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Tag: gay pride

2023 Year in Review: Evolution’s Up and Down

The down time of the pandemic feels so long ago, it’s hard to believe that this was our first full year of operation since 2019. Ten weeks of 2020 followed by months of closure and a few brief attempts at reopening, followed by moths of closure and a few brief attempts at reopening, followed by months of closure. March 2022’s relaunch feels so long ago, and so does that incredible energy that went along with it. COVID changed so much, most significantly the neighborhood where we are.

Anyone who follows us, knows me, or visits the space, knows that we have been hit hard by the current state of downtown. Don’t get me wrong. I still love the heart of the city, love the opportunity to work with some great businesses in the area, but it’s getting really hard, kids. The costs of 2023’s vandalism, break-ins, and robberies has exceeded $10,000, and for a small business still underwater with over $100,000 in covid debt? That makes for a hard year.

Prices are rising everywhere, but we’ve avoided big increases. The economy is hurting, and marginalized communities like queer and trans people are hurting all the more. But that’s meant no extra money to refresh the space, much less no extra money to get us closer to our goal of opening somewhere street-level, with, you know, windows and a kitchen and accessibility. That’s still the plan, but let’s be honest, the only way that’s gonna happen is with your continued love and support.

Both of which we got in 2023, loads!

It was a great year, all the above notwithstanding. We started off big, with Drag Race’s Olivia Lux being absolute pure drag excellence. Olivia was far from our only Drag Race guest. We were joined by Kornbread, Bosco, Suki Doll, Icesis Couture, Willam, Deja Skye, Kaos, Lady Camden, Heidi n Closet, Jackie Cox, Lemon, Elliott with Two Ts, Anetra, Kandy Muse, Jan Sport, Jorgeous, Tammie Brown, Jada Shada Hudson, Kita Mean, Oceane Aqua-Black, Stephanie Prince, Kiki Coe, and yes, Edmonton’s own first Drag Race star – Melinda Verga! Add on Dragula’s Hoso Terra Toma, Call Me Mother’s Justin Abit and Weebee, and Calypso Jete Balmain from HBO’s Legendary, and yes, the talent was THERE.

Let’s be honest. The talent is always here though. Edmonton drag remains diverse and ground-breaking, and we love celebrating it. Like at February’s Stiletto Awards when we crowned Tugs Cuchina and Rexy Resurrection as our new EVOs, and inducted Sucreesha Minorah, Mac U More, and Tanner Steele in the Hall of Legends. Gemma’s Dollhouse continued to celebrate trans and non-binary and 2-spirit drag talent, and Sapphic Panic continued to celebrate our Sapphic drag artists. And we tried to sponsor and support drag talent outside of EVO too, sponsoring shows at Next Fest, Fringe, Drag Me Out to the Ballgame, Taste of Edmonton, K-Days, YEG Christmas Market, and more. And as always, we remained an active supporter of the ISCWR, with their record-breaking 47th reign stepping down in August.

It was the Summer of Pride this year, but truly, we are queer and proud all year long. Still, one of the highlights of 2023 is going to be that Pride Riverboat Party. What an amazing afternoon of sun, sounds, and sick drag! We weren’t sure how we felt about August pride celebrations, but with June being Pride Month, July having queered-up festivals like K-Days and Taste, and now August hosting Pride Fest, plus Pride Cup, it’s a loud and proud community and city and we love being at the heart of it.

Community partnerships remain at the heart of what we do. Not only with the ISCWR, one of Alberta’s longest-running queer groups, but also groups like Curling with Pride, Edmonton Rage, Edmonton Lesbian Event Network, Fellowship of Alberta Bears, RaricaNow, Team Edmonton, Edmonton Pride Centre (especially their new Josh Brown Wellness Room), Chew Project, and all the other community groups that are active out there changing lives for the better. We exist to give them space, voice, and, where we can, financial support.

