25 years of Pink Triangle Services

I had the opportunity to do another history piece for the current issue of Capital Xtra, and I gladly took it. Being as I am a relative newcomer to Ottawa (coming up on five years now), I always like to know a little more about the history of what's gone on, and I'm especially interested in knowing more gay and lesbian history, since I think it's something that my generation and the ones after me don't get a lot of exposure to, which makes these kinds of stories extremely important to tell. There was a lot of material to cover for a story like this, and I picked a few narrative threads to tell it, but with only a page to work with, I had to be pretty judicious about some of it. Nevertheless, it was a fun piece to work on, and I learned a lot doing it.

Smaller magazines to take funding hit

Hitting the Xtra.ca national page a day ahead of its print release for the upcoming issue of Capital Xtra is a piece I wrote on the changes being made to the Canada Magazine Fund. This was an incredibly interesting article to write, as it affects the publishing industry, especially as one of my usual outlets (being Outlooks) may be affected by these changes.

The writing process for this piece was quite long and fairly research-intensive, and I did a lot of interviews to understand the current situation and how the changes are being introduced. I also attended a Heritage committee meeting where the executive director of Magazines Canada was a witness, though as it turned out, his attendance was somewhat problematic as the meeting was really to discuss the cuts to the PromArts and Trade Routes funding, and his presence had been requested by the government members somewhat out of the blue (and hence, he barely spoke the whole meeting). Nevertheless, I'm glad he was there, since it gave me the opportunity to talk to him about the issue.

Amazingly, I managed to get key interview points into the piece from pretty much every subject, which can be incredibly difficult to do in a piece this size. The only person that I wasn't able to get a quote from was the Liberal Heritage Critic, Pablo Rodriguez, due largely to scheduling conflicts, but it turned out well in spite of that absence. I'm incredibly proud of this piece now that it's seeing print.

Green Party leader chats about coalitions, queer issues

I have a new piece up on the Xtra.ca national page today, which is another long-delayed piece, which I had been working on last week. I'd been hoping to speak to Ms. May sooner after her party's policy convention, but she wasn't in Ottawa the week after, and then we she was in town and we finally had a chance to sit down and talk, it was another week before the piece went up on the site, simply because other things ended up taking precedence. But that's the way the business works.

This was my first time meeting Elizabeth May, and I can say that she's as genuine in person as she appears on television. I hope to continue speaking with her again in the near future.

Ottawa bathhouse now partially co-ed

The other, much shorter, piece that I wrote yesterday is now online on the Ottawa page of Xtra.ca. I'm not sure whether or not this will appear in next week's print edition, but I get paid the same regardless.

Anti-gay evangelical appointed to refugee board

I did a piece this afternoon, which is now up on the national page of Xtra.ca, about the appointment of another evangelical to a political post. Did I not also say that I would be doing more pieces on immigration issues? Regardless, this was a pretty good piece to write, and all of my interview subjects called me back at a reasonable time, which allowed me to get this filed ahead of schedule, and work on a much shorter second piece today (which I'll link to when it goes up). There will likely be more immigration-related stories yet to come in the next few weeks, and already the two opposition critics in the piece are getting to know me, which isn't such a bad thing. (In fact, Maurizio Bevilacqua keeps wanting to remind me that yes, he was in the cabinet that voted for same-sex marriage and that he was a supporter, which is always nice to hear).

Tory minister makes case for gay Iranian refugees

I have a piece today on the Xtra.ca national page, which was one of the many projects I was hard at work on last week. I'd been hoping to get this out a bit earlier, but it was a rough week in terms of getting all of my necessary quotes in time, and chasing down certain MPs, and so on.

But it got done, and here it is. It looks like I'll be doing a few more immigration-related pieces in the near future, so this just might be a taste of what's to come.

Citizens' group gung ho about Village

My other piece in the current issue of Capital Xtra is a conversation between the president of the Centretown Citizen's Community Association, and the head of the Village Initiative. Going into writing it, I knew that it would actually be in two formats - a summarised version for the print edition, with the longer piece to show up online. And that's how I wrote it up.

Well, what ended up happening was that my summarised piece was pretty much killed, while an excerpt from the transcript was in the print edition, with a note at the bottom to check the website to read the whole conversation. And then there was a bottleneck issue on the website, and it didn't show up there for another two days (which is why I'm posting this now, and not on Wednesday when the print edition came out).

Part of why I enjoyed this piece was that it allowed me a chance to introduce these two people in the community. I had some success a couple of years ago when I did a group interview with a bunch of sports teams headed to the Outgames in Montreal, and as a result, they got together and formed a quasi-organisation for the city to have some unified representation there. (It didn't much last, but it was a start). That said, I'm hoping that introducing these two individuals will be a way to help contribute to the community through my journalistic efforts.

Pay equity: inside the poison pill of the 2009 budget

One of my pieces for the next issue of Capital Xtra made an early appearance on the website's national page today. The issue is the chances to pay equity that are in the budget implementation bill (that's currently C-10 for those of you keeping score), and I managed to delve into it fairly well, though it is by no means the definitive word on the issue. There are still outstanding questions that I'm waiting for responses for at Treasury Board, so if they ever get back to me on them, I'm looking to do a follow-up piece (though possibly for another venue - stay tuned).

Thoughts From the Hill - March Edition

In this month's issue of Outlooks, we're back to our usual panel format, and I will say that I really enjoyed this month's question. It's one I'd been meaning to tackle since we first started up the panel, and we finally had the right opportunity to look at it.

Since the previous month's panel, there had been shuffle in the Liberal shadow cabinet, and MP Scott Brison was made International Trade critic, after previously having the finance portfolio. And when I went for my interview with Senator Nancy Ruth, she came prepared with a briefing note, and a chart of our top ten import and export trade partners. That was quite a bit of fun.

You can read this month's panel in Outlooks' print edition, or in the online edition, which you can download in .pdf format here. (The panel can be found on page 23).