Happy 100th Birthday Papa
Today would have been my papa’s 100th birthday. He was quite upset that he couldn’t hold out for the big 1-0-0, but he passed away in 2005 at the age of 93.
My papa was a very interesting man. Patient. Inquisitive. Hard working. Sensitive. Strong. Compassionate. Stubborn. Respected. He could do his taxes without a calculator (yes, they were often slightly wrong). He built me a garage when he was well into his 70s. I’m pretty sure I inherited his sailor mouth—although, he stuck with the traditional expletives (e.g. bugger, bastard). He once tried out “mo-fo” on my little brother to see if he could make it work. It didn’t stick. He told great stories about the On To Ottawa Trek, riding the rails, teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere, and farming up at Meadow Lake. He took my Grammy to Hawaii once, but he was actually scared of flying. He had a full head of hair until he died. When I was born, he thought my name was Verbecka. He was later corrected, but only after buying a Canada Savings Bond for someone named Verbecka Hardy. He didn’t get a hearing aid until he was in his 80s. He took my mom to Disneyland in 1962 (?) and they actually met Walt Disney. He owned Churchill Hardware in Saskatoon until the late 1970s—he knew how to use every single tool that he sold. The mechanics at Canadian Tire used to let him onto the repair floor to watch how they fixed cars. I always thought he looked like Humphrey Bogart, but then I learned that Bogey spit when he talked. My papa didn’t like to spit. He thought it was rude. He wasn’t a great typist—he hand big Dutch hands that could never really hit the keys very well. I always picture him with a pencil in his hand. He kept cherry chewing gum in his desk drawer and I was allowed to have a piece from time to time. He let me lick the salt triangles before he put them in the soft water tank. He kept everything, just in case he needed it someday and he bought stuff when it was on sale.He grew plants in the basement under a pink light. I still have no idea why he did that. He would run an incredible grow-op. He loved animals. Cats always found their way onto his lap. There were always ten boxes of shreddies in the cold room, next to the dozen or so boxes of Neilson’s chocolates. I always liked the Willowcrisp ones. He used to let me hold his big thumb when we went for walks together. He called me his ‘klein machen’. He would ask me “Wie jeht es?” and I would reply, “gut.”
…and I promised I wouldn’t cry as I wrote this, but I broke my promise…
And I miss him dearly. He was my jack-of-all-trades. He could do anything. Not a week goes by when I don’t think of him or wish he were here to help me take care of my house! And meet his lovely great granddaughter, who can spot him in photos and calls him papa, too.
apologia pro vita sua: coming out to strangers
I am frequently asked two questions by students, colleagues, and new friends: (1) how did you meet your partner and (2) when did you ‘come out’. The answer to the first question has several answers, depending on who’s in the room when you ask and how many drinks I’ve had. The second question, however, has remained unaltered over the years. It’s an experience that has taken on more significance as I’ve aged; I’ve interpreted the events over and over again as I learn more about the world and my place in it. But the basic facts remain the same: the first person I ever told about my sexuality was a stranger with a baseball bat. And he intended to use that bat to beat up some fags in the park. I was 17-years-old and completely unaware of the danger that I had put myself in. It was also one of the most important and liberating moments of my life. I was asked this question again the other day, so I though I would share the story here as I wrote it in 2010:
City Park is a centrally located neighborhood in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, bounded by the shores of the South Saskatchewan River and the central business district. As one of the first neighbourhoods established in the relatively young city, it has a mixture of 1900s character homes and wartime bungalows, each built on a spacious lot typical of Prairie urban development in the Twentieth Century. City Park also boasts a large greenspace named Kinsmen Park. First purchased by the municipality in 1903, the park was initially used as a horse-racing grounds and later as the site for an annual agricultural fair and exhibition. Today, the park hosts a children’s play area and amusement centre, two baseball diamonds, and a soccer pitch. During the much-too-short summer months, it’s a favorite location for picnic lunches and pick-up football games. At night, however, the park becomes something else, something considerably less ‘family friendly’. Kinsmen Park is a well-known cruising area and hangout for male prostitutes. It is in this park that many young men have their first homosexual experiences. In fact, the park’s ‘disreputable’ nightly activities are so well known in the larger community that they are often the source of local mythology. The road that circles through part of the park is known as the ‘fruit loop’, and it is impossible to survive high school without bearing witness to a series of jokes made at the expense of those ‘fags in the park.’ It should come as no surprise that Kinsmen Park is also a dangerous area for gay men and the epicenter for gay-bashing incidents that seem to increase in regularity with Spring temperatures.
