Shrewed

In Shrewed, Globe and Mail columnist Elizabeth Renzetti asks the questions many of us ask as women: Why are there so few women in politics? Why must we feel unsafe in public spaces? Will things always be this way? However, the collection of essays really shines when Renzetti turns the lens toward her own life, sharing her experiences as a daughter, wife, mother, and journalist in a male-dominated world. Quick-witted and eye-opening, Shrewed exemplifies that famous line: “The personal is political.”

Defying Expectations: The Case of UFCW Local 401

Defying Expectations: The Case of UFCW Local 401 is a book about success. In it, Edmonton’s Jason Foster, an associate professor of human resources and labour relations at Athabasca University and former director of policy analysis at the Alberta Federation of Labour, investigates a union that has had “remarkable success organizing a group of workers that North American unions often struggle to reach: immigrants, women and youth.” The result is a deeply interesting look at how unions and their members can work together to create much-needed change.

This Will Be Good

Praise for This Will Be Good, written by Mallory Tater—a writer from the Algonquin Anishnaabeg Nation (Ottawa)—is thanks to flowing prose that evokes strong emotions. Unabashedly covering topics such as eating disorders, sexuality, and death, Tater’s stylistic voice paints a vivid portrait of a child growing into her womanhood and dealing with what that means. Although readers are advised content may be triggering, those looking to expand their poetry collection need to make space for this one.

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, but I gobbled them up. I loved caring for babies—figuring out what made them smile, rocking them to sleep. I couldn’t wait to share my favourite movies with them, to embarrass them while singing loudly in the car, to take them to their first day of school. I wanted it all.

What I didn’t plan for, though, was growing up queer. That realization hit about 10 years ago when I moved to Pickering, Ont., from Jamaica. I was just 13 and I had a lot on my plate: teenage angst, puberty, and navigating immigrant life and the struggles that came with it. I was too busy figuring my new reality to give much thought to my sexuality and what it meant for my future.

But after coming out at 16 years old, I found myself questioning gender roles and heteronormativity, things I was told were absolutes. I knew my kids were meant to get their father’s last name. He would teach them sports I liked as kid, like soccer and cricket. He would tiptoe through the house with a baseball bat when we heard a creak in the night. All of these beliefs melted away once I realized I was queer, and were replaced with questions: How would I parent my future children? What did it mean to parent with another woman?

I couldn’t look to the media for advice on LGBTQ parentage. Queer families on TV were too white, too rich, or too tragic to be relatable. I watched Willow and Tara fall in love on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only for Tara to be shot and killed. The cartoons I watched, like Adventure Time, could only hint at queer themes or risk angering parents. Comics and young adult fiction were better outlets, as writers had better control over what happened to their queer characters, but great stories I could relate to were few and far between.

According to Statistics Canada, 99.9 percent of Canadian children live with opposite-sex parents, indicative of heteronormative family structures. I needed to seek out the 0.1 percent outside of that structure who could tell me about their experiences firsthand. For young Canadians looking to navigate the world of queer parentage, resources are surprisingly scarce—especially in a country so highly regarded for its LGBTQ rights. As with many queer matters, my best bet at getting answers was turning to the community.

***

Daniel Gosson wanted answers, too. The 35-year-old loves children, and it reflects in his years of work as a registered early childhood educator. He and his partner, Patrick, both see themselves as fathers, but they had few queer role models. While gay parenthood has become more visible in recent years, the pair felt they still had limited influences, like Neil Patrick Harris and his family. The only other gay fathers Gosson knew were parents of his students or co-workers, and he felt awkward asking them such personal questions.

Gosson got most of his information from researching, something he did often for his master’s in early childhood education. Even then, he couldn’t wholly relate. “Most of it is directed at lesbian mothers, since that is the largest group of queer-headed families and they’re starting to grow from that,” he says. The statistics back it up: In 2011, there were 7,700 children under 25 living with female same-sex parents in Canada, as opposed to 1,900 living with male same-sex parents.

Gosson, like me, always knew he wanted to be a parent. “My mom has told me whether I have them biologically, adopt, or steal, she demands I have grandchildren,” he says—a common retort heard by many queer couples. “She wants me to have a family.” My own parents have said similar things. Each birthday, they jokingly ask for grandchildren. I’d oblige them if I had any idea where to begin.

I was sure Kim Katrin Milan could help. She and her husband, Tiq, spoke regularly at universities and conferences about all things queer, and she is a co-owner of Toronto’s Glad Day Bookshop, the world’s oldest LGBTQ bookstore. The pair welcomed a baby girl, Soleil, in January. I met with her at her house in February, only a few weeks after Soleil was born. I watched Tiq pass the baby over to Milan, who wrapped her in a shoulder sling. The baby slept soundly on her mother’s chest throughout the interview.

