in a moment that has made me feel like Not A Spring Chicken Anymore, an OCAD student asked me to write up some thoughts about the mural at The Beaver for an assignment on Toronto nightlife. i was happy with how the write-up came together, and thought i would share it on here, in case any of you are interested. ❤
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Like many before me, I first flocked to The Beaver as a curious baby-gay seeking a west-end alternative to the Church and Wellesley nightlife scene, where I’d felt like a bit of an outcast. I became a Beaver regular in the early 2010s, shortly after the bar’s co-owner, the beloved artist/DJ/promoter Will Munro passed away from cancer. I’d never had an opportunity to meet Will, but I felt the heaviness of his loss hanging over the queer community.
Fortunately, The Beaver carried on, thanks to both those in Will’s scene and a new generation of keen and transgressive nightlife freaks. I was studying at OCAD at the time, and the prospect of illustrating event posters felt like an exciting change of pace from my class assignments. I linked up with an emerging drag collective, the House of Filth, and became one of the regular poster artists for their infamous monthly party, Bad Tuck.
As the years went on, The Beaver staff and regulars became my buddies. The former bar manager had proposed I paint a mural referencing Will Munro and Jeremy Laing’s Virginia Puff-Paint installation, but the owner expressed concern that it might alienate the bar’s more normie brunch crowd. The owner became less involved overtime, and in 2016, Lee D’Angelo, a prominent local tattoo artist who bartended at the time, began drawing on the walls of the washrooms and back hallway in an effort to breathe some new energy into the space. Lee generously offered me a wall of my own, so I drew one of my comic characters kicking over a condo complex.
Lee, myself, and a few other local artists had thoroughly decorated the back hallways, but I was still keen on the idea of creating a proper mural right by the dance floor. This time, the current bar manager was able to give me the OK, and I in fact had free reign to do whatever I wanted! I was given a key to the bar, and over two or three weeks, I would let myself in, throw some music on, and paint throughout the days.
The mural came together organically. I wanted it to feature the “queerdo canon” and serve as a tribute to The Beaver’s mandate, and to Will’s spirit. There’s a range, from larger cultural figures (Bjork, Liza Minnelli), to queer art icons (Klaus Nomi, Sylvester, the Cockettes, Leigh Bowery, Pickle Surprise), to local legends (General Idea, Virginia Puff-Paint). Across from the mural, I re-created one of Will’s final pieces, an Egyptian god with Tom of Finland’s head, watching over the dance floor. It’s a powerful, haunting piece from a body of work exploring his own mortality.
Will died almost a full decade ago now, and the new baby-queers flocking to The Beaver may not even know who he was — and you can’t blame them. So much queer history isn’t reliably documented or institutionally preserved. It’s often up to us to keep the stories alive. Hopefully the mural can serve as a reference point, and a celebration of what’s come before — energy that can be transferred to the next crop of nightlife freaks and whatever they have in store for us.