Who is elvira kurt

Gilbert also contributes opinion pieces — which often draw fiery backlash. You are loved for who you are. Evergon has always made art as an affront to the conventions of dominant culture. Born in Niagara Falls, Ont. Gonzales and, most recognizably, Evergon. He has employed everything from non-silver printing to Polaroid photography to digital imaging to achieve his singular effect, imbuing his prints with a baroque sensibility through elaborate staging and the intense use of light and colour.

And for this I am grateful. Richard Fung — you are my shero, my hero, my artistic everything, so thank you for everything. Casey Mecija is an accomplished multidisciplinary artist primarily working in the fields of music and film.

She had always purchased my clothes a couple sizes too big when I was a child so that I could grow into them, and, even though I was entering my mids at the time, her old habit had endured. But that was only part of her decision, which had also been influenced by Coyote themselves.

Ivan Coyote first came into my life two years ago via fellow queer icon Belle Jumelles. The Toronto International Festival of Authors was taking place at the Harbourfront Centre, and Belle had an extra ticket for the night. Coyote, an award-winning author and short film creator who has released multiple albums that combine storytelling with music, was there to talk with acclaimed journalist Rachel Giese.

You could feel the breath in the room hold itself — the way it would right before a belly laugh or a much needed sob — as Coyote called language into themselves. You could hear fingers digging through distressed denim pockets in search of pre-dampened tissues. Coyote had taken a question about society and language, and answered it with a vision of a new future.

As the evening came to a close, the audience was given the opportunity to ask questions, and one of the first ones was an inquiry into how Coyote takes care of themselves as an activist. I felt my blood slow down, waiting, making sure not to stir too quick so as not to miss a second of their response. Every activist in the room listened deeply, awaiting their Holy Grail of self care.

A harmony of giggles and confusion spread through the room as they responded by telling us Yes, roast chicken. They shared with us the importance of making a meal, the importance of sharing that meal with others and the importance of checking in. And the way we make sure we stay strong can be as simple, and as loving, as making and sharing roast chicken.

I learned that in the play. As the words exited her mouth, I stood witness to what happens when greatness gets to share space with greatness: it dismantles every system taught to keep us in our place and builds us a home. Ivan Coyote saves lives on the daily. The way they share their story invites people to want to get to know themselves, to befriend themselves and to fall in love with the core of themselves.

Ivan Coyote has shown me that we have a right to challenge the language and notions we thought we were obligated to live by because they were made by us to begin with.

Ivan Coyote is also part of the reason my mom bought me a T-shirt just a few sizes too big. I put on the T-shirt this morning, and, as it turns out, it fits.

Why is Ivan Coyote one of my Super Queeroes? Because my mum thought of me that day as exactly who I am. I think she learned that from their play. Heath V. Salazar — also known as their drag alter ego Gay Jesus — is a Dora Award-winning Latinx performer and writer. Throughout her career as a writer, editor and political activist, Silvera has laboured to make sure the stories of women — particularly queer women of colour — get told.

In , she co-founded Sister Vision, a pioneering Canadian indie press devoted to publishing writing by women of colour, and in , she published Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian of Colour Anthology — the first anthology of its kind to be published in North America.

Silvera has also painted vivid, multilayered portraits of the immigrant experience she immigrated to Canada from Jamaica at 12 years old and the African and Caribbean slave diaspora in her rousing works of fiction, which include the short story collection Her Head a Village and novel The Heart Does Not Bend.

I mean, there was no subgenre of LGBT. Best known for sparking the global wave of Ginger Pride by marching hundreds of redheads through the streets of Edinburgh, Shawn Hitchins is an award-winning entertainer and author. But the magnitude of his contributions to Canadian art and queer activism have proven he is anything but.

