In April last year (2023), I attended a QMUNITY event at Creekside Community Centre aimed at services and opportunities for senior gays. Part of the agenda included a panel of older gay writers reading short excerpts of memoirs, poems and the like. This was my introduction to Quirk-e. I had long contemplated writing, especially memoirs, but had rarely put pen to paper. But those kindly benign faces on stage looked like they might give me the encouragement and mentoring I needed to begin.
I inquired about the group and was given a member’s phone contact, and shortly after had a telephone interview. I was asked a number of questions about myself and then was told my interest in joining Quirk-e would be vetted by their coordinating committee before acceptance. He did suggest that I sounded like their type but membership was limited and there were only a few spots open. Well, I thought, I hope I’m gay enough, interesting enough or whatever is required, and wondered just how exclusive was this group. Turns out I made the grade, and was invited to join, but it was now summer and for various reasons I was not able to attend my first meeting of Quirk-e until October.
My first meeting was on Zoom. It was my first glimpse of the grey-haired and balding members who occupied each of the gallery squares on my laptop. As usual, I found it comforting that my peers always manage to look so much older than I think I do. As the meeting progressed all kinds of topics were brought forward. A major project was developing a website so that others could find links to Quirk-e information, its history, stories, and resources. Some members were facilitating a refugee family coming to Canada, SOGI was being threatened, the planet was dying, and so it went. Finally with a handful of minutes left in the two-hour meeting it broke into three small groups depending on the creative interest of participants. I went to the Pan-memoir group. There was time for just one short reading.
When the meeting had ended I thought about what I had observed and heard. Was my first introduction to Quirk-e what I expected? What had I expected? Maybe a tutorial on sentence structure or missing commas or dangling modifiers? Perhaps, but, I do know that I had not expected to observe a forum of elder gays that were astutely political, antiracist, refugee advocates, environmentalists, and committed to reconciliation for Canada’s Indigenous people. As I attended a few more meetings, I began to appreciate that Quirkies had a fierce commitment to social justice. Yes, it was a writing collective but the substance of their work was also meant to challenge inequality, the intolerant, and the misinformed.
On reflection, I should not have been surprised. After all, wasn’t our generation of the baby boomer gays the progressive champions of social change? Isn’t that how we learned to survive and thrive as a community? We have always known struggle. We have fought for rights that were denied us. We have fought injustice and inequality heaped on our community and in turn had the backs of other marginalized minorities. Quirkies are tried and true old war horses still trudging on, because their work is not done.
My politics are left of center but I still have a lot to learn about the struggles for justice and equality for all peoples. Although I have participated in small ways in the past, I thought my days of activism were behind me, or at best I would be supportive from my easy chair or with the donor’s cheque.
In the past few months I have received encouragement and mentoring for my writing but I am also getting an education on discrimination, oppression, and injustice. It has been a dividend to listen to the discussions promoting inclusive policies that embrace racial as well as sexual and oppressed minorities and the health of the planet. Activism is part of Quirke’s agenda, through advocacy as well as through writing and documentation of our past and present struggles. Turns out I didn’t join just a writing group and I better not put my marching boots away just yet.
