The Calgary September 2012 FREE JournalReporting on the people, issues and events that shape our city TRANS 101 | p. 4 G ENDER BRUCE MCCULLOCH | p. 20 issues RAE SPOON | p. 14 Inside the Calgary Journal... EDItor-In-ChIEF PRINT Melissa Molloy Christine Ramos EDITOR IN-CHIEF ONLINE Trevor Presiloski PRODUCTION EDITOR Eva Colmenero REPORTERS Karry Taylor, Anna Brooks Juliet Burgess, J. Emily Clark James Wilt, Ian Esplen SUPERVISING EDITOR Jeremey Klaszus PRODUCTION MANAGER & ADVERTISING Brad Simm PH: (403) 440-6946 Photos courtesy of Derek Besant calgaryjournal.sales@gmail. Internationally renowned artist Derek Besant speaks about public art on page 15. com OUR CITY ‘I don’t dress people THINGS TO DO Produced by journalism students at Mount Royal Fake Moustache like you’ YYComedy Festival University, the Calgary Page 6 | Calgary’s drag king troupe Page 12 | Local model faces racism Page 21 | Bring all of Calgary’s Journal is a community done up corporate style while shopping best comedic genius together this newspaper that reports month on the people, issues and events that shape our city. We are the CALGARY VOICES ARTS proud winners of the Meet The Artist SPORTS 2010 Pacemaker award Born This Way for North American Page 8 | One writer remembers her Page 15 | Calgary’s Derek Besant Gay Athletes explains the art equation newspaper excellence years as a boy Page 22 | Why some don’t come from the Associated out, and what people are doing to Collegiate Press. No Safe Place help reduce homophobia in men’s Page 10 | Calgary GLBTQ activist BOOKS sports shares experience of growing up CONTACT THE queer WordFest JOURNAL: Page 16 | The annual festival is COVER ILLUSTRATION: [email protected] back this October, so what’s it all Melissa Molloy 403-440-6561 about anyway? Illustration by: Eva Colmenero The people who make Calgary’s LGBTQ community. Starts on p. 8. 2 September 2012 | calgaryjournal.ca Singing for community, joy and survival Calgary Jewish Seniors Choir offers second chance to sing MELISSA MOLLOY | [email protected] was in Auschwitz.” competitive — members of any vocal ability would Steven Spielberg’s film, “Schindler’s List.” Chorister Frieda Plucer says, holding up her be able to come and sing, even if they had been When the group sings one can see, and feel the “I forearm to reveal a set of faded tattooed told earlier in life that singing was not on their absolute ecstasy in the room. Heads sway and numbers marking her registration into the repertoire of talents. lyrics are belted out with passion — if the song is notorious concentration camp. Secondly, the choir would aim “to revive and upbeat members clap in tandem, some even get “To live after the horror I went through,” she says to keep alive Jewish music,” while members up and dance. of her role as a chorister, “I come here to be alive.” formed bonds and relationships with each other Szulc, with guitar in hand paces in front of the Plucer is only one of several Holocaust survivors that would effectively “decrease isolation” in the group singing with as much gusto as the rest. She that pepper “Voices,” a choir for seniors mostly senior’s community. is accompanied up at the front by the fabulous comprised by members of Calgary’s Jewish But despite the group’s inclusivity, Szulc is very pianist Arlein Chetner, who volunteers her time community. The five-year-old group meets every clear that this is not just a “sing-a-long” for seniors. and 40 plus years of music expertise. All together, Wednesday at the Calgary Jewish Community These folks rehearse with performances in mind the room feels as though it is bursting with Centre for rehearsals and tonight the room is and have been asked to sing in front of the Prime emotion. packed with singers. The excitement among them Minister of Canada, clergymen and women of the Later on, Szulc explains that the near-tangible is palpable. Calgary community and Mayor Naheed Nenshi. emotion of the choir and their music is due in part It takes the choir’s director and creator Karina Szulc says that the performance aspect gives the to the history of some of its membership. Szulc a bit of effort to get the group to quiet choristers much more than singing practice. “There’s a lot of Holocaust survivors,” she says. down. Members are much too busy laughing and “A choir has a purpose,” she says. “When they “There is something about using music to send a catching up with each other after a week apart. perform in front of an audience there’s a sense of message: That they survived — that they are here The vitality among the choristers is contagious and accomplishment and pride, and also a sense of and they are alive and they are strong and vital. if one were to close their eyes they’d guess they