Glenn Crawford says recognizing the area as a gay village will help the community with its struggle for visibility.
Noise, construction, roadblocks, detours. The constant disruptions have become almost routine as Bank Street undergoes sewer and water line reconstruction.
However, tucked away in his cozy James Street apartment Glenn Crawford isn’t focusing on the ugliness coming to his section of the promenade. Instead, he’s looking ahead to the chance for his community – the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community – to be in the spotlight, once the dust settles.
For the past three years, Crawford has been actively involved in the renovations as a member of the city’s public advisory committee. Now, with the last town hall meeting looming on Mar. 18, Crawford is armed with the information and support to make the James Street to Nepean Street section of Bank Street an officially recognized gay village.
A self-described “late bloomer,” Crawford did not come out as a gay man until 10 years ago, when he was 28. Growing up in Kanata, Crawford never felt like he fit in with either the affluent middle class or the rural sector of the town.
Unfortunately, his classmates shared that view, and he found himself a victim of bullying as early as the first grade.
“I grew up with a lot of negativity around being gay before I even understood what that meant,” he says.
That negativity and fear deepened during his teenage years when AIDS dominated the news.
“(Being gay is) not only the most awful thing to be, but then you’re going to die from it.”
As he inched away from the more conservative suburbs, and closer to downtown Ottawa, Crawford hit another major snag on the road to self-acceptance at the age of 20.
Crawford’s mother, who had been suffering from brain cancer, passed away.
Crawford says that this challenging experience stalled any progress he had been making and caused him to retreat to deal with his family. He says it was responsible for slowing his process of maturity.
With his own experiences behind him, Crawford understands all too well the need to be a part of something and to be able to draw support from somewhere.
“When you are raised by parents who are like you, whatever that ‘like’ is, you have that natural support system so that no matter what else is going on around you, you at least have your family core,” he says.
But as is common within the GLBT community, there is a feeling that there is something missing.
“Everybody who grows up different feels a lack of connection,” says Crawford, who eventually found that connection in the area of Bank Street he now calls home.
Before running his own graphic design business, Jack of All Trades, Crawford truly was one. He dabbled in careers ranging from textbook illustrator, retail, teaching and journalism.
It was his stint as a writer for Capital Xtra that gave Crawford his first real understanding of where the GLBT community was, who was involved and what was out there.
The idea of a gay village in Ottawa is not a new one, and the area between James and Nepean streets has long been thought of as such, informally.
Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes says she doesn’t think that the GLBT community has asked for this recognition before talk of the Bank Street reconstruction began.
“The reconstruction has been looked on as an opportunity to talk about how to identify parts of the street,” she says.
But Crawford says there is much to be gained by having something that is clearly delineated and recognized by everyone in the city.
“I think it’s really important to offer people a safe place and a place where people can feel there’s a positive representation,” he says. “Even now post-Will & Grace and all of these other shows, I don’t think there’s a lot out there for people.”
For members of the GLBT community, who are not normally raised in a gay household, isolation from the community becomes a problem. Crawford says being able to connect with others in your community is important for the young just coming out as well as the older, more established members.
Crawford says that his goal is to push for recognition for a community that already exists but is struggling for visibility. He points out only three businesses and organizations that are visible such as the bookstore and two sex shops.
“Literally, I could be walking down the street and someone could approach me – I don’t know, because they think I’m gay for some reason – and ask ‘Where’s the village?’ Well, you’re in it.”
This lack of visibility makes it difficult for others to share Crawford’s vision.
“The critical number of businesses and residents that coalesce in a specific geographic area is what brands the area,” says Gerry LePage, executive director of the Bank Street Business Improvement Area. He says that you can’t brand something from the top down, rather there has to be a thrust from within the community to make it their own.
Citing Chinatown as an example LePage says, “They didn’t brand it with their gateway and wait for the Asians to arrive.”
LePage says that if the GLBT community has indeed gathered in this particular area, it’s not self-evident by the amount of businesses that cater to their specific community.
“If you look at the fact that there are 40 to 45 businesses and organizations (that cater to the GLBT community) in this area of Bank Street that we’re hoping to designate the village maybe only three or four of them are obviously gay or lesbian,” says Crawford.
But Holmes says the process of creating a gay village will be made much easier if the community had their own concept of what it wants.
In late 2007, Crawford and fellow advisory committee member Richard Barnes set up a group on the popular networking website Facebook and an online survey to gauge public opinion about whether the area should exist, how it should be marked and just what it should be called.
They collected 329 responses with 89 per cent of respondents voting in favour of creating a GLBT-designated village in Ottawa.
The survey also suggested that community members would most like to see the area marked with the six-stripe rainbow flag, lamppost banners and street signs with identifying logos.
Crawford says he was most excited by the survey respondents’ choice of name for the area. Fifty per cent of respondents preferred ‘The Village’ over other choices such as Rainbow Village, SoLa (south of Laurier), and Q Village.
“I’m quite pleased that what came out of the survey was a very straight forward name,” he says. “I think it’s important for the official name to be something that is a blank slate so that people can project whatever they want on it.”
By not joining under an exclusive banner, Crawford says the community recognizes that it is just one part of a very diverse Bank Street and that the village can only serve to benefit everyone by supporting existing businesses and encouraging others to open and make the area more prosperous.
“I think it’s good to be welcoming of everybody and looking for as many groups to come out and feel comfortable as possible,” says Holmes, who also mentioned that she has not been aware of the downside of having a GLBT village in any city.
Crawford takes pride in the area where he lives and works and sees these changes as a long-range plan to make things easier for a future generation.
“Coming from a place now where I’m very happy in my life, it’s about not forgetting the struggle that I went through and trying to make it better for other people.”