We are well into our planning for 2024 already – with the Stiletto Awards coming up February Long Weekend, with the tenth anniversary of Alberta’s Drag Superstar contest coming, with the tenth anniversary of our Sunday Revue coming, and of course, another Summer and More of Pride. This year has been a journey, for sure, but the lesson really driven home by the hard times was how much we still love what we do. When we work, we WERK! The magic of queer space is needed more than ever these days, and we are honoured, humbled, and so very happy to be your year-round pride bar.

Happy holidays, from all of us, to you!

2023 Year in Review: Reconnection, Renaissance, and still Really Queer

The year started off in a grand and glorious way, getting a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal from our once and hopefully future premier Rachel Notley. There have certainly been awards and recognitions in the past that I’ve received and appreciated, even as they might make me feel old or trigger imposter syndrome. This was no exception. The other recipients in that room have improved and enriched so many people’s lives; it isn’t always easy to believe that I should be counted among them.

And certainly this year came with many lessons that for every person I’ve helped, there’s been someone I’ve hurt, but this one night, I let myself just believe in myself and be happy.

This year has been… weird. At times, it has moved so very slow; at others, it was lurching forward at breakneck speeds. Looking back, things that happened at the beginning of the year feel like there’s no way they could have been in 2023, they feel so long ago. Welcome to old age, I guess. But, as 2023 reminded me so very many times, old age is a luxury not everyone gets to enjoy.

The body count of 2023 was high. My Opa passed. We lost Deb. We lost Alberta’s first Drag Superstar, Tiara Manila. We back-to-back lost two monarchs with the ISCWR, Emperor 14 Rob and Empress 27 Endora, as well as Brenda Buffet. Gentle giant James Jarvis passed. And just recently I learned Justin died from fucking fentanyl, which means another star needs to be added to my Too Many Too Soon tat. Those of you who know me know how every new death walks me down the memory lane of all those who I’ve lost before, so indeed, 2023 was a year spent on memory lane.

Memory lane wasn’t always sad though. It was a year of random reconnection. From the sudden reappearance of Ross (and the accompanying memory lane about Boots and Jim), to high school reconnects like Jacqui and Katrina, to even further back reconnects like a visit with my kindergarten teacher, it was a year of looking back, in many ways. Those of you who know me know that every year is looking back though; that sensation of “life flashing before your eyes” when you die is one I won’t recognize when it happens – my life is always flashing.

Memory lane is always part of my career path of course. Work with Edmonton Queer History Project and Rainbow Story Hub continued in 2023, with projects and events always there to unearth forgotten memories. Highlights included the summer series of walking tours, the Times.10 photo archive processing with the City of Edmonton Archive, and the digitization project that will help future historians and storytellers have easy access to our collective queer history. We even had a queer history display this year at K-Days.

Buddys to Buddys walking tour with Dan

For the second year in a row, I worked with Explore Edmonton on K-Days, Edmonton’s summer fair and exhibition. It was an opportunity to queer up the midway, as 2022’s programming expanded so exponentially. There were ten days of queer entertainment, featuring so much local talent, both drag and live. What will 2024 bring to the midway? Time will tell.

I was also able to help queer up some of Edmonton’s other festivals. I worked with Winterruption for the second year in a row. We brought drag for the first time ever to Taste of Edmonton, thanks to James Jarvis (RIP). And we just dragged up Fort Edmonton Park with the successful three-night run of SlayBells. 2023 featured the Summer of Pride, but truly, its pride-all-year in Edmonton.

Pride Brunch at the Rec Room
Family Photo at Aiden’s grad dinner

The festivals weren’t my only opportunity to enjoy some great entertainment though. Right after K-Days was Freewill Shakespeare Festival, and there were lots of other shows too, here and in NYC – Anastasia, Pretty Woman, Aladdin, 12th Night, Romeo + Juliet, Music of the Night, Ain’t Too Proud, Importance of Being Earnest, Little Shop of Horrors, Hooves Belonged to the Deer, Hadestown, Lion King, Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, and & Juliet. There’s an alternative timeline in which I’m an actor, as opposed to just being dramatic.

