-Grant
An interview with "Fred"
F
We’ve we have skipped the first year in Foreign Affairs where the level of paranoia was scary.
G
Let’s talk about that.
F
Oh it was scary it was very scary and here’s my story which is really, it’s a terrible story I have told it to anybody who will move, so you might as well hear it. So um… my dad had one friend in Ottawa and he ended up being an assistant deputy minister at uh, in Foreign Affairs, a very nice man. And he greeted us. We were, we joined on June 2nd, 1969, and either on June 3rd or June 4th, at some session where he spoke, this friend of my dad’s, Montre – Montreal establishment, because there were some Montreal anglo-establishment people who came here right, and he said “blah blah blah blah, and if anybody is homosexual”, I would think he would have said, “…would they please come over and identity themsleves later, so that we can take steps for their orderly departure from their government of Canada.” Now, I had been recruited in England, they’d paid my trip back, it was my carreer, um…you can imagine your third day here what kind of message that is. And the level of paranoia, I tend not to be a kind of paranoid guy, but I quickly got to know a number of gay people older than I was in Foreign Affairs, External Affairs in those days, and it was crazy, it was crazy. Um..some of them who are older than me have never recovered from all of that. They are single men who have probably only had paid sex in the past 30-plus years are just –
G
Unpaid sex?
F
Only paid. Yeah.
G
Okay.
F
Oh Yeah. In other words they have become unattractive, weird, weird. And and part of that is because of looking over their shoulders all the time. The level of looking over your shoulder, the who’s being tracked all this stuff that was going on. Now I’m not sure that it’s the whole question of uh, was there not an ambassador who committed suicide? Was it the guy in Egypt?
G
I think he was in Asia.
F
Okay. Anyway, that and people having lost their jobs. We knew there were questions about people having lost their jobs. And we’re talking about, I mean the gay men that I knew were, you know we were, we were numbered. Now of course Foreign Affairs wants gay men because they’re cheap to send abroad because they’re maximum two people, as opposed to these people who travel with children who have to go to international schools right? It’s all gay, it’s crawling with gay men now. It’s totally changed.
G
Oh I think it was crawling with gay men back then too.
F
I…Um…probably more…I had a number, I would have known a whole slew of them and I can identity, I can identify them.
G
How did you meet other gay men then if Foreign Affairs was so, a place, and you know, we can also talk about the civil service in general, [was] so paranoid.
F
No, the civil service, less paranoid. You know, if you were in a, if you were in a… scientist or energy [mines], or resources it would just be different.
G
Oh okay.
F
It would just be different. So how did I meet them? I can remember there was just a stunning looking man who was on, (00:18:01) (1 Hour)part of foreign affairs was the building that is no longer there right beside the Chateau Laurier called the Daily building.
G
Yes!
F
And I was on the fourth floor of what used to be Gambel’s Department Store and I used to – it was just a big walk around this ridiculous fourth floor. Huge space, huge everything and seeing, seeing a man and the vibes were such that you know just I sort of knew and so I don’t want to say that I quickly identified, something like that, and he ended up being a guy who was in a relationship and we became, he and his partner and I became friends for thirty...well until 2001, till my previous partner ended our relationship and I just cut off a whole lot of people.
G
Okay and just to make sure, Daily building held Gamble’s Department Store?
F
It was Gamble’s Department Store, and it was then became the Daily Building which was Foreign Affairs. One of the Foreign Affairs buildings.
G
Oh okay. So it wasn’t Gam – you met him on the fourth floor of –
F
The Daily Building.
G
What were the dinner parties like in time. Were they pretty common?
F
Yes. Yes. Much more than now for me. Um…oh my god dinners…it was the whole dinner circuit especially for me between, well between 1975, 72 and 2001 it was constant. Dinners, in fact we one gave, we gave gay parties, had 50 people once for…did we feed them? Probably. Oh yeah.
G
Why do think? It sounds like they weren’t unique to Ottawa.
F
Oh no. All over the world. All over the western world.
G
Why do you think they were so important?