Here they were, a queer family with a beautiful baby of their own. They both looked so graceful and effortless. But Milan let me know the process was anything but. Her first pregnancy before Soleil ended in a devastating miscarriage. Because Milan is a public figure, word spread quickly. “Having to go through it publicly bonded me to other folks whose first or first few pregnancies were miscarriages,” Milan recalls. “I got to start having conversations with people about making families. All these people reached out and kept saying, ‘We’ve never seen this and we have no examples of this and it means a lot to us that you’re willing to…give us an idea of how we can do this.’”

Community support is a major factor in queer parentage: Where traditional resources are unavailable, queer friends are there to lean on. During her pregnancy with Soleil, for instance, Milan opted to use a doula to further embrace that sense of community. A full spectrum doula, Giselle Johnston offers services to expecting parents from conception until postpartum. Doulas tend to with the non-medical side of pregnancy, there to “care for you emotionally, physically, and provide information around whatever part of your journey you may be in in your reproductive life,” Johnston says.

As a Black, queer, non-binary person, Johnston understands that navigating pregnancy within a highly complex medical system is hard enough as it is. That’s why Johnston chooses to prioritize the needs of queer parents of colour, in the hopes that future parents don’t feel further marginalized by the medical world. “If I hear that they’re being misgendered, I will definitely speak up. If I feel that care providers are not respecting my clients who are non-gestational parents, I will speak up,” Johnston says. “If I feel that if something is being done against them, I try to speak out about it in that moment and hopefully provide learning opportunities or just try to make that situation a little bit lighter for my clients.”

There is also a better sense of understanding in the many routes to becoming a parent among community. Johnston reminds me of them: In-vitro fertilization is an option, albeit an expensive one. I could ask a friend to donate sperm, or visit a sperm bank. Or I could adopt. But there is no set way of going about parenthood as a queer woman. “Everyone is different,” Johnston says. “Every starting journey is different.”

***

I was raised by, and still live with, my married, heterosexual parents and younger brothers. In Jamaica, I also had various aunties and uncles, some related and some not, who fed and disciplined me as if I were their own. In many ways, this model resembles how LGBTQ communities turn to one another in their own parentage.

The nuclear model, once considered the norm, is no longer necessarily the status quo. While married couples are still most prevalent (Statistics Canada says they sit at about 67 percent of the population), there are more single parents in Canada than ever. Multigenerational families and common-law unions are also on the rise. And though the numbers are low, so are same-sex families.

I had a hard time finding concrete numbers about types of queer families that exist. As Gosson noted, there isn’t much research about queer families. “We’re starting to talk about queer-headed families, but we’re still very stuck on nuclear family structures,” he says. “If we’re not going to share queer family life or what it looks like for us, how are we going to know what it is? How is anyone going to know?”

In particular, there is little statistical insight into polyamorous queer families—those who parent with two or more partners. One of my former coworkers falls under this category. Samantha, whose name I’ve changed to protect her identity, lives with her 36-year-old husband Derick, and her partner, 28-year-old Kendra. Samantha and Derick were already married with children when they met Kendra three years ago at a friend’s party. Samantha and Kendra fell for each other, and all three now live under the same roof. Together, they parent three- and eight-year-old girls.

Kendra initially had hesitations about becoming a mom, but grew into the role. I saw them wrangling their rambunctious three-year-old and getting her ready for bed. Each parent does their fair share of raising the girls, evenly splitting the workload. Samantha is glad for the extra eyes in the house, noting that none of the kids can get away with much. “Someone always catches them,” she says.

As far as they all know, the girls are okay with the arrangement. They haven’t yet had a conversation about their polyamory, since their youngest is still a toddler. Their eight-year-old, however, is fully aware of the gender spectrum, and understands that Kendra’s pronouns are they and them. “It’s not something that is new or alien to her. It wasn’t a shell shock having someone non-binary, and she is the first person to correct someone if they use the wrong pronouns. She is absolutely militant saying, ‘No, Kendra’s they.’”

The unique perspectives their daughters have at such a young age gave me an appreciation for raising my own future children in a queer environment—where learning about differences and coming to celebrate them was commonplace. I wondered, though, what their futures might look like. As the child of cisgender, straight parents, it was difficult to imagine a life raised in a more LGBTQ-friendly family.

Then I found Molly Bud Willats. Between the ages of eight and 25, Willats lived in Digger House—Toronto’s first hostel for at-risk youth affectionately known as the “Lesbian Mansion”—with her mom, her mom’s partner, and her brother. The 29-year-old says her childhood was an alternative one, where she was raised in an “incredibly queer environment.” Her parents, both women, worked in the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre, where she was surrounded by strong women, many of whom were gay, and she often attended Pride and political marches. Being raised in a communal household by both her moms—and, when they separated and dated again, their partners—and other younger women made her feel as if she always had someone to lean on. Willats painted a picture of a loving, politically active, community-based childhood—and it sounded incredible.

***

Everyone I spoke to for this story noted the importance of community, queerness, options, and children. In a TED Talk, Kim Katrin Milan said, “The gift of queerness is options.” In a few years, I will choose how to bring my child into the world. We will have chosen family, those whom I have decided to surround us with. I will choose to homeschool them like the Milans will with Soleil, or I will choose to bring them to rallies like Willats’s parents did.

