Thunder Bay - Bay Street

Finally being able to enjoy Thunder Bay’s PA downtown, this time I was looking at the space in terms of gender and sexuality, something I had never really noticed or considered while I was living there. There is a lot less sexuality in the downtown spaces in comparison to Saskatoon and New York’s spaces. While there may be occasional instances of sexual display, and I am not unaware of the attire during night life, but there is more modest dress during the day and less displays of affection in public space.

During the Y-art sale, there was a heat wave that was comparable to Saskatoon’s heat in May this year. While people were in shorts and skirts or open backed summer dresses, no one felt the need to wear full bathing attire to keep cool. Despite being very near the shore of Lake Superior, people were dressed in a non sexual manner. I noted the gender of the people in the space was obvious through their clothing, men having a similar long shorts style while women wore dresses or skirts, but there was not a display of skin and sexuality that I saw in other cities on my travels. There was a modesty that did not present itself elsewhere.

While there is still a difference of male and female attire, there was not a discrepancy in the who was showing their sexuality, the women were not more exposed or singled out than the men.There was a wonderful enmeshing of male and female identities in a way that didn’t accentuate their differences.

This downtown Bay Street area was surprising after my experiences in other cities, I was not expecting such a neutrality of sexuality and gender as among the hippies of Thunder Bay art scene. I wonder now if that is why Thunder Bay has always felt more comfortable to me in the past, or has some sort of influence on my own reflection of the space.

Thunder Bay - Trowbridge

Being in Thunder Bay, I knew I would be able to see a waterfront that would include people in swimwear, similar to the waterfront in Saskatoon but actually at swimmable water rather than a green park at city center. The Prairies have small water sources and don’t have much access to swimming but Thunder Bay has various out of town rivers and waterfalls that allow for a summer dip, changing the way sexuality exists in the city. People wear their bathing suits in the water rather than in a park beside the water. I have never come across people in full swimwear within the city of Thunder Bay.

Trowbridge is a camping site/park that runs alongside a river than empties into Lake Superior to the Northwest of town. The entire length is a series of small waterfalls, coming from a small river at the top. This river has a basin at the head of the falls acting like an infinite pool, pouring over the rocks at eye level while you are swimming in the pool.

The area itself has surprisingly little sexuality because there are enough areas to go into; it is often a private experience rather than a public display. Often you catch glimpses of people in full swimwear, in their private little section. There is hardly any attempt at public displays of sexuality because the area is used for cooling off with a private group rather than a beach-like sun tanning display. Though you will see couples out for a swim, it is unlike the couples walking the waterfront in the evening in Saskatoon, there is no strong classification of the area as heterosexual or overly sexual in any way.

The gender was very reminiscent to Banff’s landscape because it is outside of town, which holds the strongest gender signifiers. Besides the campsite, the place is entirely natural following the shape of the landscape. The amount of people who frequent the place are an even mix of male and female, and both are using the space in a similar manner – for swimming, hiking, using the park for picnics which don’t allow the gender of the space to lean one way or another. I have never come across any strong displays of masculinity or femininity in this outdoor space.

Thunder Bay - Camp

Camp was a surreal experience in that I felt connected with nature in a way that I have missed in the prairies. There were small incidences of gender involved but the experience in the space was entirely genderless, just body with air, water and earth.

Within the social aspect of the camp, gender was brought in by the people attending. The masculinity oozed from my experience on the water because of the manly control of the water toys. Bob brought his fatherly protection while Sarah and I were out in the sailboat; he would drive up in his motorboat providing ‘assistance’ in hints and tips on how to control the sailboat and by providing the safety of a mechanical boat rather than sailboat. We were watched women while we were near Bob’s water.

While water held masculine attention, the camp itself seemed to attract the feminine, with all the women flocking to be baking, making meals and cleaning up afterwards in the female kitchen space, often the only occupied space of the interior of camp in the length of a day. While the men and women mingled for most of the resting and chatting, the women would cycle to the kitchen constantly, filling the space as to not allow any foreign bodies into their space, causing the men to retreat to the deck towards the barbeque or the boats.

Finally, sexuality and gender were obvious through bathing attire and the need to cover our bodies in a gender way while around the water.While in female groups we would not hesitate to strip our uncomfortable spandex, but the diversity of the group prevented as exposure of our bodies, despite the little difference a spandex bikini makes. This need to cover our bodies from the other gender continues to define our daily behaviours, which reflects our mental segregation of the two.

Downtown Banff

Downtown Banff was a strange sight to see. This is my second time in the area, the first being in fall, just after most of the tourists had left. This time I was there in June/July, right about the time the tourists start to appear.