F
Well gay guys, it’s at home. It’s in a secure environment, it’s…you put in a day’s work and so people come over for dinner. I mean you’re en group. You know it’s not like going out and being part of a choir practice, or playing golf or whatever, it’s was the, you weren’t gonna…men socialize, straight men socialise over sporting activities or something, single interest group kind of things, whereas gay men well that’s the way they socialise. Is that it? Perhaps. That’s the way they socialized then. That was a way of making your own history and putting down your roots pretty deep outside of your job and doing, for a number of people, what was a…you know, middle class kind of thing. You know I was a bit you know, people knew that I came from, you know I had some privileges and things and so it was what I saw here were a whole lot of people wanting to entertain and entetain well etc. and in those days wanting to have all these rules around how grand the dining room table could be etc. and I had, it’s how I had been brought up with servants and all of this stuff and I had no interest. And they, because I didn’t either decide to do something that I was supposed to, my father was very counter culture, but he was born with a gold spoon and you know, very prominent family. Um…we just sort of dismissed things. I would have this (gasp) “Bill how could you be doing that?” type of thing. So there G
This was the gays –
F
The gays here, yeah
G
were freaked out because there was an eddicat to the house parties?
F
Oh for sure! There was edicat about you…you needed to know how to do things and…Of course you had to do a…oh my god yes.
G
The gay, uh, the gay house parties were pretty formal?
F
Well not shirt and tie, but mean if you, if there was, you know, you needed to have the right fork the right way and never nose the cheese and do all of these various things and that was, you know, fine. They were grand and fun, lots of crystal and all of that and that was you know what, it was a way for a whole lot of guys, you know if you were in Foreign Affairs it was a good chance you’d been brought up in at least a middle class, if not an upper-middle class environment; your father might have been the president of a large cooperation because you know, to have made it to Foreign Affairs you would have had to have had a lot of opportunities where you did things where you learned how the world worked so in the written exams and in the interviews you could be a worldly person. That’s all changed since then; there looking for economists duh duh duh duh [etc.]… But they were looking for worldly people then so that’s what – and this was only Foreign Affairs that I’m describing, I don’t remember there being non-Foreign Affairs people in the first ten years of my life. There would be the partners who weren’t Foreign Affairs, but there was the core was a Foreign Affairs gay.
G
So these house parties you’re talking [about] were kind of like the…how should I say this? The elite of the civil service in a lot of ways?
F
Yeah. Now you said there would have been a parallel. The elite in the 60s and 70s was Privy Counsel and Finance, but…
G
And Foreign Affairs.
F
Foreign Affairs would have viewed itself as the top because they’re recruiting more worldly people…
G
Yeah.
F
…and Privy Counsel and Finance would be parallel…
G
But more, a little bit more wasp -ish. (00:30:15)
F
Yes and what you had said about the gays in Foreign Affairs and their numbers, those numbers would be greater percentage-wise than they would have been in Finance and in PCR.
G
So these house parties that you are talking about were clearly stratified among, you know, a certain class of people…
F
Yes, very much.
G
…and a certain occupation.
F
Well they were all Foreign Affairs people, or their other half.
G
And you’re saying that basically there weren’t working class people showing up at these things
F
No no never. Never.
G
It was kinda like networking almost.
F
Well we all. No it was not because you…it was the network was the gay network so.
G
What, aside from like these having kind of well really formal dinner parties…
F
People wanted to put on a show because everybody enjoyed it; it wasn’t to impress people. There was no impressing people.
G
Okay.
F
But you had to hold your own up and you had to do a good job and make people feel special cause it was the time. You know, you were just actively discriminated against 20 hours of the day sort of and people knew that. People knew that you had to hide and lie and…and that was terrible. And so this was a way to close the doors and have a grand old time.
G
Let your hair down so to speak.
F
Let your hair down and live the way, you know, why not?
G
Well it also sounds like it was live way…you know, be able to be free, but also to express these kind of cultural mores that you picked up as a kids, sort of like through…
F
Yeah.
G
Experience. But in a gay context.
