Death-dealing heat events and hate events
It matters that you name it and count it in order to change it
The summer of 1963 was my first Ontario summer and, man (as we used to exclaim), was it hot! Although I have a remarkably good memory, the details of that record-setting heat wave escape me. (The details of some of my summers in the 1970s are a bit sketchy too, but for a different reason.)
That 55-year old record has now been broken by the “extreme heat event” we have been experiencing since July 1. Despite rebranding our very hot days to sound like a not-tobe-missed concert or sale, this “event” has been death-dealing.
In Montreal, 12 deaths and counting have been attributed to this event. How many in Hamilton? Zero. If you don’t count it, it doesn’t exist. I’d rather measure summer heat by Fahrenheit than Celsius and by births rather than deaths, but if it will save lives, let’s get counting.
In 2002, Montreal became an early adopter, as usual, of a heat-response plan, making it one of the first North American cities to require front-line health providers to report heat-related deaths. In 2010, they had the tragic situation in which to test and finetune their system when a heat wave (how many events make a wave?), caused more than 100 deaths that summer. Now they have hundreds of first responders and volunteers knocking on apartment doors of the most vulnerable folks in the city to help them survive.
Just before the hottest July started, one of the queerest Junes ended. Just to be straight, by “queer,” I mean not straight. I also mean it in all the ways the Oxford dictionary defines it: strange and odd; to ruin or spoil; does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality and gender, especially heterosexual norms.
First of all, it was queer (strange or odd) to me that so many people I spoke to during the recent Ontario election said homophobia didn’t exist anymore and certainly wouldn’t have any influence on the way people voted. Yet, I saw multitudinous, “straight-up,” pejorative references on social media about the sexual orientation and gender of this province’s 25th premier, including some toward me and whether I was her lover or her brother.
If homophobia doesn’t exist, why have so many pride events — Dunnville, Barrie and Hamilton to name just a few — been queered (spoiled or ruined) by evangelists and their message of hate? I was the guest speaker at Haldimand-Norfolk Pride in Dunnville this year. Protesters took up the space in front of the stage as I finished my remarks to shouts of “Happy Pride,” that quickly turned to shouts of “shame” in response to the rants and taunts from the stranger’s megaphone about the “evils of homosexuality” and our “sick and perverted lifestyles.” The speech was filled with improperly translated biblical verses meant to cause us alarm at our impending fate of hell.
When the police officers arrived, I asked why the protesters couldn’t be arrested for spewing hatred. He told us what was being yelled didn’t count as a hate crime because they weren’t threatening our lives. While they did shout that we should take our own lives since we’re all so sick and demented, they didn’t say they’d physically help us do the deed, a threat required for hate speech. Of course, the sad truth is, LGBTQ2S+ youth already die by suicide three to eight times more often than non-queer and non-trans youth.
I spoke to a group of three young teenaged girls who identified singularly as lesbian, pansexual, and “I don’t know yet.” (And you wonder why queer is such an excellent umbrella term for “not straight”?) They were at their first Pride event with two of the moms. The third mom couldn’t be told the truth about where her daughter was that day because she disapproved. The moms looked more frightened than the kids as the protesters continued to yell in the background. They wondered aloud about their daughter’s futures in this world where “homophobia is so clearly in your face,” as one said.
Whether it’s a death-dealing heat event or hate event, it matters that you name it and count it in order to change it.