When he was 27 years old, doctors told Average that he was HIV-positive and may only have months to live. Receiving this news filled him with the conviction to live without inhibitions and unflinchingly pursue his dream of becoming an artist. The oeuvre he has crafted since — a kaleidoscopic collection of cartoonish people, animals and elements of nature — has touched viewers worldwide for its tenderhearted portrayal of the harmony of all living things on earth.

The Switzerland-born daughter of a Polish Holocaust survivor, Pool relocated to Canada at age 25 to study in Montreal, where she went on to produce a number of films with the National Film Board that conveyed the female experience with authenticity.

Treading the fine line between homoerotic and homosocial female relationships, Pool's characters have added remarkable depth to the Canadian film canon.

An homage to Clara the Carefree Chicken — one of the original New York City club kids — the suit was garish and feathered and if memory serves involved absurd, Muppet-calibre feet.

Later, under pressure from Unilever, the name morphed, becoming Vazaleen. Everywhere in the bar, in denim, leather, ornate costumes, sequins and sparkles, and various states of undress, people of myriad genders milled and moshed, danced and drank.

And there, in my mind, is Will — a yellow-feathered beacon in a sea of undulating bodies and joyful chaos. But he did wear it often: to go out dancing, to run errands around the city, to visit the Black Eagle, a Church Street leather bar. It was a strike against propriety, against arch expressions of coolness, against conventional notions of sex and desire.

And it was a tribute, in its way, to a way of being and a mode of creating that had come barely a generation earlier. Even though he had an email address, he rarely checked it. If you were hoping to weasel your way onto the guest list for one of his events, you had to call his landline, leave a message and hope he checked his voicemail before you showed up and had to negotiate a huge lineup that likely included at least three of your exes.

Still, most of the time, miraculously, his old-school system worked. Will died of brain cancer in at the age of Will was transformative — and I mean that in the most literal, non-hyperbolic way. His genius, his magic, came from a place of wanting to effect change on every level. He was a vegan, punk, feminist, anarchist, sissy, homo hero; a kid from the suburbs who worked to create a haven for other freaks; an iconoclast and a superfan; a tender maverick who carved out public spaces where a startlingly diverse collection of people could feel validated in their most private selves.

To feel safe and beautiful in our own skin — or chicken suit. At age six, Highway was taken from his parents and placed in a residential school, and after graduating from university, he got involved in social work within Indigenous communities until he turned 30 — at which point he started to write. Born in small-town Quebec, Bouchard went on to study theatre at the University of Ottawa, and secured his place in the national theatre pantheon with Les Feluettes , a coming-of-age romance between two young men presented through a play within a play that recalls a past atrocity.

It was later turned into an award-winning film adaptation, Lilies , directed by John Greyson. To Trish I would say thank you for your outstanding contributions to trans poetry and trans literature and scholarship in Canada. In , Lorraine Segato and Billy Bryans received a phone call that would change everything. The Toronto International Film Festival was looking for musicians, but neither of the bands the pair played in together Mama Quilla 11 and V were available — so they decided to assemble a new group.

Their one-off band, featuring Segato as vocalist, performed to a rapturous reception, and soon they were offered a recording contract, leading to the formation of influential new world music group The Parachute Club.

In addition to her musical endeavours, Segato is a dedicated activist and played pivotal roles in the creation of the documentaries Queen Street West: The Rebel Zone and Lowdown Tracks. Even the plays about straight people. Tannahill has also collaborated with choreographers Christopher House and Akram Khan on staged pieces at the intersection of dance and theatre; penned the autofiction novel Liminal ; and produced a virtual reality experience, Draw Me Close , a recreation of his childhood living room drawn by artist Teva Harrison.

Christopher House , choreographer and artistic director of Toronto Dance Theatre. Community builders. Feminist trailblazers.

Organizers and facilitators. Unabashedly queer. Logue and Mitchell have contributed in innumerable ways to the contemporary art landscape. What, then, does it look like to carry the kind of legacy that Logue and Mitchell have forged in the world of contemporary art? It involves making people uncomfortable, and shedding light on issues that are difficult and often avoided.

