Twenty years ago, two men were walking down the Sea to Sky Highway near Squamish, holding hands and hitchhiking to passing motorists. But instead of getting a ride to Vancouver, they met with ugliness.
Word had passed quickly around town, and at the high school, a group of boys who had been calling one of their classmates “fag boy” all day got wind of the news. They jumped in the back of a pickup truck, tracked down those two hithchikers and pummeled them with fists.
Fast-forward to the present, and we have a different kind of Squamish, one that is tolerant and accepting. Gay men can walk down Cleveland Avenue hand in hand without worry of violence, lesbians can touch each other’s arms in public without receiving ugly stares, and people will stop and talk to a transgender teenager trying to find understanding and acceptance.
It’s not a perfect world. There are still bars where queer people choose not to go, but it’s a far cry from the violent world of bullying that once existed here. As the courageous people interviewed for The Squamish Chief feature last week explained, being gay or lesbian is not a choice; no one would willingly make their life difficult in this way. It’s much easier to be heterosexual, mainstream, among the majority on the straight end of the spectrum.
However, since the four gay and lesbian people agreed to share their stories with Squamish Chief readers last week, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Safe ’n’ Sound members who are organizing Squamish’s first-ever gay pride event, a one-day conference to be held May 9, even reported that more companies have stepped forward this week to sponsor their event. We live in a new Squamish, where we are striving for tolerance and acceptance, where we attempt to co-exist harmoniously in this narrow, oceanside valley.
We don’t have harmony on all issues. This is also a town bitterly divided over opinions about the proposed liquefied natural gas plant, so it’s nice to see that people are together on what really matters: accepting fellow human beings for who they are, regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation, in the Canadian spirit.
– Editor Christine Endicott
