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Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) club

Posted: 01 Mar 2010

Taken: 01 Jun 1994

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Whitehorse •
Yukon River •
Yukon •

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Whitehorse, Yukon 528a1

Whitehorse, Yukon 528a1
Park outside Whitehorse, Yukon. The rest of this narrative (below) is about the trip and not specific to this picture.

I intended to stay in Whitehorse for a couple of days -- partly just to get the truck cleaned-up and the oil changed, but also because I had a contact there with a gay man.

Whitehorse was somewhat of a surprise -- it's 2800 kilometers (1736 miles) north of Vancouver. Considering its northern location, and after driving through very remote countryside on the way up, I was expecting a fairly rough and tumble city. But, it has the feel of many smaller cities in the Western U.S. -- a nicely maintained, historic downtown with good restaurants and shops, surrounded by suburbia and the standard strip malls and businesses. I've no pictures of the city (my camera had stopped working and was getting fixed), but did later get some pictures of a park just outside town.

My gay connection worked with the Canadian government. His work frequently took him out in the wilderness documenting rituals and working on social issues with native people, and he was also part of a group of gay men who had regular social events in Whitehorse. He invited a group of gay men over for one of the nights that I was there, and about 10 of us sat around talking about gay life in the Yukon. I learned quite a bit in the conversations, but the main thing that I got out of the conversation was a reaffirming of what I had learned in Prince George -- that there is vast distance between the lives and expectations of gay Canadian men in the far north, and the lives of American, urban, gay men.

These experiences in the north served to remind me of two very contradictory impulses in myself -- a strong need to be in less hectic and more 'natural' environments, but an equally strong need for the energy derived from urban life. To some extent I envy those who can settle down in the wilderness, but have to acknowledge that I need 'fixes' of both wilderness and urban.

From 1994 San Francisco - Arctic Ocean camping trip. Scan of an older picture. Best viewed as part of the NW Canada set.
Comments
 Clint
Clint
We had a nice little picnic in this park on our way north. On the way back down, we camped just outside Whitehorse, and went into town to see a movie. I think it was one of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films.

I find what you saw of gay culture in Canada very interesting, similar in some ways to what I think it must have been like in my part of the South in, say, the '70s or so. It sounds similar, at least, to what people who lived there in those days have told me. I wonder if it's changed much in Canada since you made this trip.
10 years ago.
Don Barrett (aka DBs… club has replied to Clint
From what I see, the mix of changes is that, a mix. It seems that throughout the U.S. (and Canada), tolerance for gays has strengthened and so there's less fear of attacks and more of a chance of acceptance (see story linked below on Vicco, KY). But in a perverse way, with increased acceptance there's less of a need to build an alternative structure, and so now there's less likely to be some local place to just hang out with other gays. It used to be that when I traveled I'd check in advance to see where there were gay restaurants, coffee house, or bars in the towns that I'd be going through. I stopped looking for those place, they only exist in major cities now, not in the smaller towns. I did check to see if there was any place in Rapid City for this last trip and couldn't find any.
Vicco, KY: www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/08/mayor-johnny-cummings-vicco-kentucky-interview-colbert-report
10 years ago.
Clint has replied to Don Barrett (aka DBs… club
I'd seen that Colbert Report on Vicco and thought it captured an interesting, often unexpected thing about Appalachia I find often to be true. Despite the extreme backwoods nature of the place and the fact that they're extremely leery of ousiders--or maybe because of that fact--Appalachian people can be surprisingly forward-thinking. I've nursed a number of theories why over the years, but I would never expect a story like this to come out of western Kentucky.

It's true, a lot of people here in Chicago talk about a decline of gay culture in the Andersonville neighborhood, what traditionally has been called "Boystown." The Pride Parade has exploded in popularity over the last five or six years, but the neighborhood itself has become much more the territory of young, semi-affluent professionals than the mass of gay shops it used to be. You see a lot of jogging moms with mega-strollers there now.

In a way, it reminds me locally of the decline of the Bronzeville neighborhood that came on the heels of the civil rights movement. I've read a lot about the way Bronzeville thrived in the early half of the 20th century, with a thriving economy all its own that kept it a strong and vibrant community. (Richard Wright likely would have questioned that assertion.) Then after the '60s on, African-Americans could (in theory) patronize any business in any part of the city they wanted. This is unquestionably a good thing, but it resulted in a cultural hole at the heart of Bronzeville. The neighborhood always had lots of poverty, of course, but it also had strengths. After the '60s, those strengths left to try to compete among the culture at large (where it had a distinct disadvantage), and all Bronzeville had left was the poverty.

It's far from a perfect analogy, but I think there are similarities.
10 years ago.
 Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)
Don Barrett (aka DBs… club
There are indications that the death of supportive community has not been that healthy for African-Americans, showing up in increases in teen suicide and heart-disease for adults. Its superficial acceptance, the workplace is still not that accepting (e.g., Silicon Valley is very white). Its way too long to get into here, but there are solid reasons to expect that sexual health problems for same-sex active are still high in part due to the lack of a community to shape self-worth.
10 years ago.

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