“You don’t know you can be something until you see someone else doing it,” Samantha told me. She’s right. I was unsure about how to raise a child in an open environment until I saw Milan doing just that. My parents kept me away from politics and activism my whole childhood, but Willats’s parents didn’t—and she was better for it. Samantha and her family showed me polyamorous families can be healthy, possible, and even practical.

Our stories are complex and begging to be told. One day, I will add my own story to the colourful tapestry that is queer Canadian families.

Land Mammals and Sea Creatures

Despite the title of Jen Neale’s debut magic realist novel, it’s the Birds who dominate this story. Julie Bird returns to her coastal B.C. hometown to prevent her father, Marty—struggling with PTSD—from his long-desired self-destruction. When a stranger from Marty’s past arrives the day a blue whale beaches on the local shore, followed by a series of bizarre animal suicides, the town explodes in passion, turmoil, and the stench of decaying whale carcass. Insightful, gripping, and mysterious to the end, Land Mammals and Sea Creatures blows the reader to pieces, redefining life, death, love, and grief.

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 the first Toronto Star articles about her death, her friends mentioned she had a “penchant for French antique furniture.” But her story remained untold.

Forensic evidence from the scene of Cassandra’s apartment suggested her murderer was someone who had committed a sexual assault back in 1997, targeting another Southeast Asian sex worker. The 1997 victim survived the attack and was able to provide the police with a detailed description of the perpetrator as a large cisgender man in his late 30s or early 40s. But from then to 2003, Toronto police did not make the public aware of it until he struck again.

As a trans woman of colour as well as a sex worker, Cassandra was at high risk of experiencing everyday violence, discrimination, and mistreatment by the police. In fact, for many sex workers and for trans people of colour, some form of police harassment is a regular occurrence. While national statistics on transgender people are hard to come by, provincial and local research illustrates what most of us already know: A 2010 survey of trans people in Ontario by Trans Pulse (a project collecting data on access to health care in the trans community) found that roughly a third of trans people who have been incarcerated reported transphobic harassment from the police; the same study notes roughly a quarter of racialized trans people and a third of Indigenous trans and Two-Spirit people reported harassment from the police due to racism.

Yasmeen Persad—an educator, facilitator, and community worker who provides training for racialized LGBTQ people and HIV-positive LGBTQ women in Toronto—encounters this regularly with those in the trans community. “When it comes to law enforcement, there are a lot of challenges,” Persad says. “Because of their identities, of who they are, by default it sets them up for more police scrutiny. Many [people I work with] are newcomers, immigrants, sex workers, living precariously, in the shelter system, under-housed—these people who are often on the fringe of everyday day-to-day survival have real challenges with the police.”

When they are targets of violence, both sex workers and trans women are often dismissed as victims of their of circumstances. Not having a fixed address, being potentially exposed to drugs, and subverting assigned expectations of gender and sexuality contribute to a public perception of carelessness and deviance that tells people and institutions how much they have to care about those they see as putting themselves at risk.

Talking about the lives of trans women is frequently a conversation about risk, and the kinds of risks that cisgender communities and institutions take for granted. Stories about Cassandra’s murder in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail focused on the details of her transition, her sex work, and her past in nursing school. According to the site Accozzaglia, a transgender history project run by long-time trans community members in Toronto, the message was clear: “Journalists fabricated a narrative on morality which could try to rationalize how Ms. Do probably brought this death on herself, because she was a woman of colour, trans, and had earned her living from sex work—throwing away a more ‘acceptable’ nursing career.”

The way that the police and the press treated Cassandra’s case was typical of their treatment of trans women at the time. That same year, a trans woman of colour named Shelby Tracy Tom was murdered in Vancouver by a man named Jatin Patel. Reports at the time referred to Shelby only as “an Asian transsexual prostitute.” Police took several days to inform other community members of what happened to Shelby, prompting harsh criticism from other sex workers who felt that withholding information unduly put them at risk.

We still don’t know the identity of the man who killed Cassandra. In February 2016, the police unveiled their new cold-case site, which aimed to publicize information about unsolved cases to engage the public in looking for new information. The next day, the police posted a two-minute video to YouTube describing her case, taking care to disclose the status of her medical transition. Interest in Cassandra’s case briefly renewed, 13 years after she was murdered by a man who had a history of violence against sex-working women of Asian descent. But it soon fizzled out. There was nothing new to be learned.

II: Deanna Wilkinson

Yasmeen Persad’s office at The 519, a queer community centre located in the heart of Toronto’s Village, the area surrounding Church and Wellesley streets. There, she leads the Trans-Identified People of Colour Project. “We work with a lot of trans women who in the summertime might be hanging out in the park because they might be accessing the shelter system, and during certain times of the day the shelter might be closed,” she tells me. “Police see them as troublemakers, like they just shouldn’t be there.”

