I got to back to the Yukon this past week, this time with Joy. It’s only been a few months since my last visit. We hit up the Dempster Highway, the Tombstone Territorial Park, among other spots.
More than any other place in Canada, I could see myself living in Whitehorse. That said, it was colder than I expected – some days starting in the single digits despite having travelled in August.
I’ve reached middle age. It’s neat to have this on my blog, where I documented turning 21, turning 30, and now 40.
At the start of my thirties, I was living with four lovely roommates while working in tech and lobbying for trans rights in Parliament. I didn’t know it yet, but I was also incredibly insecure, felt stunted by my fear of the unknown, and employed toxic communication patterns to soothe difficult feelings.
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Last week, I attended a screening of two short films by queer Algonquin College film school graduates. One of the movies was set in the nineties, a time before this director was born.
When she was asked about the choice of period, she mentioned how she liked the tactility of that pre-smartphone era. On another occasion, a gen alpha family member expressed a desire to own a boombox. It’s a thing for that generation to place a bit of an aura on the nineties.
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Took a day trip to Montreal last weekend. Despite going to this city every year or so for events or people, it had been a generation since I had acted the tourist.
It helped that I got to hang out with a pal and go for a 20km walk. I also finally tried both classic Montreal bagel spots: St-Viateur and Fairmont.
One thing that stood out on this trip is how the downtown appears to have started to build big again. The construction of high rises in the city seemed to stagnate after 1970, coinciding with the exile of businesses to Toronto.
While the arts thrived, it seemed dependent on assets from long-gone wealth. I’m glad things are changing.
The public’s support for same-sex marriage in Canada, according to a 2024 Ipsos poll, is at 65%. This is down from 75% three years earlier. Twenty years ago, marriage was the proxy issue for whether gay people had a place in society.
Today, trans people are in the crosshairs and the proxy issues include access to puberty blockers and athletics. In the UK, add to that washroom access. In the US, well, everything.
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