Photo Courtesy Studio ZX

The graffiti-covered Van Horne skatepark on the edge of Montreal’s Mile End is usually dotted with boys in beanies and sneakers, launching themselves into the rink with the cracking sound of skateboard wheels hitting concrete. But, every Thursday night for a brief stint during the summer of 2021, they were replaced with a different crowd: femme, queer, and trans people, speeding by on skateboards or rollerskates as their friends cheered them on.

As the sky darkened, more people arrived. They came dressed to impress and eager to be with others who understood queer joy. When Vicky B. Ouellette, a trans woman and community activist, looked down into the skatepark the first time she attended “Tran Horne Take-Over,” she couldn’t hold back tears. “I’d never seen something quite like [it]. It was so precious and so exclusively queer, and it was really important.”

“There’s a lack of understanding that we create these spaces out of necessity, not out of entertainment,” Ouellette explains as she recalls the weekly event, which was intended to unite femme, queer, and trans people during Montreal’s COVID-19 lockdown. However, with each passing week, Ouellette noticed a shift: slowly, more straight, cisgender people who seemed like observers rather than participants started to attend, recording videos and taking photos. By August, the event was shut down. She believes that the police discovered it as a result of these people broadcasting the event online.

Despite knowing that the events broke the city’s stringent rules against gathering at the time, Ouellette also knows they were deeply necessary. She cites this saga as an example of how there is a widespread absence of awareness around the importance of nightlife for queer Montrealers. For many, coming together with their community is more than just a hangout; it’s seeing their self-made family.

Ouellette is the founder of Studio ZX and the president of MTL 24/24’s advisory council, two organizations driving nightlife activism for marginalized communities. To her and many others, the act of nighttime entertainment and gathering is sacred. If an event or venue is expressly queer-friendly, it becomes a haven for people to let loose without the fear of being misgendered, harassed, or othered. However, as city officials place greater scrutiny on the nightlife sector, the underground scenes that the community has built may be pushed further to the fringes.

In April 2024, Montreal’s Commission on Economic and Urban Development and Housing presented its final nightlife policy recommendations in a public assembly meeting. It was a step toward the city’s intention to spend $2.1 million to create a 24-hour nightlife zone, likely in the Latin Quarter, as well as “nocturnal vitality zoning” throughout the city. The details of the latter are still vague, with a sense that this zoning would permit alcohol sales after 3 a.m. (the city’s current cutoff). These developments may pad the city’s bottom line, but the policy lacks clear details on how it will include or protect the main drivers of Montreal’s local nightlife scenes and its most vulnerable populations: queer and racialized artists, patrons, and workers.

For those who are not within these minority groups, it can be difficult to understand the constant feeling of unease and danger in nightlife. When asked if she feels unwelcome in nightlife spaces that are not expressly queer-friendly, Ouellette was quick to answer: “Absolutely. It’s just so easy to be objectified, or fetishized, or harassed, or screamed at, or [looked at] cross-eyed. Stuff like that is so common.”

Maintaining physical safety is also a factor. For racialized people and those who are both queer and racialized, some of the peril in nightlife is not overtly violent, but stems from a sense of otherness in some of the city’s scenes. “Being hit on by cishet men not knowing that I’m trans is a situation that is extremely uncomfortable, and can be dangerous,” Amai Doucet, Studio ZX’s media relations and communities manager, explains.

For too many people, discomfort, and sometimes violence, is the status quo in nightlife. Canada’s Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces found that sexual minorities are nearly three times more likely to experience violent victimization and more than twice as likely to experience inappropriate sexual behaviours than heterosexual people. Studies have also shown that racialized women who report violence are often taken less seriously than white women, leaving them at further risk.

The document outlining the city’s most recent recommendations for the nightlife policy includes a section titled Safety & Security, which emphasizes a need to increase funding for NGOs that work to decrease night-based sexual violence and collaboration between these groups, the city, and Quebec’s Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Solidarity. Although these recommendations are a starting point, they are so general that it is difficult to glean any concrete plans.