F
Sure. Now you see I’m the one, I would even though I’m thinking of people who’s father was like say number two or three, you know in one of the big trust companies an stuff, I don’t believe he had, he might have had a privileged background, but it was not like mine. I mean I was viewed by everybody as the person who was right at the top socially simply because I was. Now I wasn’t professionally, I didn’t do any better than anybody else, but I, you know…
(00:31:57) 1 hour
G
You had the family background. What, aside from dinner was there like a house-party aspect to this as well, or were they more dinner parties?
F
Oh one time, and we’re now moving to about 1990, on Mcclaren street we had a[n] eight-course dinner in eight different gay houses. (laughs)
G
On Mcclaren street?
F
Yeah just in three blocks.
G
(laughs) Wow!
F
And maybe I, maybe I should say seven, but I mean it was definitely it was orderves and starters and duh duh duh duh duh…salad, duh duh duh duh duh, desert…
G
(laugh) Wow.
F
And everybody would b – we had the rules right you had to, accept one person broke the rules. In other words it was about half an hour at each house let’s say, and he had us an hour and a quarter, we were all angry and pissed off at him.
G
(laughs)
F
He didn’t care about any of it. He didn’t care about any rules abut anything that guy. Why do you use queer?
G
Uh [it’s a] catch-all for GLBTQ community.
F
Okay. It’s funny you know I don’t like the world queer.
G
ahuh (affirmation).
F
But you chose that as better the GLBT.
G
And also like, it’s just it’s catchier for like a title, I think a little bit.
F
Okay.
G
Um…
F
I don’t like it at all, because I don’t like being called queer.
G
Yeah. I think it’s a post-modern thing, you know. It’s more of a reflection of a generational shifts.
F
You know because there’s an incredible movie. Dirk Boguade, 40 plus years ago and I guess if you did his filmography, or whatever it’s called. There’s a moment when he pulls down his garage door, you’ve heard about it, and it says Farr, F-A-R-R that was his name, is queer.
G
Yeah.
F
I didn’t…I just I…queer…I…but I hear you. So somebody your age and younger, queer is just natural it’s not –
G
It’s a little more, I mean, we politicise it definitely, you know and it’s something that’s a little bit less about like strict gender identities and much more like a attitude. Umm…a little bit more blurring of the lines of like you know, treating gays and lesbians and bis it’s like…
F
Really good.
G
You can, you know move boundaries a little bit quicker with it, I think.
F
But you know when you have things like “queering the pitch” and all of these kinds of things it doesn’t matter.
G
Yeah.
G
How do you think Ottawa of like as a government town, as a capitol, and as a small city, how do you think that influenced the shaping, the community and how like gays and lesbians and queers in Ottawa kind of related to one another and how like the community took shape?
00:42:16 (1 hour)
F
Well you know the whole thing, you know, with the government is obviously it was between 78, 77, and 83 that the whole closet/un-closet thing happened because it was in February 84 that I went public in the Prime Minister’s office. I was the first one who came, who was out. Umm…uh…that I went public and they wanted me to affirm that I was gay so maybe they were the last, I don’t know the spectrum, but that is the core period for people of let’s say now people who would have been 45 and older or 50 and older now, 50 something and older, the whole paranoia thing, um… which was legitimate cause you could have lost your job!
G
Yeah, from the 50s on!
F
From the 50s on.
G
[till when you are talking, 83.][CH1]
F
Uh so 83, so that sort of changes, that changes a lot…I lost the train of thought, whatever.
G
Oh we’re just talking about how like, you know, the civil service, or working the civil service impacted Ottawa’s gay and lesbian community.
F
Okay, so I think there is a whole lot of before and after eighty…eighty-three let’s say. Umm…you know I was out, totally out in all of my jobs from 85 onward. Everybody in my division would have known. I shouldn’t say totally out; everybody would have known. I had people, a whole lot of straight people working on the PTS campaign because I needed help and I had all these sort of ex-football types, I said “I need you to do this, I just just do it! Shop and do it!” And they did whatever I needed done; put together lists, organized that, but they packed things into....yeah.
G
Cool! Yeah getting back to the question, I mean did you find that, you know, the civil service people like didn’t…I’ve had a lot of, several people say, you know, gays in the civil service were a lot more reluctant to come out and be openly gay.
