Group pushing for province's 1st LGBTQ community centre
A local group wants to create an LGBTQ community centre in downtown St. John's, but the proposition is raising some controversy.
A steering committee has been working on the project for about two years and will be looking for government funding. Newfoundland and Labrador is one of only three provinces in Canada that does not have a centre of this kind.
Charles Murphy moved to St. John's seven years ago. As a queer person, he feels the transition would have been a lot easier if there had been having a central place to connect with the community.
A lot of the resources are scattered, so I ended up having to find them on my own.- Charles Murphy, committee member
"A lot of the resources are scattered so I ended up having to find them on my own, which is kind of cumbersome," he said.
"We'd love to have something here that's our space, that it's visible and we're represented in the St. John's community."
The committee has incorporated the name Quadrangle LGBTQ Community Centre and are currently seeking charitable status.
Two weeks ago they issued an online needs assessment survey and have already received more than 700 positive responses.
The committee's next step is to find a space to rent and draft a business plan, which they hope would include government funding.
Ailsa Craig is a sociology professor at Memorial University who has also been working on the project.
"Being LGBTQ is something that is more accepted and more out there in the open, but there's still not a lot of space which is public for us to build community in," said Craig.
"To be able to have a place you can meet so you're not scrounging for space all the time, a space that's not a bar or commercially related, is really important."
Government office needed more: critics
However, not everyone in the LGBTQ community thinks the centre is a good idea.
Noah Davis-Power is a local advocate who has been fighting for an office of LGBTQ inclusion within the provincial government.
The office would deal with policy oversight, resources, and professional development across all public sectors, he said. A national LGBT charity, Egale Canada, has been lobbying for the office for years.
Davis-Power said that while a community centre would be wonderful, the proposition is taking government's attention and resources away from creating a public office.
"Moving forward we need to have our priorities straight as to where we're going as a community, together," said Davis-Power.
"A pot of money didn't appear at the end of the rainbow, as much as we'd love it to."
We need to be realistic about where the money is coming from, how much money is there, and what we're going to do with it.- Noah Davis-Power
He said that while a community centre would be beneficial to those in St. John's, a government office would improve the lives of LGBTQ people across the province.
"Is that necessarily what we need right now in moving towards making safer schools, better equipped hospitals for trans peoples, for LGBT seniors to go into homes? No, that community centre is not going to do that," he said.
Compared to people in other parts of the province, Davis-Power said St. John's already has "tenfold" the amount of resources available elsewhere.
"We need to be realistic about where the money is coming from, how much money is there, and what we're going to do with it."