Homos and their newspaper should be welcome in the city, in the suburbs, and everywhere.
That’s the message a small but proud group of Ottawa queers and allies brought to Broadway Bar & Grill in Kanata on Friday.
They were there to bring queer visibility to the restaurant, whose owners requested that a Capital Xtra newspaper box be removed from the front of the establishment in October.
Broadway’s managers said that their request to remove the box was based on a number of complaints from the restaurant’s patrons, who were concerned at some one the material in the newspaper.
“I guess some of the people we get in here are a little bit more closed minded,” said Adam Aucoin, a queer server who works at Broadway. “It’s just unfortunate that this is what had to come about, because the owners really didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings…they were just trying to keep the peace.”
Staff from Capital Xtra and several members of Carleton University’s GLTBQ Centre came to Broadway to show Broadway’s owners, staff and patrons that queers and their newspaper are no different than the rest of the patrons at the restaurant or the Ottawa Sun box outside.
“It’s important to show that gays and lesbians are everywhere in this city, and everywhere in Canada,” said Marcus McCann, news editor at Capital Xtra. “Here we are and we’re proud.”
Aucoin said he was glad the Capital Xtra supporters came out to Broadway. “My fears were diminished when I went onto the Facebook event, and people were saying that it wasn’t going to be a negative thing. Nobody’s going to picket or protest or anything like that, they just want to come, eat, drink and be merry, and show Broadway and the owners that they exist.”
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