A decade of queer Toronto nightlife gets immortalized in Eric Kostiuk Williams's 2AM Eternal

Queeries is a column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

If you've been even a casual participant in Toronto's queer nightlife over the past decade or so, you've almost certainly encountered the work of cartoonist and illustrator Eric Kostiuk Williams.

He has deservedly been the community's go-to creator for promotional poster art, not to mention mural work (including a particularly iconic one at the legendary late Queen West queer bar, The Beaver). And now you can bring that work home, literally, as Williams has compiled roughly 100 examples of his work in a gorgeous book: 2AM Eternal: A Decade of Queer Nightlife Posters and Comics. 

The book's title is a nod to The KLF's classic rave anthem "3AM Eternal," but adjusted by Williams to reflect Toronto's notoriously early last bar call.

"Ours is a city famously hostile to fun," he writes in the book's foreword, "from its historical Protestantism, earning us the nickname 'Toronto the good,' to its present-day gentrification-on-steroids, creating Sisyphean hurdles in the form of constant venue closures, noise complaints from new condo dwellers, and a higher cost of living that scares off the weirdos and degenerates who keep city living interesting."

While all of this is certainly true, it doesn't feel that way in 2AM Eternal, which makes the city feel like a utopia of queer fun in the decade Williams chronicles — which is a testament to the resilience of Toronto's LGBTQ folks in finding ways to create good times in spite of everything, and to Williams's own role in that history.

Williams comes from a comics background, but through his years being a part of Toronto's queer community, he became involved in not just making posters for people's events but also creating comics about his experiences being out and about. 

"As the years went, there was a larger and larger body of work," he tells me. "I didn't immediately think about collecting it, but it was always in the back of my head."

"I think what made me start thinking about it more seriously was the lockdowns. I did continue to work through the lockdowns, doing stuff for online events, but as with a lot of us, it got me very reflective on everything that had come before over my decade plus in this city. And during that time I did a count of all the posters I had done and it was around 100 of them. So everything was converging into a sign that it needed to happen."

Williams says another big factor in his desire to put together 2AM Eternal was a desire to chronicle something that seemed to be disappearing at a startling rate, in part due to the pandemic as well.

"A lot of performers I'd worked with had moved away at this point, and a lot of the bars we did events at were gone, and a lot of the posters were never printed physically — they were just shared on social media," he says. "So all in all, it kind of felt like a bit of a rescue effort to remember what had happened in the last few years. Because all of a sudden it was starting to feel more like history."

"I think the pace at which things started change made me want to take a moment to remember everything that had happened."

Among those memories is a poster from December 2013 that Williams says "just encapsulates the vibe of The Beaver parties of that era." It was for a drag show called "Bad Tuck: Pro-Choice Christ" that was hosted by Judy Virago and Igby Lizzard. 

"[Judy and Igby] would art-direct me through the posters," he says. "And for this poster, they were each raised Catholic and wanted to do a Christmas party that was sending up Christian tradition and giving it kind of a demented, John Waters-ian spin. So they gave me this very specific directive to draw the nativity scene but with the Virgin Mary giving herself a vacuum cleaner abortion. I remember the emails so clearly where Judy was like, 'We want Mary to be holding the vacuum cleaner, feeling happy, empowered by her decision. It's a positive moment where she's reclaiming her path.'"

Williams says that this specific poster is is unlikely to be something he would make today, though he still stands by it.   

"I think it hit this sweet spot of being on the edge, but not really at anyone in our community's expense," he says. "So that was one that we were really proud of for just nailing the tone. And I remember not a lot of people were physically flyering so much at that point, but we printed a bunch of them and just posted them all around Queen Street. And a lot of them got torn down either by people who were offended by it or people who wanted to keep it for themselves. So it was impactful."

"Honestly, looking back, the most controversial thing about this poster is that the cover charge was only five dollars!"

That party was, of course, held at The Beaver, a bar opened by the late, great queer artist and nightlife pioneer Will Munro in 2006. When the bar shuttered in 2020, coupled with lockdowns, it felt like the end of the very era of queer nightlife in Toronto that Williams documents in 2AM Eternal.

But a new dawn seems to be on the horizon, and Williams is hopeful. This fall, the new queer bar Three Dollar Bill will open in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood, just a few blocks from where The Beaver once was. And the owners asked Williams to create a mural for it.

"There's just something so heartening about being involved with it and painting something new for it," Williams says of his work for Three Dollar Bill.

He calls the mural "a love letter to Toronto's queer history," commemorating venues of days past (Boots, Pussy Palace, The Beaver, The Henhouse and Zipperz), local icons (Peaches, Jackie Shane and Will Munro), and community members we've lost in recent years (Eric Wedderspoon and Sandy De Almeida).

"My intention was to strike a wistful tone without being overly sombre — to celebrate the impact of these people and places in our lives," Williams says. "To carry their memory with us, as we move forward."

2AM Eternal: A Decade of Queer Nightlife Posters + Comics, 2012-2022 is available now.