Driving back and forth along Wellesley Street in Toronto, Iris looks for a sign that she belongs. It’s late at night and raining, and she’s been blown off by a date. The woman she met on the dating website Plenty of Fish lives in Niagara Falls, and Iris rented a car for the weekend to […] More »

In a ballroom in Toronto’s LGBTQ Village, long-time drag queen Fay Slift smiles down at a young child dressed just like her. Both wear ice-blue wigs, bright patterned dresses, and long pink evening gloves. Around Fay’s look-alike sit more children, listening as she and Fluffy Soufflé, dressed in a navy muumuu and bracelets made out […] More »

I’ve always seen myself as a mother. As a child, I had dolls that I fed and bathed. I was one of the oldest of a dozen cousins, and often, there was a baby for me to hold and play with. I read parenting guides and magazines cover to cover—not required reading for a kid, […] More »

I: Cassandra Do On August 25, 2003, a transgender woman named Cassandra Do was found dead in her apartment on Gloucester Street in Toronto’s LGBTQ Village. I don’t know much about Cassandra aside from some essential facts: She was 32, she did sex work, she was once in nursing school, she was Vietnamese. In one of […] More »

In honour of Pride Month, we’ve compiled a brief list of LGBTQ artists from across the country who are changing Canada’s arts landscape. Know someone who should be on the list? Tweet us @thismagazine! DAYNA DANGER is a queer, Two-Spirit, Métis/Saulteaux/Polish visual artist based in Montreal. Danger’s medium shifts to capture her ideas, whether that […] More »

On stage, a group of classical musicians dressed in formal evening wear hold their string, brass, and woodwind instruments. Making their final preparations before playing, they check their tuning, adjust their seats, and arrange sheet music on the stands in front of them. A pianist sits to one side, and a drummer near the back. […] More »

Former politician Cheri DiNovo was raised an agnostic atheist and, from an early age, thought religion was silly. “I didn’t understand why people were religious,” she says. “I always wanted to have that conversation, but was embarrassed to ask because I saw that some of the Christians I knew were very smart people who did […] More »

As a queer young woman fresh out of university entering the workforce, Jeanette Stock had several challenges to navigate. “The biggest barriers were my own about me being queer. I had never been schooled in workplace 101 on being queer,” says Stock. Challenges included coming out at work and getting comfortable with speaking about her […] More »

“Hey hey, ho ho, corporate Pride has got to go!” “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re fabulous, don’t fuck with us!” The chants pierced the hot night air of June 24, 2013, accompanied by tambourines and drums—including a makeshift drum, made from a red frying pan with a wooden spoon for a drumstick. A crowd of […] More »

  On February 4, members of Toronto’s LGBTQ communities gathered at the Metropolitan Community Church, in the city’s LGBTQ Village, in search of solace and comfort. Just a month prior, police made public their arrest of Bruce McArthur, the 66-year-old alleged serial killer who has been charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. The news came […] More »

Like the protagonist in his book, The Clothesline Swing, Ahmad Danny Ramadan is a hakawati, a storyteller, at heart. He has listened to countless tales of hardship and love, and has carefully crafted his own novel—and life—around them. From his house in war-torn Damascus to the pride parade in Vancouver, he has dedicated much of his […] More »