Of course, my main career path remains Evolution, but I think that’s going to get it’s own post. But in keeping with the personal memory lane of this post, that’s something that’s always part of EVO, and never more so than in the last few months, where people who have moved, or just moved on, re-surfaced. It’s always wonderful to see people I haven’t seen in a long time. The water under the bridges is deep, but beautiful.

For a second year in a row, I didn’t write one word on any new book. After two coming out during the pandemic, I’m just … word-less. There’s been too much survival mode and not enough creative-mode, and I’m hoping 2024 sees that shift.

Travel-wise, 2023 was the year of Italy. What a transformative experience that was. Rome. Venice. Florence. Milan. And then of course stopping in Paris on the way home just because. Michaelangelo’s David was so powerful; gay gaze indeed, I suppose. And Venice was pure magic. Add on a quick tail-end of Toronto Pride (aka trip to Steamworks) and a quick in and out of NYC, where “& Juliet” blew me away. Even though my 2024 travel calendar is currently empty, I anticipate that changing soon. After all, life is very short.

David’s bicep vein

I crushed, and was crushed. I soared high, and crashed down. I moved. I appreciated. I grew. I was blind-sided more than once, but I always made my way back out. The navigation is the whole point I guess. Get lost, sure, but learn something as you find your way. And if that’s the point, 2023 was, all in all, a good year.

My people

Edmonton Queer History Links and Resources

I’ve always enjoyed learning about those who came before me, ever since I went to the book launch for Darrin Hagen’s The Edmonton Queen. The last few years, this interest has turned into a vocation, and for those of you who also want to dive into our collective queer history, here are some great places to turn!

One main site is the Edmonton Queer History Project. This includes an online map featuring downtown walking tours, which you can do on your own or in groups (click here for groups dates!) The site also contains links to two podcasts: From Here to Queer and Vriend Versus Alberta. The newest addition to EQHP is a stories map where you can drop pins to memorialize the places that figured in your own queer history.

If you want to tell longer stories, check out the Rainbow Story Hub! This foundation exists to capture history from the experiences of the people who lived it, so that future generations can find comfort, inspiration, and queer joy from those that came before.

The Edmonton City as Museum Project also has loads of articles on our queer history: a five-article series on gay bars, a five-articles series on the Pisces Spa raid, a two-parter on the ISCWR, and more.

There is also an amazing and growing collection of digitized materials accessible through the Internet Archive, thanks to EQHP and their partners who have been working to collect and scan these great resources. With over 70 GB of stuff, your dive can be deep indeed!

You can also check out Tales of the LGBTQ, a podcast whose early focus was on the people who enriched our community.

And of course, if you want to start your journey like I did, check out Darrin’s book, The Edmonton Queen, available on Amazon here among other places.

The Stardust Lounge: A Gay Bar Moment

For most of my gay life, the Sunday Night drag show was a gay bar staple. Whether it was Feather Boa at the Odyssey in Vancouver, where I saw my first ever performances, or the Sunday shows at Boystown or Detours in Calgary, or Edmonton’s Betty Ford Hangover Clinic at The Roost, the weekend ended with drag.

In the spring of 2005, Twiggy and Kitten Kaboodle had been dominating Edmonton drag for years. Every Sunday, the area around the stage would be filled with people screaming for Kitten to do Tina, or for Twiggy to do a signature number like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or These Boots Are Made For Walking (Fun fact, Twiggy, wanting to avoid doing Boots, got rid of her boots entirely, but that just forced the audience to start wearing boots so she could borrow them when they demanded it as an encore). I was among that crowd for the longest time, but that spring, I was managing Buddys, direct competition to The Roost, and Sunday Night was the night I wanted. We already had Monday, Thursday, Friday on lock, but couldn’t crack into the Roost’s Saturday or Sunday. Who could I possibly find though, that could remotely compete against the drag juggernauts of Twiggy and Kitten?