F
You know I don’t know what to say about that. Are you talking about prior to 83?
G
Prior to 83, and I had people saying like up into the 90s even. But maybe because you were in the upper echelons it was very different, but say for like a functionaire.
F
Like a clerk, you mean?
G
Yeah like a clerk, middle, middle, middle…
F
Middle level clerk, or middle level officer?
G
Uh…Yes…(laughs)
F
Because I was not a high, I was not a high level. I worked in high level environments, but I never, I didn’t get the big promotions because my brain doesn’t work that way, and that was fine.
G
Yeah. I um…it just seems like a lot of people really umm…reluctant, hesitant, uh…reserved after working for, in the civil service to be openly gay.
F
You know, there are other issues there.
G
Like?
F
You know, my father was counter culture. He, his grandfather was a titled important man and he….and his, and his mother was a, sort of shoot-of the hip American establishment gal, my grandmother was a sweetie-pie crazy, and she was sort of like “uh fuck this” and all that and that was [heard of too[CH2]] So I al – I had “fuck this” and I had a social superiority complex, which I think I was very good at managing and you’re – what I’ve told you here I have told you as context and not saying I am better or worse. It was just giving you context. And so I wonder because I had confidence and because I knew people, Oh I did know people at the highest levels though family, and I knew if anything happened I could, there was definitely one or two phone calls I could’ve made. And in fact, and then those phone calls then got replaced by other potential phone calls at the high, at the very highest levels.
G
Okay. So yeah your position was somewhat unique.
F
Well yeah, but I worked at that. Was it, was it unique?
G
I think people were a lot less secure, or felt a lot less secure than you did. Um…yeah…one thing I’ve got a vibe from is that a lot of people who were more lower ranked would feel that, yeah okay legally we’re not to be discriminated against by the 80s, however you had like, you know, an office manager would could make your life really hard and rally difficult, right? Or you’d sort of end up hitting, what I call like a “lavender ceiling” right, you’ve, you know, you’d hit a certain point and not get promoted, you know.
F
Oh I hit certain points and didn’t get promoted, but that was nothing to do with being gay. (laughs)
G
Yeah. Or people getting transferred because you know, people didn’t like them in certain places.
F
Oh yeah see, you see I have another person who was fired because he was gay in the late 80s…
G
Exactly, right!
F
…and he didn’t, he had no backbone, but this guy worked in a department where one of my close friends was an assistant deputy minister. She was a really fast moving gal; she became the deputy minister. She’s the longest serving deputy minister. She was dean of the deputy minister community when she moved to another job a year ago and said YES!
(BREAK IN AUDIO at 00:48:34)
(1 hour)
G
Um we were just talking about how the civil service kind of impacted ottawa’s gay and lesbian community.
F
Oh yeah was I making a point there? If you don’t remember the point it wasn’t that interesting. (laughs)
G
Well you talked about the friend who in the 1980s got fired…had no backbone…
F
Oh yes! Okay so this. So his boss’s boss who was an ABM was an orthodox Jew.
G
Right.
F
And was uncomfortable, I guess, I don’t want to say through his orthodoxy, or whatever, and started to make life miserable for this guy, and anyway somehow we got in touch, we were chatting. It wasn’t a fundraiser for me, I don’t know why. And I said “look, I can have the orthodox fellow’s boss, who’s the deputy minister, I can have her spoken to immediately about you. Within 24 hours it will be done.” because my pal was here and she wouldn’t have put up for one second with anything like this, right.
G
Ahuh.
F
She wasn’t gay, but she just… I don’t do that.
G
Yeah.
F
And he never stood up for himself and his life sort of unravelled since then.
G
And that I think was that threat, that like possibility I think really still haunted a lot of people at that point so…What about…
F
I always worked on insurance policies, eh. I always had cushions. I worked on developing them.
G
Oh okay. And that’s maybe part of the reason why you had such an easy go of it.
F
Probably, but I worked on it.
G
Yeah.
F
Mhm.
G
Yeah and probably a lot of smart people did. But also being open, so open maybe helps a lot too.