The Church and Wellesley neighbourhood has seen some significant changes over the last few decades, particularly with how the area is policed. According to Patience Newbury, a scholar of transgender issues related to public space well-versed in the history of the Village, the 1990s saw numerous incidents of assault and vandalism where police would avoid getting involved, or admonish those living there who stood up for themselves. But around the mid- to late ’90s, things shifted. Cisgender people, mostly gay men, began to buy up storefronts and needed to work with police. They wanted cleaner sidewalks, less noise and sleaze, and fewer homeless people, so as to maintain the value of their properties.

Newbury says among the biggest losers in this new closer relationship between cis gay people and police were the trans women who lived and worked in the area. Property ownership in the Village that was accessible to cisgender people was completely out of reach for trans people, especially women, who are relegated to informal and unprotected work. For trans sex workers, the Village was, and remains, one of the key spots to conduct street-based work. The main stretch of road where many trans women make their livelihood is just east of Church and Wellesley, on a street called Homewood Avenue.

Business has taken a hit, largely due to changes in who formally occupies the space. And in the absence of good-faith regulation and worker protections, many sex workers are unduly put at risk as a result of law enforcement.

Since 2014, some laws around sex work have changed in letter, though not entirely in spirit. Sex workers no longer face the direct threat of imprisonment as a consequence of their work. But the risk hasn’t disappeared: It’s still illegal to purchase the services of a sex worker, and to “communicate” for the purposes of doing so, which forces many people into underground and unsafe positions. Police also respond to neighbourhood complaints by stopping and questioning sex workers, a form of casual harassment. Most studies on the legal status of sex work have found that enforcement creates greater risk of harm for sex workers than otherwise, by forcing workers into worse-lit, less accessible, and more isolated locations to avoid police.

Trust in the police is understandably low among sex workers. There’s a long history of exploitation and sexual violence at the hands of law enforcement, especially against women of colour. Just last winter, a member of the Vancouver Police Department was exposed for allegedly exploiting vulnerable sex workers that they had been charged to protect.

“I think any sex worker is threatened by police,” says Monica Forrester, a program coordinator at Maggie’s, a safe community space and resource centre for sex workers in Toronto. She’s been involved in activism on behalf of sex workers and the transgender women for years. “The police will harass the girls mostly when there’s complaints. The girls work in an area where I would say more gay men live, and there has been some friction with the gay men in the area where they work. Police will respond to any sort of call—like that’s there too much noise, you know what I mean? And they’ll push women off of their corners, or tell them to go somewhere else—which can be dangerous considering that they’re trans.”

***

The Church and Wellesley neighbourhood has been in the news lately because police believe the area was the hunting ground of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, who, at the time of this writing, has been charged with six counts of first-degree murder. But McArthur is not the first serial killer to make a name for himself in the Village. That title belongs to a man named Marcello Palma, whose victims were three sex workers: Deanna Wilkinson, Shawn “Junior” Keegan, and Brenda Ludgate.

Palma murdered Ludgate, Keegan, and Wilkinson on the night of May 20, 1996. Of the three, only Brenda Ludgate was cisgender; Palma murdered her in the city’s downtown west end. Junior Keegan was only 19 years old when they were murdered by Palma, and while most reporters called them a “transvestite,” it is probably more accurate to describe them as genderqueer.

Deanna Wilkinson was a 31-year-old transgender woman. In the excited reporting days after her body was found, she was referred to only by her former name. Both Keegan and Wilkinson were shot to death on Homewood Avenue, where they worked.

I’ve been thinking about the Homewood murders for several months after learning of them through transgender and sex work activist Morgan M. Page’s history podcast, One From the Vaults. As she tells it, in the wake of the murders, trans women came together to develop a range of community programs designed to help sex workers go about their work with less danger—meal transports, meetings, safe sex supplies.

This was front of mind when I spoke to Persad, who told me about the programming currently underway at The 519. She’s doing good work, but it’s not without its challenges—particularly from police, who often mistreat the trans people of colour in her program. “There’s constant harassment,” she says. “Police see them often like targets, or disposable people who shouldn’t be there, who shouldn’t be around.”

Hours later, I couldn’t stop thinking about those words—targets, disposable. Palma was known to be violent with his wife, and admitted to his psychiatrist that he fantasized about killing street people and sex workers. Despite this, no one tried to intervene in the months leading up to the night Deanna was killed. In fact, Palma was able to freely amass a veritable arsenal of handguns, including the one he used to murder three sex workers.

III: Grayce Baxter

“Transgenderse are also ignored by the police,” writes Viviane Namaste in the 1995 edition of Gendertrash From Hell, a radical transgender zine made in Toronto. Edited by Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra Phillippa, Gendertrash published a total of four issues in the early 1990s—an indie, alternative means of reaching community. In her piece, Namaste mentions three women to illustrate her point: Marsha P. Johnson, whom the New York police called a victim of suicide despite witnesses stating she had been targeted for violence; Tammy Ross, whose sudden death the Montreal police chalked up to suicide; and Grayce Baxter, who disappeared in Toronto in the early ’90s.