Then I saw her, walking down the street in front of Buddys on her way to work at the nearby Rexall Drugs. Binki. I’d worked with Binki before. She’d played Dorothy in our drag production of the Wizard of Oz, and then the Sandy to my Danny in the ISCWR production of Grease. As she walked by, I yelled out, “Hey Binki! Wanna host a drag show?” She laughed, I laughed, and I thought no more about it.

Until a few weeks later when she showed up at the bar, proposal and co-host in tow. The co-host was Vanity Fair, who I knew, but not well. They were both talented, and of the same drag generation as Kitten. That was good. Buddys was the gay bar of the next generation, and our queens and shows needed to represent that. The show they proposed was called The Stardust Lounge. They pictured it as a glamourous night out, candles on the tables around the stage kind of glamour. I got the approval to try it, bi-weekly alternating with the already existing GoDonna Show, and we aimed for a June launch.

Just a couple weeks before the first show, Binki and Vanity got to host a set at Coronation, which was maybe the first time the city got to see the two of them in action together. And every performance they introduced, they managed to remind people that The Stardust Lounge was coming.

It came, and it was glorious. I mean, maybe not the curtains those first shows, but the shows? So glorious. And the reviews spoke for themselves, as did the Peanut Gallery of loyal fans the show soon gathered. The Stardust Lounge rang the death knell of the Twiggy/Kitten Sundays, because Twiggy and Kitten soon wanted to be guests in Binki and Vanity’s new gig, with group numbers every show and a wonderfully fresh hosting dynamic.

The Stardust Lounge ran at Buddys for six months. Then, my brand new addiction derailed their first show of 2006, and they quit, until I got fired, then they went back. But when negotiations with Buddys failed to meet their needs, they moved the show to The Roost. There, they operated as Flashback Sunday for 2007, The Roost’s last year, and then they and their casts, feeling the burnout, changed the show into a long weekend special event at Boots.

Soon though, the show suffered a schism. One spotlight was maybe not big enough for two stars like Binki and Vanity. The show had catapulted them to the top echeleon of Edmonton drag, leading Pride Parades, hosting the main stage at our festivals, but they splintered. Binki and some of her girls relocated to Play, as the Playgirls (which became the EVOgirls and then Les Girls); Vanity stayed on at Boots with a new group of girls, starting shows called the Queen of Hearts Cabaret (which eventually led to this becoming an ISCWR event) featuring the Pleasure Dolls. They reunited occasionally though, some gigs at Junction, and then eventually, a stupendous ten-year reunion tour in 2005 at EVO. But it was never the same.

The success of the show was all them, I know that. I was merely fan and historian and stalker, but when I look back, I can’t help but think that without me yelling out at Binki that spring day, this sequin-clad chapter of Edmonton drag may never have happened. To this day, they’re two of the most talented entertainers, hosts, and artists I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

#FBF – The Start of EVO: A Gay Bar Moment

When the Junction closed in September of 2012, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. The morning after the Grand Finale, I went on a little road trip – just me and my camera. That first year of sobriety had given me so much freedom, and nothing demonstrated it like the open road. Sobriety had also given me the gift of time to figure out the next step – time, and money. But neither were unlimited.

Meanwhile, south of the border, the economy was crashing and the government response seemed to be an unwillingness to renew work visas, even for those who had lived and ran businesses there for years. My uncles were getting deported (well, by this time, they were living there illegally actually). Did I want to move to Calgary with them, they asked. We could open up a business together. They, you see, also would eventually run out of time and money.

And so I made the call to leave behind the friends I’d made and life I’d built, and take a chance on something new. On a snowy day in February 2013, my loser drove me and all my worldly possessions through a snowstorm to Calgary; it certainly wasn’t our first snowstorm together, but in a lot of ways, it was our last.

