It’s definitely the slow news season: the Ottawa Sun summarizes an article in Outlooks magazine entitled “The Gayest Small Town in Canada”:
Travel editor Randall Shirley came to see a show or two and met with some of Stratford’s prominent gay and lesbian residents and business owners, some of whom were featured in the article.
The piece — “The Gayest Small Town in Canada” — appears in the July/August edition in print and online. The national magazine is geared toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) population.
Shirley wasn’t surprised to find a relatively large gay and lesbian community in the southwestern Ontario city of 30,000, but what did surprise him was the openness he found there.
“Growing up in a small town myself, I know how difficult it could be. I was just really surprised at how open they are about it,” he said from his Vancouver home.
He noted the artistic community connected to the theatre is a draw for GBLT visitors but Stratford is unique because it’s in the middle of a rural area.
Okay, perhaps Ottawa is far enough removed from Stratford that this might come as a surprise to Sun readers, but really? Stratford has two industries: pig farming and the Festival. Historically, the theatre has been one of the few areas where being gay was not an automatic career-destroyer. Stratford’s theatre industry is huge for the town … it literally put the place on the map. Put these facts together, and you’re surprised that the town is gay friendly (or, at the very least, nowhere near as gay-hostile as a typical small town in a rural area)?
It’s really only gay friendly if you’re an actor who moved to the city. The theatre crowd and the pig farming crowd aren’t that miscible. My highschool (in Stratford) had plenty of gay boys and girls. But none of them seemed to figure it out until they went away to university or college.
Comment by Liam — August 22, 2009 @ 00:17
That’s not too surprising either. Lots of people don’t really get a chance to “discover themselves” until they get away from the home environment, and for a lot of them, some of the discovery is sexual. Most universities are far more gay-positive than even the most tolerant major cities (colleges not so much).
Comment by Nicholas — August 22, 2009 @ 07:53