It was in Kinsmen Park on a Spring night in 1993 where I first announced my own queerness. The weather was just warm enough to justify a midnight game of capture-the-flag with a few friends. We planned to rendezvous at a particular meeting place and divide up into teams before starting the game. I was the first to arrive. As I sat on the cold ground waiting for the others, I was approached by a group of five young men in jean jackets and white sneakers. They were carrying baseball bats. One of them explained to me that they were out “looking to bash some fags” and wanted to know if I was interested in joining them. I declined, explaining that I was waiting for friends, and four of them moved on. The fifth, a scrawny boy with a peach fuzz mustache, sat down next to me and gave me an uncomfortable smile. He apologized. It wasn’t ‘like him’ to participate in any gay-bashing, but his older brother had dragged him out that night with the group. He “didn’t have anything against fags”, but was just “going along with his buddies”. Before I could stop myself, I admitted to this boy that I was gay—something that I had never before said out loud. And then I was immediately struck with an intense sense of danger. Luckily, the boy did nothing. He gave me another uncomfortable smile and then quickly left to go catch up with his ‘buddies’. One by one my friends arrived at our meeting place and, as they organized into teams, I continued to sit on the cold ground contemplating what I had just done. My gender likely saved me from physical harm—I would certainly have felt the end of a bat if I were a gay man. Nevertheless, I was shaken and the uneasiness I felt during those few moments would haunt me for months after the encounter. I was also left dealing with the realization that I was just like one of those ‘fags in the park’. Although years have passed, I often think about how reckless I was to disclose my sexuality to a possible assailant and, at the same time, how liberating this felt. I ponder how my disclosure might have affected that young boy. Did he dismiss it easily or did it shake him as it shook me? Why did he stay behind and think it necessary to apologize to me for his behaviour? Was he questioning his own sexuality? These are questions I will never be able to answer.
I point to this moment in the park as a defining experience in my life. It was not until recently, however, that I began to think of the anxiety and distress resulting from the incident as part of the everyday trauma that I experience as a lesbian. A traumatic stressor is traditionally understood as an external event outside the range of normal human experience and which leaves one feeling disempowered, helpless or overwhelmed. An instance of trauma might be a singular event, such as a natural disaster or an assault, or it may be prolonged, such as exposure to abuse or war. Within this limited definition, my encounter with the gay-bashers in the park constitutes a singular traumatic event, a one-time-only occurrence with a distinct beginning and end. Confronting gay-bashers might also be part of a prolonged experience of verbal and physical homophobic violence. Yet neither of these categories of trauma seems appropriate in scope because they both assume that the traumatic stressors are “outside of the range of normal human experience.” What is normal? Confronting a potential assailant in the park might be an unusual experience for a heterosexual person; it is not unexpected for a gay man in Kinsmen Park at night. At the risk of perpetuating the victimization of gay men, gay-bashing in the park is a known risk. This is not to say that every gay man is assaulted every time he chooses to go to the park, but only that the threat of assault is ever present. This was true in 1993 and it is true today.
Did somebody not read the memo on accountability?
There is a precious story in the news yesterday about the mayor of Hunstville, a small town nestled in Ontario’s Muskoka cottage country. It seems that Mayor Claude Doughty engaged in lengthy email conversations with his local Member of Parliament Tony Clement, in which they discussed the use of money from a G8 Legacy Fund somewhere in the tune of $50 million. As many of you will recall, Hunstville was the host the G8 Summit in 2010, and the town benefited from this meeting by securing significant cash to pay for renewal projects to help beautify the town and make all the G8 nations feel safe and cozy.
Now, just about everything having to do with the G8 Summit and the subsequent shit storm of G20 that took over Toronto and turned it into a police state, is fundamentally wrong. Money was misspent, police used illegal tactics to search and seize, citizens’ rights were violated, and gobs of taxpayer coin was lavished on fake lakes for media and giant fences. Don’t. Even. Get. Me. Started. At one point, I was told that I would need to obtain a security pass just to get to my office in the morning. My bags were searched three times as I walked down my usual route through campus. There has been plenty written about the ridiculousness of the G8/G20, so this is not the focus of my concern. This time.
But I digress… the interesting thing about this story is that the emails were obtained by an opposition party member through Access to Information, even though they were not exchanged using official email addresses. In fact, Tony Clement and Claude Doughty carried on these conversations about the use of government funds through their personal gmail accounts. One might assume that they communicated using their personal accounts in order to keep their conversations ‘off the record’. Unfortunately for these two, the nature of their discussion was official business and the records can be subpoenaed. This has left Doughty enraged and vowing to never use email for private conversations again. In an article in Maclean’s, he is quoted as saying, “”To me, these emails are conversation … but they’re in a form that’s now reproduceable … I guess we’re all going to go back to telephones.”.
Last time I checked, phone conversations were also considered records and could be subpoenaed.
And really? Seriously? You are surprised that people want to know about how their millions were spent?
Maybe you shouldn’t have personal conversations about really important, highly scrutinized and controversial spending of many millions of dollars ‘off the record’. In fact, I’m fairly sure that the age of accountability is going to bite you in the ass for doing this. Why else would you need to use ‘off the record’ communication if the conversation was, in fact, above board. It seems like only shady/politically uncouth business happens ‘off the record’.
Thoughts?