You see, Evolution Wonderlounge was very close to being a Calgary bar. We certainly looked around. And more than looked! We found some great spaces, even put in a couple offers, but none of them ever actually happened. While we explored our options, I made some trips back to Edmonton, to visit those people I’d just so recently and dramatically said goodbye forever to. And on one of those trips, we learned that the space that had briefly been the gay bar Play was for sale.

I’d never been a Playboy, but I liked the space, and we bought into the dream of the Edmonton Ice District, and what it would do for downtown. (Narrator: it wouldn’t do much for downtown, that’s for sure!) Edmonton at the time had Buddys and Woodys for gay bars, so there was room for another, we thought, and certainly, we felt we could carve out a corner for ourselves. And so we signed a lease, even as a new gay dance club in UpStares opened.

If you’ve seen the bar, you wouldn’t have recognized it then, with its wood pillars, carpet everywhere, cockroach infestation good times. The bar had one working lightbulb when we took over, and it was so sketchy that delivery drivers and cops didn’t even like setting foot inside. Another basement bar, some drag queens said? At least make it white and bright. And white and bright it was! Then again, everything is bright and shiny when it’s new, isn’t it?

Very little about our original plan for the space stayed. The seven-days-a-week lounge, with after-work happy-hour idea was a fantasy that never stood a chance. But what hasn’t changed in the nearly ten years since we opened is our desire to be something that’s not just a bar. It was a family business from day one, and that hasn’t changed; that family has simply expanded to include so many amazing members of this community who I have worked and partied with for so long. With EVO’s ten year anniversary coming up, it really isn’t too soon to start looking back at the moments and people who have made us what we are.

Stay tuned. It’s coming.

My Pride Timeline

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​My first Pride festival was 1997. Was it Lethbridge’s first? I don’t remember one in 1996, and I certainly would have gone. Lethbridge in 1997 was a very different place than it is now, with a giant Pride Fest happening at a major mainstream downtown club. Then, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Lethbridge and Area (GALA/LA) threw monthly events at the Croatian Hall, outside of town, and the ’97 Pride event was even further into the country. There were some queens down from Calgary (likely ISCCA, not that I knew what that was then) for a show at a little gay BBQ. Even the prospect of a slip n slide wasn’t enough to keep me there, not when my friend Dave suggested ditching for a night in Calgary, where I could slip and slide into some hot boy’s bed. 

My first (and last, come to think of it) Calgary pride saw a very hungover me ending up actually walking in the parade, with Calgary’s queer youth group at the time, I-dentity. The fact that impromptu attendance at my first parade involved me being in it was par for the course of who and how I was then: gay gay gay gay gay and you better know it (as opposed to now, when it’s gay gay gay gay gay, but let me nap). And yes, that parade was empowering AF, but my clearest memory of my first Pride was the vodka-soaked kisses of Michael with the ice-blue eyes. 

My first Edmonton pride was 1999, I guess? I wasn’t really involved in the community yet; I’d only been back from Lethbridge a couple months. I didn’t know then how big a role Edmonton Pride would play in my life. By 2000, I was Village People’ing and crashed the Roost float, and by 2001, I was reigning as Prince for Reign 25 with the ISCWR and was actually invited to be on a float legitimately. 2001 saw a shift in the Pride festival into a format it would keep for two decades, with the parade leading into a beer garden, entertainment stage, and resource fair. 

In 2002, I joined the Pride board (then called EPWS – Edmonton Pride Week Society) as Secretary. Things were going along great with plans for Pride 2003 (The Flame Within) until blatant transphobia derailed the board. In the fall-out, one of the board members who had been tasked with parade organizing went around  and cancelled all those plans before quitting. I was left the only member of the Executive, and it fell on me to cancel those cancellations, while emergency board recruits like Mickey and Erin Wilson salvaged the society. Yes, people had tried to extinguish the flame, but it burned brighter than ever that year. 