F
Yep.
G
Cause it’s like well I can’t get blackmailed because well what are they going to blackmail me with?
F
Well I mean before that they had already… I mean the beginning of 84 [I was?] [CH3]the director of security, which means everybody up to included the clerk at the Privy Council would have known. They just go through things, right.
G
Yeah. What about your first encounter with gay life in Ottawa was these house parties.
F
Yep.
G
What about like the bigger community? What was like your first public experience of it?
F
It would have been the end of GO, Gays of Ottawa, beginning of PTS and I would have been involved with that throughout most of the...oh no! The first one was, so I think we’re skipping through the 70s unless you want to talk about my, you know, that would have been maybe going to bars, not often.
G
Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about bars, bathhouses, saunas, clubs…
F
Bars, bath…was there a bathhouse in Ottawa in the late 70s besides this place, was Wellington there? Of course Wellington was there, of course it was. Oh shit! Of course it was because I went and probably some parks too.
G
What was the first bar you went to?
F
It must have been the Royal, the Lord Elgin…was it?
SOMEONE
Probably.
B
Yes upstairs and downstairs. And was there another one? Later it was one on Laurier called Shades[1].
G
The B[2]? Oh Shades.
F
Where was the B?
G
The B was above the Hungarian Village.
F
Oh yes! Probably, see I’m not a bar person so I’m not any of that. Oh yeah the B, I remember that. Oh as in fact you probably went from the Lord Elgin [3]to the B perhaps, did you? Something like that, a walk back and forth.
G (or CHUM)[CH4]
Yeah.
F
But you see my chum is more of a bar person than I am.
G
And uh, and Shades, you know, the other club…
F
And there was a guy called Les. Les MacAfee. Remember Les?
G
I know the name. He started…and he…
F
And he, did he die of AIDS?
G
I don’t know if he did.
F
Yes.
G
But he started Shades.
F
Correct, correct. One of the many losses in the 80s, oh my god…
G
Yeah we’ll talk about that for sure. What was the bar scene like back then?
F
From a non-bar type? It would have been, see had I had a , my closest childhood friend ended up being gay so we would have, and he was living here from 74-84, so he and I would have done things together, we would have gone to the bar perhaps, though he has a partner he stayed with the same partner, but his partner first year was in the states. Same with, same partner, they met in Yale in 1971.
G
Wow.
F
And they’re still together, they live in Chicago. Umm…what was it like? For me it was furtive because I’m not a, I’m not a social person. I, you know being brought up in certain establishments there’s a separateness. I want to say, above and apart…
G
Ahuh
F
…which is a terrible thing to say, but that’s sort of…
G
It happened.
F
Yeah! Everybody interprets it a different way, right.
(Phone rings, break in Audio: 00:53:56)
F
I can talk to you about the parks a little bit. I mean you mentioned Majors Hill so I would have been there a total of eight times over eight years and I remember there was all sorts of paranoia about the police.
G
Why?
F
Oh being arrested. uh yeah. Total paranoia about that. And then there was whatever that park was on the Rideau River.
G
On the Rideau River?
F
Right beside the Russian Embassy.
G
Strathcona?
F
Strathconna[4]. And I would have been there a total of eight times and I possible had sex three times at Strathcona itself and then maybe once or twice at Major Hill, Majors Hill[5]
G
Napean Point[6]?
F
Yes. Maybe picked up people once or twice along the Canal. Uh…probably picked up a people at Elgin Street, possibly picked up people at the bars.
G
Elgin street?
F
Oh just walking up and down that wooden street.
G
Really?
F
Oh yeah.
G
Street cruising? Now how did that work on Elgin?
F
Oh you talked about, you’re very good with words for describing certain things and the eye contact you had something else that went with that when you said it to me half and hour, an hour ago, you know, yeah the eye contact.
G
The eye contact.
F
(00:57:45) you were just going down the street there you go, right. Likw, straight men don’t look at each other like this.
(20 min)
G
It’s true there’s no body language involved…
F
No there’s nothing. In fact, in fact, if you make eye contact with a straight man you lose his eyes.