Queer and racialized groups, and the threat of danger they face, are mentioned in the published recommendations, but the details are scant. One recommendation is to “support the creation and maintenance of inclusive nighttime community spaces for marginalized communities, such as LGBTQ2+ people, racialized communities, and people with disabilities.” Although marginalized communities and safety issues are both mentioned broadly, the document does not link the two. (This Magazine contacted several city officials who were part of the policy’s creation for comment, but none were willing to speak about the policy directly.)

As Montreal prepares to invest millions into nightlife, there is no better time for the city to improve its relationship with some of its more important players. Montreal cannot continue to undervalue the voices of marginalized groups as it enacts policies that directly affect these communities.

Last year, FANTOM, a non-profit that serves as a voice for queer and racialized people in Montreal nightlife, conducted a survey to assess its community’s needs. By far, the top concerns were safety and security, with 61 percent of queer and 58 percent of racialized surveyees mentioning it in their responses. FANTOM’s co-founder, Oliver Philbin-Briscoe, was pleasantly surprised to see that the new recommendations mentioned safety for marginalized groups at all—it’s the first time the city has done so in writing, as far as he remembers.

FANTOM envisions several projects that may help address queer and racialized people’s safety concerns, like an app to search for, review, and share venue information and the creation of more local, community-owned and operated event spaces. Still, many activists have more expansive ideas that require significant funding, resources, and collaboration with local officials.

For example, Philbin-Briscoe says it’s important to expand public transit hours to match the proposed 24-hour zones, ensuring that after-hours patrons and workers would have affordable and reliable methods to return home safely. This idea is proposed in the document, but Philbin-Briscoe is reluctant to celebrate it as a win before further steps are taken. Ouellette suggests a more qualitative path forward: a widespread education campaign illustrating the realities of marginalized communities.

Another key solution that activists emphasize is well-trained security personnel. Doucet believes that good security must hold a deep understanding of the needs of marginalized communities and be sensitive to the existing tensions between these groups and law enforcement. Several of FANTOM’s survey respondents felt that overly aggressive and poorly trained security are a central problem for marginalized communities in the underground and after-hours nightlife scene. Doucet suggests mandatory training that focuses on harm reduction and de-escalation rather than the use of violence.

Ouellette says that she believes the city’s lack of consideration for marginalized communities is not ill-intentioned, but rather, stems from a lack of knowledge and resources. However, Doucet thinks there is a relatively simple way to address this problem: to put more marginalized people in decision-making roles. “This would make sure we don’t get to a point where we’re asked our opinion after 95 percent of the work is done and most of it can’t even be changed,” she says.

Doucet suggests a council of queer and racialized people that can advocate for themselves in the city’s policymaking, in nightlife and beyond. Sometimes, she says, policymakers may not consider what Black and Brown folks, women, and queer people need because they don’t know their life experiences. That’s why Montreal needs these groups to be involved in making decisions about this city’s future.

Queer and racialized nightlife activists are cautiously optimistic, but wary of what is to come. To ensure that their hope is not misplaced, marginalized people’s concerns, solutions, and voices must be a central and meaningful part of Montreal’s nightlife policy.

Illustration by Olivia Thomson

In 2021, Aaron Beaumont decided it was time to create more queer connections in New Brunswick. While doing their undergrad at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Beaumont’s work in fat studies led them to learn more about fat activism online. After realizing that most groups were based in the U.S., and the few Canadian groups that existed were decidedly not in New Brunswick, Beaumont took matters into their own hands.

They created QT Fatties, a mostly online, and sometimes in person, community for queer and trans fat folks living in New Brunswick. Four years later, it has transformed into a space Beaumont had been dreaming of: one where trans fat folks across the province can connect.

QT Fatties uses Discord to plan both virtual and physical events geared towards other fat, trans queers. They’ve hosted clothing swaps and art markets, and have had online monthly meetups. They’ve also run mutual aid fundraisers for people in need of gender-affirming care.

