: “Society Made Queer Men of Colour a White Killer’s Prey.”
As I’ve mentioned before on the blog, the Bruce McArthur case is one that has hit fairly close to home for me. As a queer man of colour, and one who fits the profile of some of his alleged victims, I have found myself angered by the way the case has been handled by both…
A Romantic at Heart
On Thursday, Toronto discovered it had a serial killer preying on gay men. Or perhaps I should rephrase that. The general population of Toronto discovered that it had a serial killer preying on gay men. Not the community itself, which had long suspected that the growing list of missing men with similar physical characteristics and…
Forever Yonge
“My feet tread a familiar path along Yonge, a neon circus of idling cars and roving packs of suburbanites here to enjoy something a little different. The sixties have come to Toronto two years too late, and so seven odd decades of being good atop a mud pile have left the citizens feeling antsy. I…
The Nemesis of Neglect
2017 hasn’t been a particularly good time to be a queer person in Toronto. I mean, there is still significant division within the community over the demands made by Black Lives Matter in the 2016 Pride Parade, with Pride out roughly $1.3 million this year via lost sponsorship and lowered attendance. Hanlan’s Point, a popular and…
The Return of Miss Jackie Shane
Sometimes it takes fifty years for popular culture to catch up, huh? In the record store this afternoon, I was pleased to see the new Jackie Shane record sitting alongside St. Vincent, Lana del Rey, and Wolf Parade on the HOT NEW ALBUMS shelf. There’s Miss Jackie, resplendent in a hot blue belted number, casually…
Naked Hearts & Reel Asians
Some people go to bars, but the nerds go to bookshops. The first spot I visited as a baby gay was Glad Day Bookshop, and that was when it was a tiny store tucked up a massive flight of stairs on Yonge Street. The man behind the desk paid little attention to the tiny beige…
CBC Arts: Naked Heart Festival & Glad Day Bookshop
CBC’s Peter Knegt did some coverage of the upcoming Naked Heart Festival at Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto, and I had the opportunity to share some thoughts on the evolution of the shop from a standard bookstore into a thriving community hub. There’s even a sexy pull quote: You can find the full piece on…
JP Larocque 