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.

In a capitalist free-market system, profit over everything seems to be the battle cry of big business and corporate strategy. However, those looking to make a positive difference and give back to the community have created a market for themselves through an innovative model of social entrepreneurship. Going into business now has a friendlier face, and an alternative bottom line—and it’s social enterprise.

Multiple terms and slightly varied definitions exist, but generally, social enterprises are businesses that have a social, cultural, or environmental benefit attached to them. Regarded as having a double or triple bottom line, they are ventures that generate revenue while adding value to their communities. Throwing the “rational economics” rulebook out the window, social enterprises are colloquially known as businesses for impact. They are motivated by a commitment to social change through the power of good business, rather than the largest possible profit. Social enterprises operate in a variety of industries, from health and social services, to finance and trade—and they are disrupting the way business is done.

In Toronto, there’s TurnAround Couriers. The company exclusively hires youth who face barriers entering the labour market, providing employment opportunities to those in need, investing in their employees’ education, and providing them with health benefits. Environmentally conscious missions, like Mattress Recycling, are also popular among Canadian social entrepreneurs. Operating out of a facility in Hope, B.C., just east of Vancouver, the company charges a small fee to recycle 90 percent of mattress materials that come through their doors. Since 2008 they have helped keep over half a million mattresses out of landfills.

Canada has been criticized in the past for being about 10 years behind other western nations when it comes to development of the sector. Definition and consistency has been a significant roadblock for social enterprise in this regard. From province to province, terminology varies quite drastically. Only in 2016 did Canada finally announce an official definition alongside a national directory, defining social enterprise as “an enterprise that seeks to achieve social, cultural, or environmental aims through the sale of goods and services. The social enterprise can be for-profit or not-for-profit but the majority of net profits must be directed to a social objective with limited distribution to shareholders and owners.”

Before social enterprises became popular in Canada, one woman was able to corner the media market. Elisa Birnbaum is a pioneering voice for social enterprise, advocating for coverage at a time when there was an obvious lack. As a freelance writer and communications consultant, she has been helping social enterprises gain recognition through her reporting for nearly a decade. Her work in the industry has culminated into a book, In the Business of Change: How Social Entrepreneurs are Disrupting Business as Usual, out this May. “It took me a long time to get mainstream media interested in these stories I was pitching them,” she divulges, “I was the first person to write about social enterprise for the Globe and Mail, and it took me about a year to get them to accept that this is something worth talking about.” Now that the movement has gained traction in Canada, mainstream media is much more inclined to publish stories relating to social enterprise.

Birnbaum and her business partner Nicole Zummach started SEE Change Magazine in 2009, an online magazine and platform for social entrepreneurs, as a response to the earlier gap in coverage. Birnbaum’s experience speaks to the journey social enterprise has had gaining recognition in Canada over the last decade. In the past, she was met with blank stares at the mention of the term. “Now I can bring up social enterprise to the average person and nine times out of 10 they will acknowledge and know what I’m talking about,” she says.

Media coverage of social enterprise has been an important tool in familiarizing laypeople with the term. A greater understanding among consumers, Birnbaum suggests, can help to attract government support and regulation, which is crucial to accelerate growth and investment in the industry. “In the U.K., they’ve carved a much stronger understanding after almost a half a century of using the term,” she explains, “and they have established dedicated legal models under which social enterprise lie.” In Canada, the situation is different; little policy exists to regulate social enterprise at the municipal, provincial, or federal level. “Where any specific policies do exist,” she explains, “there’s a lack of consistency among jurisdictions. What’s more, there’s no distinct incorporation (and thus no distinct legal entity) for social enterprise, which makes it difficult to develop policies.” Government policies and action plans are critical to the development of social enterprise; they help to regulate and define the industry, facilitate collaboration, foster investment, and encourage entrepreneurs using an alternative business model.

The U.S. and the U.K., unlike Canada, were early adopters of the model, quickly recognizing the catalyzing potential of the social enterprise movement to incite positive social change. National institutions cropped up to regulate the burgeoning field of social enterprise in each country in the 1990s. As a result, they both have well-developed policy structures and governing bodies in place to support and regulate its growth. Canada has been playing catch-up in this respect—only in the past few years have the provinces began to formally recognize the sector through legislation. B.C., for example, was the first to introduce formal policy surrounding social enterprise in 2012, amending the Business Corporations Act to include the community contribution companies, or C3, model. Other provinces have been slowly following suit, such as Ontario, where the government has released a 2016–2021 social enterprise strategy to target the growth of the sector. However, there is still no formal governing body that exists on the federal level to regulate and monitor the industry in the same capacity as it would for fair trade products. With no official demarcation of authenticity, the sector is vulnerable to a form of greenwashing; companies may advertise as social enterprises to attract customers but fail to follow through on the perceived mission.

Social enterprise has come a long way in Canada in the past 10 years. A 2016 survey showed that there are more than 1,300 social enterprises in Canada, they employ over 254,000 people, and provide services to an additional 5.5 million. With continued investment and government support, social entrepreneurs will be situated to take over a greater share of the market, and create real and lasting change in their communities and beyond.