G
Yeah and the once over, the slowing of pace…
F
Oh the whole thing.
G
The turning around to look.
F
Oh, fatal.
G
(laughs) What about like, was there dress, or you know, a fashion that, you know would kind of make you go hmm…gay.
F
No. If the person was neater. I mean it was all, it was the package, right.
G
The well draw….
F
Doing the best you can do with whatever God gave you, was part of it.
G
Mmm true.
F
Yeah, package it well. Still now.
G
(laughs) Eyebrow.
F
It’s the same thing now. It’s the same thing now for my generation, and it’s, it starts to vary as you get younger whatever the look’s gonna be. There was always, there was discrimination then against effeminate man, and I don’t know what it is now. It continues?
G
I think there is probably a little bit more room for that now, but I mean straight acting is still something you see on Squirt[7], all the time.
F
What is Squirt?
G
It’s an online cruising space.
F
Oh yes yes, yes.
G
I think…
F
No fats nor femmes need apply? Have you ever heard that?
G
Yeah, yeah, yeah.. You know it’s just interested because I have asked people about Elgin and people have said it wasn’t really that gay.
F
Okay.
G
You’re saying that…
F
Oh I just remember, two or three times, between Lisgar and McClaren picking somebody up. I wasn’t looking to.
G
When was this? 70s, 80s?
F
25 years ago? No it would have been 70s and then it would have been mid 90s. Because somewhere in the 90s, when I, no well when my chum after ten years started to, started to, out whatever he had to get into other stuff outside of our relationship to be able to stay there. There is nobody upstairs, so who., where are these people? Anyway, at that point I started to relax a bit about it because we had been totally together for all of the 80s, nobody else. What a wonderful. what a safe way of having lived through the 80s; we met in April 81.
G
Okay.
F
Anyways, so.
G
Elgin was kind of like…I am just wondering how Elgin developed as discourse of gay. I guess a lot of gay people lived in the Golden Square Triangle.
F
Perhaps.
G
Or, Golden Triangle.
F
Golden Triangle, yeah. I better, I better take a step back from saying any more about this because I don’t know. And the more you’re asking the more I am thinking of one encounter in the 70s and one encounter in the mid 90s and that’s it. And I…
G
On Elgin street.
F
And the thing is I was with, I was in a relationship for 20 years, so that removes 81 to 01. I was in a relationship from 74…74, 75, 76, 77 so those four years we were together and then we started to come apart at the end 77 and so I would have 78, 79, and 80 I would have been active then and that’s when I went to Wellington a lot.
G
To Wellington?
F
Wellington Street Baths.
G
Oh okay.
F
What are they? Club Baths.
G
Yeah. Sorry I thought we were still talking about Elgin.
F
Okay.
G
But uh, what about, oh let’s actually take a step back before we talk about Club Ottawa. Um, what about encounters in, or your, you know, impressions of park cruising in this town. Did you, did you feel like that was a really common way to meet people?
F
Perhaps. See I can remember doing it in London. (01:02:02) (1 Hour)
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Ponce Street Loo [8] in London.
G
I know Tea, Tea rooming was a big thing.
F
Okay, so where Sloan Street comes down from Night’s Bridge down to Sloan Square, there was a street called Ponce Street and they actually had a loo there and I remember I was stopped by the police. “If we ever see you little bugger here again, you’re finished!” That would have been 1969, February 1969. So yeah smartened up around that and I cruising the parks, I mean, you just had to be really careful, that’s all.
G
Yeah?
F
Oh yeah. For the whole time that I was around, but I it’s because I had that over me from London I took it applied to, I just maybe took some of the London experience, married that with whatever I had heard from various people talking and was extremely careful. But remember I had, I had chums right. I had three major relationships.
G
Yeah. Um…how did you go about like, meeting people in the parks?
F
Well it’s, it’s I mean you’re looking, right? And there’s people there, you’re going by and if something works, your heart is pounding and excitement and now I don’t rem… I am not remembering. I told you I had picked up some people and also had sex with people because you went into bushes perhaps, is that what you did? So you would go into bushes you, I don’t know and you pull[ed] your dick out, right?
G
Pretty much.