Mapping Sexual Toronto
Well, well…. more press about the Sex and the City course at UofT. And this time, the article is articulate, well researched, and interesting to read. Check it out at the Toronto Star online here. Reporter David Graham gets it right, avoid condescension, and somehow manages to still make the course sound sexy, which it is! I’ve said it before: Best. TAship. Ever. Oh, and thanks to guest lectuerer Mark Kingwell, I am now totally obsessed with urban exploration again. The flaneur in me has awakened!
1920s Report Cards and the Stories They Tell
Angelina's Report Card
A gorgeous little story appeared on BoingBoing this morning about a man who has tracked down some of the women who attended a NYC girls voactional school in the 1920s. In 1996, Paul Lukas found a treasure trove of their report cards in the garbage and, thankfully, retrieved them. The records are artwork; lovely photographs, hand-written notes and typed details on classic report card paper. Lukas recognized their value, but had no other way to engage with them. He kept them as curios for years, but eventually decided to track down some of the students. He writes about the report cards in an article that originally appears in Slate. Lukas claims that interacting with the records and using them to learn about the lives of young girls in Manhattan in the 1920s was a life-changing experience. See, archives change lives!
From the same newspaper that brings you a daily dose of sexism…
The Ottawa Sun (publisher of the daily SUNshine girl photos) has published an editorial about the Sex in the City course offered by University of Toronto. You can read more about this groudbreaking course at the University College website or below in my previous entries on this blog. The National Post and Calgary Herald have also written on this course, taught as part of the UC One seminars at University College.
My philosophy: Respond to good press graciously, but never to ignorant criticism.
Australia adds third gender to passports
Australians have been given a third choice when describing their gender on passport applications, under new guidelines aimed at removing discrimination. You can read more about the groundbreaking policy change here.
I’m thrilled.
And I’m curious… How will this impact information management and surveillance? OK, I’m a total nerd, but I’m just very interested in how this monumental change in social policy will have trickle down impact on information management. If this were the UK, I would wonder how the new category could become subject to crazy surveillance and what this will do for privacy. Computer databases will have to be amended to include a new category of data. How will other countries handle these passports upon entry?
Again. Thrilled. Just…. curious.
The World of Gay Pulps: A Talk with Matthew Rohweder
Interested in queer popular culture? On Thursday, September 29th, Matthew Rohweder will be giving a talk on gay pulp as part of the ongoing lecture series at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA). Matthew is a PhD student in English Literature at the University of Toronto. He will discuss his recent work and share insights into the CLGA’s Pulp Fiction Collection.
- When: September 29th, 7:30pm – 9:30pm
- Where: Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives at 34 Isabella Street, Toronto
- How: reservations are required as space is limited. Send an email to lectureseries@clga.ca to book your spot!
This event is free, though donations are gratefully accepted.
What would Salt N Pepa think?
In my last post, I gushed about the new Sex in the City course that is being offered for the first time at University College (UofT) this fall and it looks like I’m not the only one to think that it’s a pretty cool idea. Peter Kuitenbrouwer has written a short and sweet article about the course in today’s National Post. The article, which sports a lame-ass title pulled from Salt-N-Pepa’s AIDS-crisis call for safer sex, sensationalizes the fact that we are now able to study sex for credit. That said, it’s also a great step in getting a broader audience to recognize that sex is an aspect of humanity worthy of academic study. So, I will forgive the Kuitenbrouwer for blowing open the awesomeness that is University College and Sexual Diversity Studies.
Best. TAship. Ever.
I’ve decided to abandon my usual assignment with the Faculty of Information and take on a teaching assistantship with University College, home of my collaborative program in Sexual Diversity Studies. Wahoo!
This year, University College launches UC One, a special course that offers first-year students the opportunity to learn about university-based research in the urban Toronto environment. The course will be taught by a team of professors from University College and complemented by guest lecturers. The main goal of the course is to help students understand how their own academic studies will help them engage with the city around them. For most students, this will be their only first-year course taught in a small seminar style, a great way to develop strong critical and writing skills, take those first steps toward intellectual independence and hone their creative imagination.
Students must apply to enroll in the program. In the fall, they attend a presentation, followed by a shared lunch that gives students the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting. After lunch, they have the opportunity to learn in a small discussion-based tutorial of no more than 25 students. In the winter, students take part in one of four seminars based on the interdisciplinary programs hosted by University College (Canadian Studies, Drama, Health Studies or Sexual Diversity Studies). Where was this course in my first year?
I’ve singed up to lead the tutorial section for the Sexual Diversity Studies group. Their seminar will be taught by the excellent Professor Scott Rayter. It starts next week and I’m getting pretty excited. The roster of guest lecturers is pretty fantastic: Mark Kingwell, David Miller, Camilla Gibb, Kristyn Wong Tam…the list goes on. And the readings are quite interesting. Hopefully, this will light a fire under me to get moving on a few urban-based projects that I have in mind for this year. Stay tuned.