Mae Callen started Queer Ottawa Blogs over a year ago, because she wanted an online list of local queer blogs and nothing of the sort existed. She wanted to hear about the lives of other queers living here and local voices and experiences she could relate to.
Basically, she just wanted to meet dykes.
In her search, she discovered half a dozen from Ottawa and a whole whack from the rest of Canada. Blogs, that is. Not dykes.
About a month ago she decided to ditch the regional requirement and focus my efforts on compiling a comprehensive blogroll of diverse queer voices both from across the country and from Canadians living abroad. She enlisted my help (I’m Feral Geographer) and Queer Canada Blogs was born.
As you can imagine, such a list is as diverse as Canadians. From a gay kid in Vancouver to Queer Parenting in Halifax, you name it and there is a queer blogging about it. They range in topic from parenting to pets, prostitution to piety. From Yellowknife to Halifax, from Boston to Berlin, queers from Canada make up a surprising number of bloggers, finding community and support online, which maybe they can’t find elsewhere.
In this new feature in Capital Xtra, my co-conspirator and I will troll through the ever-growing list of queer Canadian blogs and pull out the little gems we like the most.
With well over 100 diverse eclectic voices to choose from, I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat waiting to hear which one will be our next pick. This time around, it’s…
The World Needs More Queer Mamas!
queermama.blogspot.com
The blogs of queer parents are a blessing to anyone considering kids. Expanding on the typical topics of exhaustion and puke-stained couches, they also cover themes such as non-biological parent anxiety, homophobic social workers and the task of choosing parental nicknames that reflect sexual and gender diversity.
This is why I love The World Needs More Queer Mamas (queermama.blogspot.com). Subtitled “The adventures of me, my partner and our growing family,” the blog is written by a busy mama in a lesbian household. Her toddler is lucky enough to have both a Baba and a Mama, and, if all goes well, will soon be joined by a younger sibling. The author posts frequent updates on her family’s daily life in a Canadian city, augmenting tales of cute kid stuff with deeper reflections on the complexity of family in a society where married heterosexual parenthood remains the gold standard for acceptance. My appreciation for this well-written narrative compels me to agree wholeheartedly with the rallying cry of the blog title: Yes, the world DOES need more queer mamas!
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