{"id":622,"date":"2009-08-21T10:36:29","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T14:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=622"},"modified":"2015-01-07T10:22:57","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T15:22:57","slug":"stratford-canadas-gayest-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/08\/21\/stratford-canadas-gayest-town\/","title":{"rendered":"Stratford: Canada’s gayest town?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s definitely<\/em> the slow news season: the Ottawa Sun<\/em><\/a> summarizes an article in Outlooks<\/em> magazine entitled “The Gayest Small Town in Canada”:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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<\/em> for the town … it literally put the place on the map. Put these facts together, and you’re surprised<\/em> 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)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28],"tags":[196,87],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","tag-lgbt","tag-ontario"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-a2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29586,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/29586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}