opinion & features

In September, Donna Glover and I flew to Denver, Colorado, to attend the International Two-Spirit Leadership Summit 2011. Hiram Calf Looking Sr., co-ordinator for the Two-Spirit Society of Denver, invited leaders from the U.S. and Canadian two-spirit groups to attend this historical event. As co-directors of the Two-Spirited People of Manitoba Inc., we were honoured to be invited and made the journey to the Mile High City.

Corey ShefmanThe top change in the tech world this year is going to be that tablets and netbooks are going to swap places in popularity and availability. Netbooks debuted in 2007, but they paved the way for the tablet boom that is now taking off. In our ultra-connected world, the young and tech-savvy are demanding an internet-connected device larger than their smartphones and smaller than their 15-inch laptops.

It didn’t make national headlines, but last March Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced a rare partnership with Canada’s queer community: a pilot project to help refugees persecuted for their sexual orientation find safe haven here. Through the project, Citizenship and Immigration Canada is to work with the Rainbow Refugee Committee to share the cost of sponsoring gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual refugees come to Canada. 

Mariah HansonTwenty-two years ago, Mariah Hanson’s dream was to produce an event that was far and above what lesbians were used to. The result has been the incredible Club Skirts Dinah Shore Weekend that takes place over five days in Palm Springs, California, every year – an iconic gathering and music festival for the lesbian community. “It’s an honour to produce an event that in many respects has become a right of passage,” Hanson says. “The Dinah is where facets of our community come together for five days to celebrate our lives. The joy and celebration is prevalent. The separations between us seem to just fade away.”

When teacher Ray Desautels goes to a school function with his partner he knows the gay couple won’t face a hostile reaction. “I have always been able to (attend functions),” he says of the accepting environment in the St. James-Assiniboia School Division in west Winnipeg. “I have found St. James-Assiniboia to be supportive (though it) was not always that way.”  That acceptance extends to allowing gay and lesbian teachers to display photos of their significant others in the classroom, he says. Sadly, acceptance isn’t universal, Desautels points out. It’s common “in most Winnipeg schools [but] in rural areas not so much,” he says.