The downtown became clogged and crowded quite easily, and while it is a developed area surrounded by gender neutral nature, the city itself is wrought with gender and sexuality. Each tourist brought their own gendered performance to their presence in the space, creating a public space that was not so much influenced by the shops and architecture itself, but by their home cultures carrying the influence on their travels, and the tourist mentality (what happens in Banff, stays in Banff) sometimes slightly muted by the influence of the surrounding nature and landscape of the Rockies.

Within town I was invited to meet some of the local ladies (local being people who rent a space rather than travel through), I was subject to feminine gender specific outfits, small shirts and short skirts, the usual attire for a group of hot young single ladies. The men were a little more subtle but in their masculine attire – long baggy shorts or jeans and t-shirts. This was hardly any different than what I saw in all other cities on my travels, the North American uniform being split into the female showing legs, arms and chest, and the male wearing the proper length to get a wonderful farmers tan. The female shaves all of her body hair, while the male uses his to assert his masculinity. There are rare exceptions to this attire, people who are often seen as deviants or modern hippies.

There was an obvious mating ritual going on at any point past dusk, the whole downtown sprouting bars and the daily shops closing for the night. On a night out with a friend and her mother and aunts, we were targeted for conquest by two drunken ‘sailors’ who were obviously drunk tourists themselves. This is a gross ritual I tend to avoid, but I was entranced with how the three women fell into the trap of the not so charming drunken liars. There was an obvious play of gender in this scene. Those men would not have been there if they didn’t perceive us all as women. The three women would not have been charmed and smitten if they had not been men. There was a sexual tension in every exchange. The mating ritual reminded me of a drunker, more embarrassing version of the cops in Times Square hitting on my group of women.

Does the transient tourist nature of the space make the sexuality more volatile? Does the tight surrounding nature influence the sexuality? Does it influence perceptions of gender? Banff seemed to have a different sexual atmosphere than other locations, one that was hidden within nature yet accentuated by the circumstances of the location whereas gender was similar to the other cities.

Nature in Banff

Arriving at Banff I was wondering whether the nature surrounding the area would hold any gender from its connection to the town and the Center. Walking through the paths however, there are only small indications of human interaction, old fire pits, worn paths, the occasional insertion of man made art using foreign objects and pieces of nature. Most of my surroundings in those forests are completely wild, allowing a genderlessness that comes from lack of social context.

Some small gendering happens with stories of the wildlife in the area, a young mother elk was living in the woods while I was a the center, something we were to watch out for because she would defend her young. This strong motherly dominance shows a female strength that is often missing in human gendering – a mother while strong, must be a role model, a calm and understanding figure.

From that point I realized that any gender I put on to the space was just that – my own assertion of a gender, my own influence labelling the space. The trees are tall and erect, but not masculine, despite mimicking the masculine body. The mountains like breasts, crevices like vaginas, but shape does not specify gender. The nature itself was truly gender neutral. The only true hints of gender came in through human made objects or interference with nature. Small permeations of socially constructed gender extend from the Banff Centre, but diminish as you enter the forested areas, away from the town.

It seems strange to me that I can see the construction of gender and sexuality so clearly in this place, but the juxtaposition of the tourist town and the wild nature accentuates the amount of gender and sexuality within society. New York had much more than Banff because of the confined space and the mass of identities, but it didn’t seem as noticeable as here in Banff, next to nature.

Banff Institute

The institute itself was a strange collection of masculine and feminine signifiers. The Institute itself is slowly leaning away from their arts based focus and slowly embracing the money making aspect of their conferences and meetings of people from around the world. This step to me seems to me masculinising the space; the buildings are being created for corporate aspects, following a traditional and patriarchal formats.

The artwork that was scattered about the centre refutes the stark corporate nature of the space, exposing masculine and feminine creativity, giving an equal balance of feminine and masculine references. Of the participants I have often seen a larger female representative but an equally gendered staff.

Despite the majority of women, feminine art does not dominate the institution causing a discrepancy. The gendered representation is often equal through the gender neutral practise of art and the open and accepting ways of artists.

Sexuality is a different story. Like Downtown Banff the space is neutralized from the nature that permeates the mountain space, but sexuality is actually hidden in plain sight. The centre is known for breaking up relationships and beginning flings or trysts. The odd combination of tourists, visitors and short term artists creates a strange dynamic that encourages sexual conquest but prevents that sexuality from being obvious. The sexuality of location doesn’t affect the display of sexuality within the participants. Most, being artists are often covered in paint, smocks, dust and dirt and chose their wardrobe accordingly rather than don bikinis and skimpy clothing.

The centre itself represents the juxtaposition of gender neutral nature and socially engorged human life. It is a pocket of social up in the mountains, a small climb away from the town itself. It encourages the immersion of people into the nature, exposing the neutrality to the participants but also beginning to infuse nature with human signifiers that get left behind by the visitors. The woods surrounding the buildings of the Centre have human made influence throughout, usually in the form of an installation art piece,, giving it a residue of gender and sexuality to nature.