“If this is the first time you’ve heard these names and these stories, think about that for a moment,” writes Namaste. “Transsexual sex trade workers are too far removed from the suburban middle class, too marginalized to warrant media coverage, activist demonstrations, or commemorative ceremonies.”

Grayce was 27 when she was murdered in December 1992 by a corrections officer named Patrick Daniel Johnson. She was a sex worker, and Johnson was her client. When newspapers began covering her disappearance, Grayce’s work was just about the only thing journalists could focus on. Described as a “high-priced call girl,” a “prostitute,” and a “transsexual,” reporters conjectured that she was involved with hard drugs, and disclosed both the status of her transition and her former name. She was painted as a caricature, and it was assumed that Grayce’s murder was connected to a sensationalized depiction of what was supposedly a risk-taking, drug-using, party-girl lifestyle. Accozzaglia writes: “Ms. Baxter was murdered by a member of law enforcement. His motive was not drug-related. It related to his own impotence: his purchased time with Ms. Baxter expired before he could climax. So he strangled her to death, cut her into pieces, and dumped the pieces down the apartment tower’s trash chute.”

Community memory runs deep. Grayce’s murder at the hands of law enforcement and her case’s treatment by the police department and media set the tone for what trans women, especially those in sex work, could expect from cisgender institutions and the criminal justice system.

In the ’90s, the stakes for trans women who encountered the police while working were horrifically high. A criminal record could often disqualify someone from participation in gender identity therapy (which includes qualifying for subsidized bottom surgery). There is still only one medical centre in Canada where trans women can get bottom surgery, and the procedure is often prohibitively expensive, even with subsidization. If an encounter with law enforcement went wrong and a trans woman ended up with a criminal record, it would effectively cut off access to further transition-related health care.

Though this is no longer the official policy, many women continue to face similar risks because access to transition-related care often depends on the training and biases of individual service providers and how they choose to interpret government regulation.

The fall 1993 issue of Gendertrash featured an interview with a trans woman and sex worker named Justine Piaget. She describes several instances of being attacked by clients, including once having to cut a man’s testicles “just about off” during a bad call in Montreal. The same issue also features a full-page warning about a dangerous man targeting trans sex workers in the Church and Wellesley area.

This was in 1993. But not much has improved. This February, Monica Forrester told me about her experience seeking police protection after a violent incident with an armed man. “When I was doing outreach, a few women were voicing a guy threatening them. Then he threatened me and he pulled a knife. I did a report, and then I hear, two months later, ‘Oh, well there’s nothing we can do,’” she says. “And they know where he lived, but they said they couldn’t get video surveillance—you know, just a bunch of crap to say, ‘We did what we can do,’ and that’s it.” She saw it as the bare minimum attention required to close the issue, but not to take an active interest in her safety as a trans woman and a sex worker.

Forrester believes that, if it ended up becoming more serious—if he had acted on his threat—we’d quickly see that police would get the necessary information to investigate him after the fact. “It just goes to show that with sex workers, their experiences are considered not as important as someone who might not be a sex worker or who might not be trans,” she says.

Police took two months to begin their investigation into Grayce’s murder back in ’92.

Her remains were never found.

IV: Alloura Wells

I tried three times to get in touch with the Toronto police for this story. When I finally got on the phone with Constable Danielle Bottineau, Toronto Police Service’s LGBTQ Liaison Officer, I was surprised by both her frankness and friendliness. Constable Bottineau had no illusions about the kind of history that Toronto police are grappling with in moving forward with the LGBTQ community. “Historically, as an institution, policing has never been good at being transparent and having those tough conversations,” she says. Because of this difficult history, combined with a failure by police to make known their processes and mandates, Bottineau worries there is a climate of misinformation in which people are quick to come to their own conclusions or fill in their own answers.

A lack of answers has been a recurring theme for the transgender community’s relationship with the Toronto police for three years now, starting with the death of Sumaya Dalmar in February 2015. Toronto police didn’t classify Sumaya’s death as a homicide and provided no further public updates. Many were unsure how to react.

The 26-year-old model was widely beloved both within and beyond her Somali community, and people were heartbroken over her loss. At that point in 2015, six trans women of colour had already been murdered in the United States, all under age 36—a rate of about one murder per week. Many felt afraid and vulnerable, unwilling to believe that Sumaya’s untimely death was not a homicide.

“I still don’t know what exactly happened with Sumaya,” says Abdi Osman, a Toronto visual artist. Osman knew Sumaya personally, and she was the subject of his 2012 documentary Labeeb, which explored gender and sexuality in the Somali community. According to Osman, many of her other friends are still in the dark. Because she had such an important place in her wider community, the silence that followed her death was hard to make sense of.