At the end of the day, it is often other marginalized and queer folks who are the ones who will understand, find value in and support the work of queer and feminist practitioners. Independently and collectively, Logue and Mitchell continue to leave an undeniable impact on the political and contemporary art landscape on a local, national and international scale.

Rather than screening a collection of her own works — predominantly gestural self-portraits that rely on performing for the camera — she provided space to eight artists and academics, some whom she had an intimate relationship with and others who existed in her periphery. Logue chose to highlight the work of individuals who have influenced her, whom she has influenced and whom she has admired from afar, as well as those who have critiqued and looked up to her throughout her career.

If I attempted to list the myriad ways that Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue have influenced and challenged the Canadian art landscape — including how they have informed and impacted my own practice — I would be far exceeding my word count. Their creative work has helped to define the contemporary queer aesthetic, and their political action continues to push both personal and institutional boundaries in ways that will have an impact for years to come.

I am thankful for the labour they have done and continue to do, as we are all the better for it. In , Greyson produced the musical short The Making of Monsters , partly based on the murder of Kenneth Zeller, a Toronto schoolteacher who was beaten to death by five students. His film Lilies , an adaptation of a play by Michel Marc Bouchard , tells a multilayered love story between two young men — and won the Genie Award for best picture.

In , Greyson was arrested in Cairo after filming a protest and imprisoned for 50 days, leading to a campaign that pressured the Egyptian government to release him. And we have a lot of compassion in our generation and if we activate that we can make a lot of change.

Thank you for never stopping making music. And thank you for being one of the kindest, most compassionate people I know. Stephen Jackman-Torkoff is a performer, playwright and wandering poet who has acted in productions across Canada and is the resident poet with the Queer Songbook Orchestra.

Informed by her background in experimental cinema, Onodera is a filmmaker and video artist whose work fuses a number of formats — from the old-school mediums of Hi8 and 16mm, to low-fi iPhone apps and mass-produced toy cameras — in order to point a personal lens at the world, letting the viewer see it through the eyes of a Japanese-Canadian, lesbian woman and feminist.

Onodera has also helmed video essays on her creative methodology and directed the award-winning feature Skin Deep. After a bad day of school back in , I typed the name Xavier Dolan into my Facebook search bar and sent the filmmaker — or whoever owned that account — a dewy-eyed plea. A year prior, I had discovered the band of critics and filmmakers who launched the movement known as the French New Wave.

My fixation on those auteurs distorted my views and viewing habits to the point where I temporarily held the pretentious belief that the only cinema worth pursuing had already come out of s France. Any window for the contributions of my contemporaries was firmly closed; peak cinema had long flickered out into the night. Then, out of nowhere, emerged Xavier Dolan, a young director whose work was as free-spirited and convention-defying as the New Wave trailblazers who had come before him.

While so many of us spend the decade between 20 and 30 rifling around in search of who we are and the place we belong, Dolan was always gearing up to take his rightful place in film history. The eruptive, semi-autobiographical tale of a sensitive gay teenager perpetually at odds with his single mom announced Dolan as an assured new cinematic voice. Xavier Dolan also bore a particular intrigue because he was so young — only five years my senior — and openly gay.

A few months after surfacing from high school, I moved to Montreal to study literature. I began to misdirect energy I should have reserved for penning academic papers toward blog posts about movies I loved and hated. Soon, thanks to the guidance of very generous editors, I figured out a way to land side gigs scribbling words about Canadian cinema, or queer cinema, or, naturally, Canadian queer cinema. The subject of monsieur Dolan — who put out a new film each year without fail — was practically unavoidable.

What are my thoughts on the guy, then? His career has witnessed some of the highest highs and lowest lows of any filmmaker that has barely scratched But the Dolan house style that vaults a film like Mommy to sky-high triumph — a soundtrack crammed with nostalgic pop, fierce female leads and frequent sequences of domestic conflict — is made up of the same DNA that seems to have inhibited The Death and Life of John F.

And, save for Mommy , each of these films draws on those amplified emotions and uses them to show a queer experience that is textured, authentic and riddled with heartache — not just for the main characters but for everyone whose lives they touch.

Bruce LaBruce is not for the faint of heart. LaBruce has said the substantial use of violence and anti-establishment ideology that permeates his work are likely the product of being called a sissy so many times growing up. Pope is an undeniable envelope-pusher who broke barriers for queer representation in the Canadian music industry.

For being such a highly regarded author of novels, plays and short stories not to mention a number of scripts for television and radio , Timothy Findley did his best to stay out of the spotlight, eventually moving to split his time between Stratford, Ont. The author was similarly discreet when it came to talking about his sexuality — he rarely alluded to it while giving interviews — yet he peppered his writing with homoerotic undertones, complex depictions of masculinity and the occasional affair between same-sex characters.

Before turning to writing, Findley had built a successful career as an actor, sharing the stage with Alec Guinness and William Hutt at the Stratford Festival. I love that she explores all aspects of her identity and shares all of them and encourages people to think about their isms as well and how the things that make us different are also our super powers in a way.

Candy, I just want to thank you for kicking ass and taking names. Natasha Negovanlis is an award-winning actor, writer and producer best known for playing Carmilla Karnstein in the web series and feature film Carmilla.

In a theatrical career that spanned more than 50 years, William Hutt was the longtime face of the Stratford Festival who climbed its stage to play almost every Shakespearean hero written. But in his private life, he did something even more heroic: he was openly bisexual. A highly prolific artist and social activist since the early s, Mirha-Soleil Ross is a force of nature.

A staunch animal rights activist, Ross used her post as grand marshal of the Toronto Pride to lead a squadron of queer animal rights activists into the parade. I moved to Montreal in on a whim, at the tail end of a big love. Looking out over the knots of women drinking and dancing, I wondered what they were all about. Would any of them come to know me? Would I come to know them? Reader, I married her. Blais has lived in the United States on and off for decades and currently makes her home in Key West, Fla.

Logan Mader Guitarist. Callum Crawford Lacrosse Player. Famous Birthdays December 9. Vivian Loi Instagram Star. Supralugia YouTube Star. Tony Batista Baseball Player. Adam Collin Soccer Player. Percy Kahn Composer. Ty Knott Football Coach. Report Post « » Your Name:. Your Email:. Tell us why do you think this post is inappropriate and shouldn't be here:. I mastered how to do comedy in the most horrific situations. Adapting to being gay and a comic was confusing at best. She took a job at Second City in London, a different experience from the stand-up scene, one not so imbued with the desperation of individual competitiveness.

It was a more nurturing environment, more of a family situation. And then things started happening. She became the queen of the gay scene, effortlessly charming a good share of straight folks along the way. She broadened her base and stockpiled material, using her dual comedy background to the max. The experience was a revelation. I was embarrassed in a way. Her first high-profile coming out was a disaster. The producers of Friday Night!

With Ralph Benmergui were flogging the titillation factor and told Kurt not to hold back. For a person who relies so heavily on her connection with the audience, to feel a wall of shock come up so instantly like that was almost devastating. But to what end? Her sexuality is only a fraction of the complete comedy package.

This is how I got here. And now Kurt is haunting L. Not a chance. NOW What is a twice-weekly podcast that explores the ways Torontonians are coping with life in the time of coronavirus. New episodes are available Tuesdays and Fridays. Glenn Sumi and Daryl Jung. Maya Bastian discusses her film about a woman contemplating life fighting with the Tamil Tigers and the reaction to Deepa. A Canadian event safety expert breaks down concert tragedies and the shooting at the Raptors championship parade.

James Smith's show about his siblings' history with mental health has been adapted into a moving film about the healing. Your email address will not be published.