DESTINATION: TORONTO
AS TORONTO PREPARES TO HOST WORLDPRIDE 2014, CAMERON MCCOOL SWINGS INTO TOWN FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW. A CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH HIS FAVOURITE PORN STAR AND SOME TWERKING TWINKS LATER AND, HE REPORTS, CANADA’S BIGGEST CITY IS MORE THAN READY TO WELCOME THE WORLD.
“Okay, the story is this: You’ve been a really naughty boy. You’re in trouble. And now it’s time for you to be punished.”
I take one look at porn star Colby Keller and it’s clear that he means business. In one hand he’s holding a giant wooden paddle. With the other, he gestures for me to lean over a table and “hold on tight.”
“I don’t know about this…” I tell Colby, looking over to my friend for support.
“Just do it!” says Dan, my friend who is nowhere near the porn star’s paddle of pain.
In anticipation of Toronto hosting WorldPride 2014, Dan, myself and a bunch of other journalists from around the world have been invited to experience the city’s 2013 Pride festival. As delighted as I am to be meeting my favourite flesh-industry star, I’m pretty sure that “arse whipping” was not in the Pride brochure. Tentatively, I assume the position. Colby raises his arm to strike and, just like a near death experience, the trip to Toronto flashes before my eyes…
If you squint while you’re in Toronto you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in Sydney. Both cities are modern and clean. Both are located on a gorgeous body of water (although Lake Toronto is so vast it could be mistaken for an ocean). And both have chosen to erect a phallic tower in their central business district.
As much as I enjoy Toronto’s aesthetic beauty, it’s the locals – not the location – I find most fascinating. During the first couple of hours I spend exploring the city, I see a businesswoman chase down a homeless man to offer him some spare change. In an adult bookstore, I wait as the cashier helps an elderly man purchase gay porn before kindly assisting the gentleman – and his walking frame – out the door. And all across Toronto in supermarkets, in bars, and even on public transport, countless locals, straight and gay, go out of their way to ask why I’m here. All of them wish me a happy Pride.
I’m forced to conclude that the people of Toronto aren’t just nice – they’re really, really, really nice. Having lived most of my life in >>
>> impersonal metropolises, I ain’t no Blanch DuBois; I rarely depend on the kindness of strangers and these friendly locals are starting to creep me out. The second I bump into Ryan, an ex-Sydney-sider who now lives in Toronto, I have to ask, “Alright, what’s up with the locals? How come they’re being so nice?”
“Oh, yeah,” he laughs with a knowing look. “Canadians are just like that.”
According to Ryan, as well as making Toronto “an awesome place to live” this cultural tendency to be friendly affects the city’s Pride festival.
“Sydney has a very cliquey gay scene, so I always felt more comfortable going to Mardi Gras with my own group of friends,” he says. “But in Toronto, the city has such an open, welcoming atmosphere that you could easily come to Pride by yourself and have a great time. You’ll quickly meet strangers who’ll adopt you and invite you to parties.”
Over in the gay village I begin to understand why local broadsheet The Globe And Mail declared Toronto Pride “a Canadian institution”. It looks like someone dropped a rainbow bomb on the gaybourhood. Rainbow flags, rainbow stickers and rainbow advertisements adorn every static surface. There are even rainbows permanently etched on all of the district’s street signs, which help denote the village boundaries. From the gayest to the straightest of venues, everything around here is showing its pride for Pride.
That same night, some of the other foreign journalists and I head to Church Street, the city’s official gay strip. It’s mid-week during Toronto’s 10-day Pride festival. The clubs are heaving and long entry queues clog the street. We start the night at Woody’s. Known as the city’s most popular gay hangout, Woody’s was also the gay bar featured in Queer As Folk making it a mandatory pit stop. Inside it’s pretty tame until two drag queens take to the stage and lip sync to Absolutely Fabulous. Dressed as Patsy and Edina, one queen guzzles a bottle of champagne while the other fakesnorts a gigantic bag of cocaine. All this and it’s only 8pm.
Back out on Church Street we discover there’s a venue to satisfy every whim, fetish and fancy. Forced to choose between strip clubs and saunas, twink bars, bear bars, leather joints and nightclubs, our group splits up to explore it all. Some hit the bath houses (“I found a mixed-gender sauna!” someone reports at breakfast the next day), while others visit Flash, a gay strip joint. I head to Church On Church with Frank, a writer from Austria. According to Blair, another friendly local we meet on the street, tonight Church On Church is hosting College Night, which means “cheap drinks and drunk twinks!”