I spoke to another friend of Sumaya’s, whom I’ll call Shamir (he requested his name be excluded for privacy purposes). Shamir says Sumaya was the first in their circle to come out publicly, and her pride and excitement was infectious. Shamir was very close to Sumaya, and he was with her family the night her body was found. According to him, Sumaya’s family had requested privacy for the course of the investigation, and because family meant a lot to Sumaya, Shamir thought it best to respect their wishes. That meant no police announcements, no public follow-up, no feeding the rumours. “As much as we wanted to put pressure on the police, we wanted to respect her family’s wishes,” says Shamir. He had to become comfortable with silence.

Though it upheld her family’s requests, the silence around Sumaya’s death contributed to the impression that many share of the police taking a hands-off approach to the deaths of marginalized trans people.

Shamir contrasted Sumaya’s case and the police’s cautious silence with the case of Alloura Wells. People who knew Alloura described her as quiet but well-liked. But she was without a fixed address for years, making her part of a population that is at greater risk of death or disappearance.

According to research collected by anti-homelessness information centre Homeless Hub, trans women are overrepresented in the shelter system, especially as youth. Yet, one in three trans youth in Toronto are rejected by homeless shelters due to transphobic discrimination. Research reveals that homeless trans women and women of colour, especially those of Indigenous descent, are frequent victims of discrimination and mistreatment through the shelter system, though issues with data collection make exact statistics hard to find.

Still, reports by Toronto-based researchers found that police harassment of homeless people has remained disproportionately high over the past two decades, ranging from abusive language to physical assaults. In 1992, one in 10 homeless people reported having been assaulted by police, and a 2009 survey of homeless people in Toronto found that over half of the respondents (58 percent) had been victims of violence at the hands of law enforcement.

Alloura went missing in Toronto in July 2017. Folks at Maggie’s organized a search for the 27-year-old, but found nothing. In November, several months after the body of a transgender woman was found in a midtown ravine in August 2017, Toronto police were able to identify the body as Alloura’s.

“I think the situation with Alloura was just total police negligence,” Shamir says. “The situation with Sumaya wasn’t comparable in that sense.” He stressed that in Alloura’s case, he felt the lack of consistent outreach with the trans community only served to break down whatever trust had been built between trans people and the Toronto police.

Maggie’s Monica Forrester sees Alloura’s case as a prime example of police indifference to marginalized trans women. “They didn’t reach out to the community to see how to identify this person, they didn’t do any public awareness around this trans body. It shows you that trans people are not looked at as important or worthy,” she says. “And that’s something that’s still very prevalent.”

Forrester was in contact with Alloura’s father, and encouraged her family to file a missing person report with the Toronto police. But when her family reported her disappearance to the police, they claimed that police officers blew them off, giving them a non-emergency number and refusing to begin the investigation themselves. Alloura’s father says he was told that she was not a “priority” because she was homeless. Forrester was disappointed, but unsurprised. “They knew that this was a trans body they found. Because she was homeless, they really didn’t care,” she says.

In the days following, Toronto police announced that they would begin a review into how they handle sensitive missing persons cases. Police spokesperson Mark Pugash told the Toronto Star that it was “not the proper response from any part of this organization,” and said police had attempted to apologize to the Wells family.

Toronto is an increasingly unaffordable city; it’s hard to survive without access to protected employment, stable housing, and friendly service providers—a situation rarely available to the overwhelming majority of trans women.

When someone is lost, it becomes easy for institutions like the police or the media to dismiss them. Osman called it “victim-blaming.”

***

Everyone I talked to for this story spoke to a sense of feeling worthless in the eyes of police. And as long as we remain locked into a system designed by and for cisgender people that treats transgender women as disposable, that feeling is not going away.

What struck me when researching this story was how close many of the women were to each other. There are women who have had to bury multiple colleagues. They took care to tell their friends that they loved them, because there was no guarantee they would see each other again. That care spilled over into searches, memorials, protests, and news stories, demanding that their sisters be remembered with love.

This city is not friendly to trans women, especially not to those who do sex work, who don’t have fixed addresses, who have been exposed to drugs or violence, who need help and protection. Their disappearances are not the inevitable result of the risks inherent to being transgender; whether by murder, drugs, disease, suicide, or poverty, every trans woman’s death is the product of multiple interlocking systems of exclusion and marginalization.

Each one of them is a preventable tragedy. Each one of them is a priority.

& if your homeland weren’t burning, I would let you lead me

south to one of those dozen American towns called The Palisades—

make a life where the close of day, from our chrome balcony,

would look like a glitter-bomb lobbed at the horizon—

we’d have cars, a dozen, just to have them all (hey, Charlie)—

you would learn to drive & drive me all around, show me every-

thing & off, hot foreign wife in the land of pasteurized

milk & no-more-honey-all-the-bees-are-dying—

Instead I will marry you right here, you hunted thing,

throw this citizenship over your shoulders like a shock blanket—

we will love right here & our love will grow to suit this place;

adaptable, accustomed to weathering the cold—& we’ll

learn not to deny that cold will come. You’ll take only

what you need. We’ll watch Rome fall, smoke our legal weed,

& I’ll quiz you on what common words to add a U to—

favourite, colour, flavour—as we work the land, wear layers

for survival. But, for now, go—revel in the throes of the dream

& I will set up camp, will save the date of your arrival.