F
Probably that’s it, I don’t remember.
G
And you talked about Strathcona.
F
Correct.
G
Now, I have hears weird things about Strathcona that it’s always been around, but not a lot got done there, right. People have always said yeah I have heard about Strathcona, or I went there, but it was always kind of disappointing, yet you’ve managed to you know…(inaudible)
F
Well because that was, it was a quiet place. I think people not only met, but had sex there.
G
You did?
F
Oh definitely.
G
Where would you start? Like what was the logistics?
F
Parking lot.
G
The parking lot? So that was a little bit further south.
F
It’s coming off, is that coming off Somerset? Is right in front of Somerset?
G
Yeah.
F
It’s right in front of Somerset?
G
Uhuh, yep.
F
Or is that Osgoode or?
G
Yeah that’s Somerset I’m pretty sure.
F
Is that Somerset that runs through?
G
Yeah.
F
And so there, you’d start there and then you’d walk beside the apartment building in the dark area, right? You’d walk all the way there and walk back.
G
Between the apartment building and the river?
F
Correct. And so you would have turned right, you’d head south and then turn back. You wouldn’t head north…
G
Okay.
F
…toward the Russian Embassy.
G
Ohhh okay. See I always thought it was more the Russian Embassy that was easier, but okay…
F
Oh you know what it may well have been.
G
I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m kind of like am going through my own mental landscape and kinda…
F
I would have said right and the same with the driveway, it would be the dark areas of the driveway, those, the pathways.
G
The pathway…
F
So the inside, we’re not the queen Elisabeth pathway?
G
Oh the canal.
F
The Canal. So we’re not on the Canal, so we’re on the sidewalk that’s west of the Canal and especially we’re on those areas, this is my experience, where you’re right beside the houses and there are bushes separating you from the uh…
G
The parkway.
F
From the parkway.
G
And those bushes were…
F
I don’t believe…was there sex in those bushes? I don’t know.
G
I know there was a lot around the Nurses’s College and the German Embassy.
F
Oh yeah. Yes! But I wouldn’t know.
G
When were these times really, these places really busy? Like when did you go there? Evenings?
F
Oh Evenings, only evenings. Never daytime.
G
Late? Early?
F
I’m not a late kind of guy so…it would have been, it was dark.
G
Okay. Were there re? around spots? (01:06:01) 1 hour
F
I would have thought so. No, I knew a man who is probably 70 now and up until 20 years ago when he would have left town, 15 years ago…20…he went to the park in Gatineau, where you go by car, every night of his life for probably 25 years. You know the one I am talking about? If you, do you know Fournier? So you are going across the McDonald Caritier bridge, and you can go up and you can split, you can go on the highway that is heading north to Wakefield, or go right on the highway that is going to Buckingham.
G
Yeah.
F
Those four lanes in both cases.
G
Oh Lac Leamy.
F
Yes. Is that it? So if you get out before that it’s Fournier. And you go along, and you can take a left before you get to those lovely old bridges, the lovely old bridge, take a left into the park and do that loop. So he went there every night of his life.
G
Oh interesting.
F
Which makes me thing that the stories you’ve read about –
G
(inaudible)… In other words Jacques Cartier Park.
F
Jacques Cartier Park?
G
Or the…Yeah that place..
F
It faces Lac Leamy.
G
It faces Lac Leamy?
F
Yeah. The south side. Yeah parts of it are on the south side of Lac Leamy.
G
And there’s a beach on that park on Lac Leamy.
F
Is there?
G
I think so.
F
Okay.
G
Okay.
F
You know in the books…
G
Oh I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
F
In the books about life in New York…
G
Mhm.
F
Is that you? Are you calling it quits? Go immediately!
[1] Shades: a bathhouse on Laurier.
[2] B: A bar across from the Lord Elgin.
[3] The Lord Elgin: A hotel on Elgin Street and a popular hang out for gays back in the day.
[4] Strathcona Park: A popular cruising place in Ottawa by the Rideau River.
[5] Majors Hill
[6] Napean Point
[7] Squirt: Online cruising space.
[8] Ponce street, London.
