When I was in Sydney recently my sister asked what did I do to ‘hang out’? At the Academy I was fairly active in some of the ‘clubs.’ One was the Junior Red Cross that devoted its energy to raising money – I guess the money went to the Red Cross. One year we sold ballpoint pens with, I think, Sydney Academy & the school logo printed on them. I remember this because I the group bought them from a company my father’s business used for similar office stuff.
If the order was large enough the company threw in an extra bonus: a coffee percolator one year, a wrist watch the next. We also sold raffle tickets for those bonus items. One year there was regional Jr. Red Cross conference held at Riverview (I think). There was a dinner& dance.
I also joined the Chess Club, even though I wasn’t all that good at it. I barely remember anyone in it. The same for a short-lived ‘Record Club’ where we brought our favourite lps & played a couple of tracks & talked about why we liked them. My selection ‘The King & I’ wasn’t deemed serious enough. The teacher behind the group wanted to hear serious music not pop, show tunes or jazz. The club didn’t last.
My biggest involvement was badminton. We had the gym every Saturday & played round-robin. Singles, mens doubles, girls doubles & mixed doubles. I was a fairly accomplished player & did win a few trophies. There was also competition with other schools.
The best part of this became music! We were allowed to play records, usually 45s, while the play was going on. I quickly gravitated to this & became a sort of dj as mt pop music interest increased. Popular stuff was the Lovin’ Spoonful, The Beatles, Dave Clarke 5. I recall playing The Gates of Eden, which was the flip side of Like A Rolling Stone & being asked to play less serious stuff. When the Monkee’s I’m Not Your Stepping Stone was first played everyone went nuts for it & we had to play it over & over again.
I was pretty serious about badminton though. A bunch of us also played at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, (now home of HAT) which had a couple of courts in its semi-basement auditorium. The space was also used by the Rotary Club for rehearsals & set building. It was great as we got to practice without the rest of the school around us. I was quite taken by one of the other guys who played. He was hairy & sometimes sported a beard until someone at the school would tell him it was time to shave.
The one non-school organization I became involved with was DeMolay, but that’s another post 🙂
The Whitney Pier Museum
is dedicated to the industry of the area
steel workers miners
displays about the various ethic groups
that created the community
Jewish Black Ukrainian
old high-school year books
pictures of teams hockey basketballs
rows of mothers knitting for the war
soldiers returning
those lost
churches that have come gone
business that survived then faded
as economies rose and dipped
the first black owned store in the city
families in fields picnics outings
Christmas parties in church auditoriums
faces turned to cameras
leaden in front of raging blast furnaces
or smeared with cold dust at a mine entrance
men in groups workers comrades
sometimes everyone named
who’s your father
takes on a tree of discovery
I sift through these
wonder about the real lives of these men
wonder where is my queer history
I’m assume each of them
had a wife and kids somewhere
they sweated and worked for that classic dream
a house a garden
no way to find out if any of them
sought out something in each other
no mention that
this is Jack and John
who lived happily together
in this house on Lingan Road
everyone knew but no one cared
I’m happy to know the lives
of famed homos of the past
Radcliff Hall Alan Ginsburg
the list gets longer
as we allow history to reveal
what some historians once thought
too sordid to bring to light
the sex lives of heteros are fine fodder mind you
I look at these photos and wonder
what truths are hidden
unrecognized
no display of the same-sex inclined
it is as if only the famed were queers in history
no ordinary folks
in these little local museums
of the closeted
every Tuesday 2019
September
Shaw Festival – Sex (Mae West)
Stratford Festival – Little Shop Of Horrors
October
Stratford Festival – The Crucible
December
The Secret Handshake Gallery – 
feature – date TBA
June – Capturing Fire 2020 – Washington D.C. 
capfireslam.org
Hey! Or you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy coffee in Washington at 2020’s capfireslam.org – sweet, eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