Inside the venue everyone is twerking their butts off. I take a moment to silently thank
Miley Cyrus for the sea of gyrating booties, while Frank dives straight onto the dance floor. Within minutes a hot young thing takes it upon himself to twerk and grind on Frank’s crotch, making his night. “That guy twerked me!” he kept saying the next day with a huge grin on his face.
Church Street’s vast collection of clubs and gay bars are merely a warm up to Toronto Pride. There are so many other parties and events to attend during the 10-day festival that the programming leaves most of us feeling overwhelmed. “There’s so much to do that I don’t know what to do!” says Frank, poring over the Pride guides (there are three). As far as problems go it’s a good one to have. But to those attending WorldPride 2014 I say, pace yourself. From low-key bar nights to dance-’tildawn parties, drag shows, leather parties and bear parties, the choices are endless.
For those who prefer arts and culture, there’s a range of musicals and theatre shows, comedy events and concerts. As if the night time schedule wasn’t rigorous enough, Toronto Pride also includes daytime activities such as tantric workshops, yoga classes, sporting events (soccer, sailing, a roller derby clam slam), a Queer Qraft and Zine-Making Fair, and Shady Tea – an afternoon of cocktails with drag queens.
There’s a lot of ground to cover during the festival. The best plan of attack is to get organised early and book event tickets in advance. That way you can make the most of the activities you want to see and have time for side trips to some of the region’s iconic landmarks.
We spend one of our days at Niagra Falls, which is an easy three-hour drive from Toronto. Niagra Falls is actually the collective name for Horseshoe Falls (the biggest and most beautiful), the American Falls (the middle child) and Bridal Veil Falls (the smallest). The site straddles the border between Canada and the USA so you need to go through customs to check out the views from the American side.
If you’re strapped for time or you can’t be bothered taking out a US visa waiver, don’t worry. Whoever drew the border must’ve been Canadian because Horseshoe Falls is the iconic Niagra Falls you tend to see on postcards. You can also take an up-close-andpersonal boat ride to the base of the two major falls from the Canadian side.
A visit to any of the islands that lie just offshore from Toronto’s city centre makes for another brilliant excursion. We time our trip to Olympic Island to coincide with Aqua, one of the major daytime Pride parties. On the way there I notice the one-and-only drawback of CFS (Canadian Friendliness Syndrome). Canadian gays are so polite that when it comes to displays of public nudity they are far more reserved than their Australian and American counterparts. Case in point: it’s a sunny day and hundreds of gays are crammed onto a ferry en route to a party. And yet, everyone on the ferry is fully clothed.
“No one has their shirt off,” I mention to Dan as we disembark.
An American partygoer overhears and butts in: “Oh I know! If we were in Detroit everyone would be near-naked right now.”
We shake our heads in disappointment. Canadian men are a handsome bunch and the lack of skin is a let down. Thankfully, once inside the party, quite a few shirts come off.
Guessing that there must be some unspoken rule about shirtlessness I ask Matt, a local, to enlighten me.
There’s a venue to satisfy every whim, fetish and fancy – strip clubs, saunas, bear bars, leather joints and nightclubs. I head to Church On Church for College Night – cheap drinks and drunk twinks!
“It depends on the party but we rarely take our shirts off in just any old club. That’s more of a foreigner thing… It has to be a specific type of nightclub or dance party,” he says.
Uh-huh. I let the issue drop, choosing to spend the rest of the afternoon taking in the beautiful views: Toronto city’s stunning skyline to my left and plenty of shirtless Canadians to my right.
Friday through Sunday, Toronto’s Pride festival kicks into overdrive. Its closing weekend alone annually draws over 1.2 million attendees to the gaybourhood. That’s the equivalent of roughly 5 per cent of Australia’s total population coming together to celebrate queer culture.
Twenty-six blocks across the gay village are closed to traffic to make way for the Pride Streetfair. Also dispersed throughout the gaybourhood are eight free-to-attend outdoor stages that feature the likes of Lady Bunny, Jinkx Monsoon, En Vogue and an abundance of home-grown Canadian talent. From early morning to late at night, community stalls, parties and crowds jam the streets. Colourful attendees wear everything from arse-less chaps to superhero outfits, fairy wings, feathered getups, sporting gear and the kookiest of homemade costumes. At one point a transgender performance artist walks through the crowd. Covered in yellow body paint and wearing nothing but a mask, her breasts and a sizeable penis are on display for all to see. Some onlookers stop to take photos while others don’t bat an eyelid.
It’s a visual feast and there’s a lot to appreciate but for my friend and local Torontonian Drew, the best part about Toronto Pride is the heterosexuals. “I love seeing all the straight people who come to Pride,” he tells me. “There are always families here who come to join the fun and have a good time.”