purpose in life that they are sending a message.” “The same reason that they survived in the were in a room of 20-somethings. Chorister Amalia Tauber makes it very clear that prison or were tortured in a concentration camp Six years ago when Szulc moved to Canada from Szulc’s intentions for the choir have been realized. for being Jewish, now that is something they can her native Argentina, the music therapist who “When we are here we forget everything that express openly. So they sing those songs with a specializes in gerontology immediately immersed bothers us,” she says. “We are just here together lot of feeling. To honour their relatives that passed herself in the Jewish seniors community. and it’s a camaraderie among us. For me the choir away and to keep the music alive makes them feel “I moved to Calgary and went to work for Jewish is so much, and I couldn’t live now without the that they are delivering a message.” immigrant services,” she says. “I realized that there choir. For Plucer, her role in the choir is part and parcel were a lot of programs here for seniors but there “I wait every week for the day we get together.” with her life as a survivor of one of history’s darkest were none with music.” Back in the rehearsal room the choir sings songs eras. Szulc says that she began to develop a plan for ranging from “Thank You for the Music” by Swedish “I’ve been through hell,” she says earnestly, but a choir with “very specific goals in mind.” For one, group, ABBA, to the traditional Yiddish song “Oyf’n her face quickly changes into a delighted smile. the choir was going to be all-inclusive and non- Pripetshok and Nacht Aktion” made popular by “Now I’m living it up!” “When they perform in front of an audience there’s a sense of accomplishment and pride, and also a sense of purpose in life that they are sending a message.” — Karina Szulc Photo by: Melissa molloy / Calgary Journal “Voices” is a Jewish seniors choir that sings both traditional Hebrew and Yiddish music as well as contemporary pop songs like “Thank you for the music” by ABBA. September 2012 | calgaryjournal.ca 3 Photo by: Quinn Dombrowski / flickr “My sex doesn’t define my identity” reads a sign at the Montreal Gay Pride Festival Trans 101 Alberta group lends collective-voice to transgender issues and experience MELISSA MOLLOY | [email protected] ransgender. It’s a term that has been used in surgery has been reinstated, but TESA has “At the end of the day what is making Calgary popular media perhaps more than ever over incorporated into its mission an array of other issues better and what it still needs is education. It needs a Tthe last few years, but what does it mean in that trans-identified people face from day to day, as trans 101 session,” she says. a community? What does it mean in a workplace, a well as education and information sharing with the bus stop or at the hospital? community at large. BATHROOMS WARS By definition, to be transgender is to be born “We try to educate the community as well as The group feels that opening up an education- with a very burdensome misalignment between the medical and legal professionals about issues facing based dialogue with folks who still feel confused interior and exterior of a person. The physical sex trans Albertans,” says Langille, adding that being or uncomfortable with trans people, can only help defining one as male or female from birth does not of service to individual members of the trans to break down barriers that affect even the most match up with the person’s own knowing of what community is also a high priority. mundane daily events in a trans person’s life, such their gender feels like from the inside. A male child “If there’s a way we can help a member as far as as the bathroom example above. might be trapped in a little girl’s body, or vice versa information or anything else that we can possibly “I spent a long time either not going to the — as well as many variations in between. do, we do it,” she says. washroom in public or counting the people that “Everybody just wants to be who they are,” says And the issues facing the trans community in go in and come out and making sure I’d be alone,” Brianne Langille, the current president of the Trans Calgary are many. Langille says. Equality Society of Alberta (TESA). “Imagine a 10-year-old child in a restaurant being Adam Legace, an active member of TESA, notes The non-profit organization was formed in 2009 terrified to use the bathroom because they are that the gendered-bathrooms issue is key because after the Alberta government passed legislation to scared someone is going to tell them that they are it highlights one of the great ironies facing trans withhold funding for gender reassignment surgery.