Would you believe that I am nearly finished with the re-scanning of photos I made during our vacation to Toronto in June 2024? Since it was the first time we had been back in town since 2019, I ended up using just over eighteen rolls of film!

With our time rapidly coming to an end (just in time for the temperatures to return to normal levels), we had two more things on our list: dinner at the Artful Dodger and a little visit to the Village.

Why?

Nostalgia, for the most part.

When I’d visit Toronto ~~~ i n a p r e v i o u s l i f e ~~~ I would sometimes set myself up at the Dodger with a beverage and do some of the writing that I had been putting off in favour of exploring and making photos. It was welcoming and cozy and I enjoyed having a third space in a city I did not reside in (but have always very much wanted to).

Still, it felt somehow important to visit even if we were walking through a sort of imagined reconstruction of a corridor that seemed in reality to be more like Centretown than the neighbourhood present itself to be today.

For its own part, Ottawa doesn’t really have an equivalent to The Village. Sure, the Bank Street BIA has in recent year played up the neighbourhood’s history of being quite queer, but the rainbows mostly showed up after 95% of the establishments and hangouts disappeared.

Not that our neighbourhood isn’t consummately queer. As a trans woman, I’ll just say that I am in very good company in Centretown.

Were we actually missing out on anything?

If we were to make a list, not really. But at the same time, we did feel something at the time. Like a social license for our own queer selves that didn’t seem to exist in Ottawa.

At least not in the same way.

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