Sam Walsh, who does administrative work for the group, explains that their Discord channel is where most of the community gets together. “There’ll be messages in the Discord sometimes like, ‘I want to do this. Anyone available to meet up and we can just hang out?’ Which I think is really awesome. It’s changed from being all on Aaron organizing, to being a little bit more community based.”

Beaumont founded the group in the hopes that more queers could find and help each other navigate being fat and queer in a largely rural province. “There was no activism happening in the province, more specifically, [around] accessibility. By that I mean clothing, gender affirming items, access to healthcare. All of the things that are already hard to access in this province—but you add body size and fatness on and that makes it more challenging,” they explain. “So, I wanted to make some of those things free and supportive and more accessible for folks.”

Walsh also says it was important to have a group based in the Maritimes, since a lot of resources are based on the West Coast. “Having something that’s local, where you’re able to connect with people that are in the Maritimes is really nice because some of the experiences that we’re dealing with are a bit different. Particularly when it comes to the medical system or accessing gender-affirming care.”

Some of these needs, Beaumont explains, stem from much of New Brunswick being not only rural, but also conservative, and generally lower income, especially compared to other provinces. Because of that, they make sure QT Fatties events take place in the province’s three major cities as well as virtually to remain accessible to all who need it.

“Fat activism is really grounded in disability justice. When we think about accessibility, online platforms, chats, whatever it may be, is what’s most accessible to a lot of disabled folks. I’m disabled myself and sometimes, in-person events are just not possible for me. [Online meetings] help in terms of rurality, but also disability accessibility,” Beaumont says.

The feedback QT Fatties has received from those it serves has been positive—but not everyone understands why it needs to exist. Beaumont says that simply means there’s more work to be done.

“There has been general questioning around like, ‘Why do we need a group specifically for fat people?’ Also, people being uncomfortable with the word ‘fat.’ I don’t think that has been a barrier to our events, but that has been things that come up online. Even though we’ve been doing this for four years people are still uncomfortable with just the idea of using the word fat.”

Still, members and organizers of QT Fatties feel grateful for its existence, especially in a politically tense time where we need activism and community more than ever.

Steven May's "Daphne's Grandchildren"

The Hope in Shadows contest is changing perceptions of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) by giving residents an opportunity to document their stories through photographs.

This year marks the seventh annual Hope in Shadows photography contest. Every June, around 200 free disposable cameras are distributed to DTES residents. Contestants are allotted three days to take pictures, which are then submitted to, and judged by, a panel of professionals and peers. This year entrants submitted more than 4,000 black-and-white images. The winning photographs are exhibited throughout the province, and a selection of the best pictures appear in the annual Hope in Shadows calendar. On October 12, the winner of the 2010 Hope in Shadows — Portraits of the Downtown Eastside was announced to be Steven May for his photograph “Daphne’s Grandchildren.”

While the media tends to portray the DTES as a hotbed of criminality, drugs and prostitution, the Hope and Shadows contest cultivates a different image. The DTES, as portrayed by its own residents, is home to a vibrant and caring community filled with families, children, and individuals who have hopes, stories and dreams – and face struggles and hardship – just like all human beings.

By giving residents an opportunity to tell their stories, the Hope and Shadows project has generated a greater understanding of the DTES and empowered its residents.

Furthermore, by allowing homeless and low-income street vendors to sell the calendars, and keep $10 out of every $20 calendar sold, Hope and Shadows also provides a viable employment opportunity to those who need it most. Last year street vendors generated over $130,000 in personal earnings in this manner. As the Hope in Shadows Director Paul Ryan puts it, “While the photos, and stories that describe them, are positive portrayals of the people who live in the community, the project also creates accessible employment opportunities for local residents.”

16,000 calendars have been ordered for this year. To order online visit the Hope in Shadows website.

Here’s a Flickr slideshow of the images in the 2010 Hope in Shadows exhibition: