My Own Private Edmonton

My older brother Pete and I were having a chat on the phone one weekend a few years ago. “I’m looking for ideas for documentaries,” he told me. “And I want to tell local stories.”

I had been working on the script for a graphic novel about working in a Le Château clothing store in West Edmonton Mall, where I’d worked briefly in the 1980s. It’s called The Le Château Diaries, I said, as it seemed a rite of passage for queer youth to work at Le Château when I was growing up in Alberta.

A great idea, Pete said, but Le Château is definitely a Quebec story, and he needed something more definitively Albertan. Then it struck me how many times I sold really ugly and weird clothing to people who were getting gussied up to go out to “the club” on the weekend. In Edmonton, there wasn’t much question about what the club was. It was the club — Flashback, a truly fun, trendy, queer nightclub, albeit a queer space where everyone was welcome. I still clearly remembered a sign that was posted in the foyer: “FLASHBACK IS A CLUB FOR GAY PEOPLE AND THEIR FRIENDS.” In other words, straight folk are welcome, but homophobia is not.

Pete loved the idea and we put together a pitch for the feature-length doc. Telus bit and we were on our way. I was confident this would be great fun. We put together a list of people we thought we should talk to: the club’s co-founder and owner, John Reid, was obvious, as was playwright Brad Fraser and people who had worked at the club, like Patrick Monaghan and drag stars Darrin Hagen and Berend McKenzie. There were pre-interviews to be done, in which we spoke with people about their experiences of the club and what it meant to them. I found many of the stories poignant but also distinctly relatable: this was a club where many, including myself, had experienced their first kiss, first hook-up or first space where they felt comfortable in their own skin.

But going back was also complicated. Alberta had a reputation for being seriously homophobic, often resisting the inclusion of any rights for queer people in their provincial human rights code. Having grown up there, I can attest to the fact that, as an obviously-queer teen, I experienced some version of overt homophobia pretty frequently. If a week went by without anyone screaming “FAGGOT” at me from a moving car, that was a good week.

I really hated being there. I ranted and raved about what a cess-pit the place was. If someone started up about that dreary rivalry between Edmonton and Calgary, I would shoot it down immediately: “What difference does it make? They’re both dumps.” My parents, who had immigrated from London, often found themselves the targets of my adolescent ire: “Why the hell did you bring us here?”

To be fair, that obnoxious snootiness was an entirely understandable response to feeling hated by the place I grew up in. Part of it was place, part of it was the time: in the 1970s and ’80s, casual and even extreme homophobia were perfectly acceptable things to express. Junior high school (grades seven through nine) was when puberty kicked in and, among the boys, a collective state of homosexual panic. The worst thing you could call a boy was “faggot.” The worst thing you could call a girl was “slut.” My parents had a lot to process — I turned out to be both.

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But as our research continued, and as I continued to pore over documents, video footage, my own memories as well as interviewing old friends about Flashback, I realized how much I loved about my time in Edmonton specifically and Alberta in general, and I recalled the good things.

I mean, there was k.d. lang.

Okay, there was more than k.d.: I attended Strathcona Composite High School, where, after almost flunking a drawing and painting class, I dared to sign up for drama. And at that drama club (which were the original gay-straight alliances), I found a truly inspiring group of friends. We put on some crazy plays together and formed bonds I still enjoy to this day. It was among them that I felt comfortable enough to come out of the closet. Though this wasn’t a surprise to anyone, it felt like a big step to me. As one friend said to me at the time, “Well, this just makes it official.” They were some of the first people I ever ventured to Flashback with.

I also saw pockets of resistance and courage when I joined the campus gay club at the University of Alberta. I got involved with the student paper and at the wee age of 20 interviewed Divine, combining my fan worship with my beginnings in journalism. I volunteered for the campaign of Michael Phair in 1991 when he first ran for city council; he won, making him the first out gay politician elected in Alberta. He served for over a decade and made epic contributions to the city. (Sadly, many of the battles he fought continue. The current Alberta government is the worst in Canada on social issues.) I see Michael whenever I go back. I’m still so proud of having been involved in that campaign, and proud to know Michael, who is such a principled man. He’s a vital part of the documentary.

The personal is indeed political, as the feminist movement taught us. To cop a line from Margaret Laurence, I realized that Edmonton, for better or worse, was where the world began for me.

And Flashback was a glorious part of that. While it was not a utopia, it allowed queer people a crucial space of resistance. As queer youth, we had been told repeatedly that our lives would be miserable and not worth living. We did what many queer people do when faced with that message: we got up and danced.

The documentary Flashback is an ode to that spirit of resistance and resilience. Not only is it a great historical record about a club’s influence on a place, but working on it allowed me to reassess a huge part of my own personal history. I hope you’ll take in the film when it has its Montreal premiere this Saturday. ■

Flashback premieres at Concordia’s Hall Building (1455 de Maisonneuve W., Room H-110) this Saturday, Nov. 23, 3 p.m.

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