A little perspective

The city workers strike is now in its fourth week, and The National Post is cranky. Just because most of the staff is on picket lines, doesn’t mean that essential services like pools and daycares should be shut down, writes Peter Kuitenbrouwer — at least not while the city is still providing food and shelter for the homeless and disabled. Let’s set some priorities, right? Sure, these people are living a daily hell of mental and physical illnesses, starvation, and deprivation, but Mr. Kuitenbrouwer has been slightly inconvenienced by the lack of city pools, too.

A bizarre Globe and Mail story reports that a group of Ontario high school boys “indecently assaulted” another boy on a school trip to Boston. The nature of the assault is never described in the article, but it sounds like a rape or broomstick-hazing-ritual-type assault, and quite frankly, it’s a little homophobic that they feel they can’t use the term “sexual assault” or go into more detail in the story. After all, as indecent as sexual assault may be, “indencent assault” isn’t the term we’d normally use when describing heterosexual attacks.

The federal government has imposed visa restrictions on Czech and Mexican nationals visiting Canada, which is yet another wrench in my plans to woo and marry Pavel Novotny.

And the Toronto Fringe Festival is over, but the Best of the Fringe remount series begins this week at the Berkeley Theatre with a few queer offerings. My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding plays Wed-Fri at 9pm. I’m told Hipcheck: The Musical, about a women’s hockey team, had a big queer following at the festival, and it plays Fri, Sat, and next Wed. And next week, A Singularity of Being, which I’ve previously blogged about, plays Thurs-Sat.

Rob Salerno is a playwright and journalist whose writing has appeared in such publications as Vice, Advocate, NOW and OutTraveler.

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