It’s weird, but looking back, becoming involved with the community when I did, I saw less problems facing Pride from external enemies and more problems from within the community. The bigger Pride got, the more internal politics and ego it had to contend with.

2004’s Pride was particularly memorable for me. In 2003, Michael Brown and myself started a gay monthly magazine called Fresh (with a lot of financial help from our respective partners). While I could easily go off on a tangent here and talk about how here again internal community politics were the biggest hurdles, for the purposes of this piece, what is important is that Fresh Magazine was recognized at the 2004 Pride Awards at City Hall. 

2004’s Pride was particularly memorable for me. In 2003, Michael Brown and myself started a gay monthly magazine called Fresh (with a lot of financial help from our respective partners). While I could easily go off on a tangent here and talk about how here again internal community politics were the biggest hurdles, for the purposes of this piece, what is important is that Fresh Magazine was recognized at the 2004 Pride Awards at City Hall. 

The parade shifted course again in 2005. At my first Edmonton Pride, it had gone down 100 Ave, then later, westbound on Jasper to Oliver Park, but in 2005, we were heading EAST on Jasper and ending in Churchill Square. I cannot stress enough how important a victory this was. This represented an acceptance of Pride as part of the city in a way that nothing else had. We were in the heart of the city, and here to stay – and it truly felt like mission accomplished. I was managing Buddys in 2005; Buddys etc had always had some of the most amazing floats in the parade, and I was excited to be part of that. This was the pinnacle to date of my professional fulfillment, and I still love that summer 2005 Buddys/Woodys team with all my heart. That being said, it’s possible that year was the coldest Edmonton Pride I’ve ever experienced. Although Binki and Vanity (in their Pride hosting debut) tried to keep everyone entertained, the temperature was dropping as fast as the rain, and by the end of the show, Churchill was pretty deserted. All that remained was our Buddys/Woodys team, because cold beer keeps wet gays warm!

Pride at Churchill continued to grow, but life for me was increasingly less proud. By 2006, I was a full-fledged cocaine user, and the snowfall definitely took priority over the rainbow. Which isn’t to say I didn’t participate still. Village People reunited for the 2007 mainstage (don’t ask me how, considering I was essentially homeless that Pride). And then came 2008, the first time I went to Pride still up from the night before. But the crowds continued to grow, and not just because I was seeing double.

Village People reunited one more time for the Pride mainstage, in 2009. We’d perform together a bit more after that, but never anywhere so big. 

2011 was my first sober pride. It was a different scene then, compared to my first Edmonton pride. The Roost was long gone, and Boots was freshly closed. New kids on the block like Play, Flash, and Pure had dominated the 2010 line-up, but in 2011, my focus was just on our programming at Junction. I didn’t really have much interest in the parade anymore, at least not as a participant. It was time to pay off years of cocaine debt, and start shaping up professionally. The theme for 2011 was Stand UP, and for the first time in a long time, I was standing up, proud and sober. 

By 2013, we knew EVO was in the works. Though I was living in Calgary at the time, I was up for Edmonton Pride to visit friends (Calgary pride had long since relocated to September long weekend to avoid overlapping with us). Little did I know then that I wouldn’t go back to Calgary. By the end of Edmonton Pride 2013, we had signed a lease and EVO, originally planned for Calgary, was about to be.

Evolution’s first Pride was 2014. We’d selected a Circus theme, because I had seen first hand how internal themes could be great for venue programming and floats. That year was the last year Edmonton Pride was at Churchill, with the parade going right down 102 ave by the bar. We were the new kid on the block now, and we were intent on making our mark. We did, for sure, and maybe we felt we made enough of a mark that that was the one and only Pride Parade we participated in. That was likely more to do with the official festivities relocating to the original home on Whyte. Whyte Pride wasn’t nearly as convenient for us, downtown, so we turned our focus inwards. 

