Take Ottawa Pride, A Less than Perfect Kinda-Sorta Superhero, A Hunky French Canadian Leather Man, and Some Religious Intolerance and Stir. Saving the day? Just got fabulous.
In many ways, my first novel Light was a love letter to my first experiences at Pride. It was the first time I found myself surrounded by people like me—and lots of people who were nothing like me, but loved who I was and I loved them just as much for being who they were—and I went back almost every year to reclaim that joy. When I worked retail, I often couldn’t do so, but I tried hard to find a way to sneak an event or two around my work schedule.
Today was the flag-raising ceremony at City Hall, which officially begins the week of queerdom here in Ottawa. Not that we should only have a week, but you know what I mean.
Now, the mayor’s raising of the pride flag at Ottawa Pride wasn’t interrupted by a religious protest of any kind (yay!) and no one started hurting anyone or throwing around objects with psychokinesis (wait, what?) and thus this year’s Pride is already off to a better start than the fictional one I wrote about in Light (oh, I get what you did there!).
But if you want to read a Pride story set in Ottawa that’s our world with just a dash of telepathy and psychokinesis and a kitten and a truly bad blind date that just won’t end and a hunky French Canadian leather man and a handsome cop and a misanthropic drag queen and a big dumb (but brave and loveable) dog, I totally got you covered.
Oh, and happy Pride!
'Nathan Burgoine 