Illustration by Matthew Daley.

On August 20, 1995, I slipped into the passenger seat of my friend’s rusty old hatchback. It was nine o’clock at night. As we pulled onto the highway, heading from Ottawa toward Montreal, I wriggled to get comfortable on the vinyl seat, smooth against my bare legs. Fastening the seatbelt, I settled in.

By ten o’clock we had hit a moose.

The first thing I remember is someone calling my name. I opened my eyes to the chaos. Shouting, slamming car doors, flashing lights. I couldn’t feel anything; I couldn’t move. Next came the emergency room. My friend, uninjured, except for a few scratches, tried to reassure me.

“They think you might just be in shock,” he said. But after X-rays, an ambulance to Ottawa, and an MRI, a neurosurgeon said broken neck, the highest two vertebrae fractured, a quadriplegic spinal cord injury.

My injury was called “incomplete” because my spinal cord’s capacity to convey messages to and from my brain was somewhat intact. I might regain enough movement in one arm to transfer to a wheelchair, I was told. I might be able to live independently. I learned in an instant how one can shift from ability to disability in so unannounced and sudden a way.

At first I could only move my eyes. Machines, attached by tubes snaking across me, had taken control of all my bodily functions. Nurses assumed my body’s care: rolling it, washing it, feeding it, wrapping it in a hospital gown, catheterizing its bladder every four hours. These actions were beyond intimate for a 31-year-old.

What came next were five months in a rehabilitation centre and the gradual return of my left hand. Shaky at first, I inched through hospital corridors maneuvering the joystick of a power wheelchair. Food splattered around me like an infant feeding itself, though eventually I mastered showering, dressing, and brushing my hair and teeth. My left hand became a cornerstone of my independence, and walking was increasingly seen as optional, merely a way to move from place to place. The wheelchair would suffice.

Public scrutiny of my body was initially surprising. In line for coffee, walking along the street, travelling by taxi: Did you have a stroke? An accident? What happened?

Yet my legs recovered. From initial twitches to more coordinated movements, I slowly graduated to propelling a manual wheelchair with my feet, stepping between parallel bars and walking with a cane. Life returned after a year. I walked slowly with a limp and retained little function in my right arm. I learned to write again with my left hand.

At that time, I viewed my recovery as a reclamation of self, though I had no understanding of what my life would become. Disabled, I had crossed some invisible line and become “other.”

Public scrutiny of my body was initially surprising. In line for coffee, walking along the street, travelling by taxi: Did you have a stroke? An accident? What happened? Marked physically by trauma, I felt on display, having lost some right to privacy. People seemed curious, often offering advice or encouragement as one would to a small child. Good for you to be out on your own!

Other intrusions were less benign. “What’s the matter with you anyway?” a cab driver once asked me after I got into his taxi. “I was in an accident,” I replied. “You can’t use your arm? And you don’t walk very well. Christ,” he said. “If I was you, I’d kill myself.”

While that cabbie likely just suffered from individual prejudices, his sentiment toward me was hardly unique. Depictions of persons with disabilities in the media reinforce stereotypes that promote such objectification and discrimination. Rarely is a person with a disability presented as a multidimensional, complex character, driven by human desire, who just happens to possess physical challenges. Instead, they are lauded as inspirational heroes, victims, or objects of pity. A reality show that followed people with disabilities on dates chose the moniker The Undateables.

***

Evenings out are often fraught with complications. Venue information on accessibility is inconsistently provided, and when it is, rarely do the words “barrier-free” appear. Listed under “accessibility” is often the number of stairs at the entrance and the flights required to access washrooms. And since stairs render an establishment inaccessible, this information tells people with mobility disabilities that they’re not welcome.

I sometimes attend events in inaccessible locations. Once I was helped up the stairs to a friend’s birthday party, only to slide down again on my bum in full view of other guests, patrons, and staff at the end of the night. Could my friend have picked a more accessible space? Possibly, but in Toronto they’re in short supply.

I travel often and am highly dependent on accessibility services. There’s little sensitivity to be found receiving wheelchair assistance at Canadian airports. Able-bodied friends I travel with are typically addressed in my place, with airline staff referring to me, if ever, in the third person.

Alone, I have been “parked” in the middle of terminals with little explanation. Agents complain to me about the number of “chairs” they have to assist, their sore backs, or staffing shortages. They converse with each other, griping about working conditions and personal matters as if I were a burdensome object to be shunted around.

Two decades of being disabled have affirmed for me that the social stigma and discrimination people with disabilities face extends to the ever-present struggle for access to services and built environments.

Universal design, emphasizing the creation of environments that can be understood and used by as many people as possible, regardless of ability, would help anyone with mobility limitations experience their cities more fully. Plus the mere presence of people with disabilities in public spaces could lessen the prejudices all too present in our society.