There were definitely some conflicts with the Edmonton Pride Festival Society that dampened my enthusiasm for festivities, but like any non-profit, boards change, so every year really was a fresh start. While we were professionally on a different page, I still respected the work, and was honoured to help judge the parade floats one year.  Still, we missed downtown programming, and we missed programming that helped the little non-profits we worked with all year. That’s why, in 2017, we started the 103 St Community Street Festival. I’m grateful for the team at EVO that picked up my slack while I navigated the hoops and hurdles that went along with that first year, and loved seeing its huge success only grow in 2018.

In the spring of 2019, the Edmonton Pride Festival Society announced the cancellation of their events. Media picked up on this as a cancellation of Pride entirely, and I feel I spent weeks trying to correct that narrative. EPFS events were not the whole of Pride. We doubled the size of our Community Festival that year, and helped get a Pride Guide out, and so many other groups kept their programming going. Never let anyone tell you that Edmonton Pride 2019 was cancelled, because it wasn’t. 

In the summer of 2019, we started the plans to relocate our Community Street Festival from 103 St to Churchill Square. With the dissolution of EPFS, it was time to go back to the heart of the city, and LRT construction on 102 Ave was forcing us off the street anyway. And then along came COVID, just as the balls were getting rolling.  Virtual programming was certainly a different way to spend Pride, but at least there was something, to keep Edmonton Pride going, uninterrupted, during a pandemic.

Now here we are, two weeks away from Pride Month 2022. This year marks forty years since 1982’s Pride Through Unity, where multiple groups and businesses came together to put on Edmonton’s first pride festival weekend, in response to the 1981 raid on the Pisces Spa. (Yes, even Edmonton’s Pride can tie its origins to protest against police action).  New groups like Capital Pride and Edmonton Pride Association have formed to fill the void left by EPFS, and part of this involves that return to Churchill Square we had been working on in 2020.  2019’s events had left me pretty emotionally broken, and all I wanted was to see other groups pick up the baton and run with it; that’s now happening, and now my challenge is just not letting my own pride stand in the way of enjoying the bigger Pride. Over forty events are being planned for this June, and myself and Evolution are helping enhance and elevate as many of those events as we can. 

But in 2022, what makes me proudest is my new position with Explore Edmonton, bringing an increased LGBTQ2 presence to K-days this summer. My Pride journey has taken me from a little gay boy desperate to be included, to someone at the heart of things, trying his best to include and involve everyone he can. And damn – that is something to take pride in.

My History in Gay Bars, Part One

The first gay bar I went to was The Roost. I was only freshly out, visiting Edmonton from Lethbridge where I was going to University. I don’t remember much about that first visit. Had I known then how pivotal a role gay bars would play in my life, chances are I’d’ve paid more attention. As it was though, I was caught up in the other firsts of that night – the first time I’d met people off the Internet, the first threesome. The Roost, sandwiched in between those two things, barely made the radar.

Lethbridge had nothing close to a gay bar. The community there, small as it was, would take over local coffee shops on Thursday nights, after which a group of us would head to a straight club to drink and dance. Once a month, the gay organization would hang up some streamers and balloons in a community hall on the outskirts of town and we would all flock out there. These couldn’t compare to an actual gay bar of course. For one of those, we had to head north to Calgary, to Boystown or Detour, or further north, to Edmonton, to The Roost. (Less often were the weekends we would go to Vancouver, where we could do a circuit of bars like Odyssey, Celebrities, Numbers, Denman Station, although really, for a nineteen-year-old boy from smalltown Alberta, all of Davie Street seemed like a gay bar.)