He’s right. Dotted among the crowd are plenty of straight couples and families with young children. Sure none of them wearing arse-less chaps, but all of them have made the effort to come and support Pride. Their presence touches my heart.
Over the course of the closing weekend, not one – but three – Pride parades take place.
“Toronto Pride is one if the few in the world that has three separate marches. The Trans March, the Dyke March and the main Pride Parade on Sunday,” explains Liz Devine, community ambassador and President of Rainbow Travel.
“Ten or 15 years ago, women wanted more visibility. They felt that the political issues of women were diluted and the Dkye March was created to support a higher level of visibility for women’s rights during the Pride celebration.”
The Trans March was created for the same reason, and Liz says that today the Trans March and the Dyke March are much more politically focused. “They’re marches with very little decoration, whereas the main parade is very festive and includes everyone.”
When I wake up on parade day, my heart sinks. The sky is full of ominous clouds that threaten rain. “Don’t worry about that,” says our guide, Michelle, over breakfast. “It rarely ever rains on the parade. There have been a few times where it’s been raining in the morning and then by the time the parade starts it’s sunny. It’s the perfect rainbow moment.”
Michelle is a Media Relations Manager from Tourism Toronto so I’m ready to chalk her words up as PR speak until, at 11am, the clouds part and disappear – just in time for the parade. “It’s a miracle!” I proclaim, but >>
>> the locals just shrug and confirm that last minute sunshine is commonplace on the day of the parade. I find a front row seat and settle in to watch it all unfold.
Doctors, lawyers, army, navy, teachers, vets, drag queens, trans groups, religious groups, political groups and, of course, Mounties all march past. Groups from across Canada are joined by groups from around the world. A lesbian constable walks hand-in-hand with her wife, followed by a hot daddy in the tightest butt-hugging police pants I’ve ever seen, all of them getting a huge cheer from the crowd. So many other police groups march past that I lose count.
The Canadian Nudists appear in their birthday suits, most shaking their willies to the delight of the crowd. A rep from Pride Toronto explains that while public nudity usually wouldn’t be allowed, the men fought for the right to go naked and won. As long as they’re in the parade their nudity is technically legal.
The Polyamorous group arrives with some of the funniest slogans in the entire parade – “Make all the love!” and “Don’t cheat, try poly!”’ They’re followed directly by the Asexual float which has a banner that says, “Cake?”
But my favourite is the brave man who proudly wears a T-shirt proclaiming, “I love foreskin”. I ask why he’s marching solo. Apparently foreskin isn’t really a thing in Canada. Good to know…
When I’m not watching the parade, my eyes are glued to the onlookers around me. There’s easily as much diversity in the crowd as there is in the parade itself. Every ethnicity, religion, sexual preference and gender seems represented – all here to lend their support and celebrate GLBT culture. This is how it should be, I think to myself, whether it’s parade day or any other day of the year. And, in Toronto it seems, this is how it is.
WorldPride 2014 will differ from Toronto’s regular Pride festival. Organisers estimate that the event will attract well over two million attendees. Along with a packed party schedule, there’ll be opening and closing ceremonies, and events will take place right across the city rather than being confined to the gay village. WorldPride will also feature a Human Rights Conference with international speakers. With homophobic atrocities occurring in Jamaica, Russia and parts of Africa this year, such an event couldn’t come at a better time. That doesn’t mean WorldPride will be all politics and no party.
“What we’ve done here is what communities around the world do – celebrate ourselves despite any sort of oppression or repression or threat,” says Kevin Beaulieu, Executive Director of WorldPride. “In Toronto we’ve always made change by celebrating who we are. It’s an enjoyable thing, but it also makes political change over time because it creates visibility and acceptance.”
I’m praying for a Cher-Gaga-Madonna closing act but, irrespective, of who performs at the party, one thing’s already certain: WorldPride 2014 will be a global queer celebration of epic proportions. The way Torontonians welcome outsiders, embrace diversity and champion equality is unique. I’m convinced there’ll never be a better time for gay people to visit than during WorldPride. If you want to know how good it feels to be in a city where the community at large accepts and celebrates its GLBT peers, go to WorldPride. If you want to visit a city when it’s teeming with sexy gay men from around the world, go to WorldPride. If you want to attend an international celebration at a time when GLBT people in less-accepting cultures need the rest of us to stand together in unity, go to WorldPride.
I left Toronto with a bruised butt cheek and memories I will cherish forever. Not even the threat of another Colby Keller spanking could stop me returning for the once-in-a-lifetime celebration that will be WorldPride 2014.