It might also preclude the need to categorize oneself as disabled, or even the need to prove “disability” to gain access to services and built environments. Ability exists along a continuum, comprised of visible and invisible conditions. We should all remember that.

I once attended a conference where a speaker reminded the audience that “able-bodiedness is a temporary state.” Whether from birth, illness, injury, or aging, many of us will need accessible services and environments.

Frankly, we deserve better than sliding our bums down stairs.

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 means hand-beading leather fetish masks or photographing naked subjects holding animal antlers. Always striking and highly erotic, the artist’s work addresses power and intimacy, explores the line between objectification and empowerment, and creates space for underrepresented bodies to fill. Danger creates with femme, butch, trans, and gender non-conforming folks in mind.

Toronto-based writer and performer CATHERINE HERNANDEZ stunned readers last year with her debut novel Scarborough, an extraordinary portrait of intersecting lives in the community in Toronto’s east end. A self-described “Filipina Femme, Navajo wife, and radical mama,” Hernandez is also the author of multiple plays and M is for Moustache: A Pride ABC Book, a gorgeous celebration of diverse lives, chosen families, and queer histories for children. On top of literary brilliance, Hernandez is the director of b current performing arts.

New Brunswick’s PARTNER is one of the most exciting bands in Canada— and they’re making the lesbian garage rock of your dreams. Fronted by best friends Josée Caron and Lucy Niles, Partner is loud, intimate, and unapologetic. Tracks like “The ‘Ellen’ Page” and “We’re Gay (But Not for Each Other)” have earned them a cult following and made Partner the most beloved lesbian Canadian group since Tegan and Sara.

BILLY-RAY BELCOURT’s debut poetry collection This Wound is a World, released late last year, established the queer Cree poet as an essential voice in the literary landscape. Writer Gwen Benaway called the work “the best of the Queer NYC poets meeting the best of Indigenous poetry.” Belcourt’s words are a revelation, challenging—among many things—gender roles, racism, and the colonialism of queer spaces, all the while crafting visions for possibilities of decolonial love.

VIVEK SHRAYA is a force to be reckoned with. In the past year alone, she released her musical debut Part-time Woman in collaboration with the Queer Songbook Orchestra (an album by a brown trans girl about being a brown trans girl) and Angry, an EP she made as one half of the duo Too Attached (a musical project with her sibling Shamik Bilgi). No matter the medium, the writer/musician/publisher/educator’s work is striking, honest, and unapologetic. Shraya’s next book, I’m Afraid of Men, will reflect on toxic masculinity, homophobia, and transphobia, and will hit shelves fall 2018.

CRIS DERKSEN is a Two-Spirit Cree cellist and composer originally from Northern Alberta. Now based in Toronto, Derksen has received critical acclaim for their albums, including the most recent, Orchestral Powwow—a powerful blend of electronic cello and powwow music. Derksen’s masterful creations as a composer accompany performances by artists like Tanya Tagaq, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Derksen will premiere new work at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity this summer.

For a peek into the worlds of urban queer youth, look no further than the work of Montreal-based writer CASON SHARPE. Our Lady of Perpetual Realness & Other Stories, Sharpe’s chapbook of short stories published by Metatron Press, follows six gay men of colour as they come of age in Toronto and Montreal. Sharpe’s characters navigate gender norms, racism, sexuality, conflicting identities, and capitalism. The author also co-hosts the intimate and binge-worthy experimental podcast Two Hungry Children with best-friend and artist Kalale Dalton-Lutale.

SULTANA BAMBINO is a creator whose work celebrates and uplifts queer lives and talent. As an artist, Bambino is known for her pastel-palette drawings depicting the universes of “supernatural queers” in her community, including the cover art for Kai Cheng Thom’s brilliant novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir. Bambino also co-founded Slut Island, a feminist-queer summer music festival in Montreal for underrepresented performers and audiences. Through words, performance, textiles, photography, video installation, and more, femme supreme

KAMA LA MACKEREL explores resilience, resistance, and healing for marginalized communities. Among her many projects as an arts facilitator and educator, she hosts Gender B(l)ender, Montreal’s only queer open mic, and is the artistic coordinator of the Our Bodies, Our Stories, an arts mentorship program for queer and trans youth of colour in Montreal.

CORRECTION (06/11/2018): A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Catherine Hernandez was still a part of Sulong Theatre. This regrets the error.

Little Fish

In her debut novel, Little Fish, Lambda Literary Award-winner Casey Plett tells a heartbreaking but hopeful story about time, identity, and the intricate relationships that tie people together. The events of Little Fish take place during a Winnipeg winter, and Plett does an extraordinary job of setting the tone of the novel through the characters’ interactions in this unique context. Little Fish is not an easy read; rather, it will challenge readers to reflect upon their own understandings of humanity and love, and to ask themselves how we may be responsible to and for each other.