I had been to a “gay place” before The Roost. When I was in grade eleven, my friend V had left her home in Sherwood Park and was living in youth emergency housing. There, she’d met some gay folk, and she was going to show me how okay she was with my recent coming out by introducing me to them. I bused into Edmonton to meet her at a coffee shop called Boyztown (not to be confused with the Calgary dance club of the same name; at the time, I had no idea any other spaces existed. This was 1994. There wasn’t an Internet for me to research things on). Boyztown Café, on the main floor of a building that would later have popular gay pub on the upper level, across the street from where another gay bar would later be, wasn’t everything I hoped. Or, I guess, the space was fine but the people V introduced me to weren’t what I’d hoped. I was seventeen. I wanted her to be introducing me to a gay boy who was cute, who thought I was cute, and we’d date and we’d fall in love. Instead, I met a motley assortment of people who I’m sure were all very nice but none of whom were attractive to me. I wonder what might have happened if I’d met someone else that night, or if I’d gone back to try again. Instead, I continued to fall in love with the straight boys who might be gay, as I came out more and more, then went back in, then came back out to stay.

By that point, me and my homophobic, misogynist, racist roommate with the beautiful body had dial-up Internet, which I could use to access the chat forum, #mIRC. There, I found the #gayalberta room, where I, as ‘oasis’ in honour of their song Wonderwall, met gay people not part of the twenty or so I saw weekly at gay coffee. On my next trip home to Edmonton, I made plans to meet one. I met up with C at Boyztown, then we picked up his boyfriend E and went to a movie. The movie was Fear with Marky Mark, who was at the height of his Calvin Klein fame. After that, C and E asked if I wanted to stop by The Roost before heading back to their place.

Like I said, I don’t remember much of anything about our short time at the Roost. It was a Tuesday. The crowd wasn’t huge, but the male stripper they had drew in a crowd at midnight.
The Friday after, I was out with my… IDK, straight ex boyfriend and his girlfriend. We went to Rebar, an alternative club on Whyte, but then I persuaded them to check out The Roost. Already, straight space, even as queer-friendly a straight space as Rebar, didn’t feel like home to me. I had finally found where my people are, and it was gay bars.

A few weeks later, I took advantage of a break in summer session to go back up to Edmonton, for more of the same: meeting new people off mIRC at Boyztown and then heading to The Roost, including one night in drag just for kicks.


That would become the pattern during school breaks, whether it was Thanksgiving or Reading Week, or whatever. I was navigating all the normal chaos of a kid coming out, but it all melted away in the gay bar. The dance floor was sacrosanct. Please check your boyfriend drama at the door. It helped that I didn’t live in Edmonton, for sure. I could fly into town, party and play (not in the PnP sense of the words), then go back home, leaving whatever fall out happened to get cleaned up by the locals before my next visit.

I would stay with my parents during these trips, although the bar nights usually involved “sleepovers at friends”, which was a more parental-friendly way of saying I was hooking up. My mom was doing her best to embrace the gay thing but had a rule against me bringing anyone home. We also lived out of town so bringing a guy the forty minutes back home wasn’t something I was super excited to do anyway.

It did happen once. Usually I was meeting locals but one June trip up, I met a boy who was also visiting, from Victoria and gods he was beautiful. Still, there was just nowhere to go. However, when I saw him there the next night as well, I knew this had to happen and brought him home, sneaking him downstairs. This wasn’t the first boy I’d had sleepover, but straight ex boyfriends don’t count (even though they may have the same name).
Years later, that beautiful one-night-stand would briefly date my ex before taking his own life.

Between that first time at The Roost in June of ’96 and the time I finished my degree in December of ’99, I really did fall in love, not with a person but with Edmonton in general and The Roost in particular. Jaunts to Calgary and the bars then always seemed to result in less friendships and more drama, and Vancouver, while over the rainbow wonderful, didn’t have the home base advantage. When I finished my degree and needed to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, the answer was simple: go home and be professionally gay.


At that point, I already had a few years of professional gayness in Lethbridge, volunteering with the gay group there. I figured that, more than the degree I’d just spent four years and forty thousand dollars to get, would be enough to get my foot in the door at a place like The Roost.
I moved home from Lethbridge in March of 1999 and my life, already really fucking gay, got gayer.