Thunder Bay - Bay Street

Finally being able to enjoy Thunder Bay’s PA downtown, this time I was looking at the space in terms of gender and sexuality, something I had never really noticed or considered while I was living there. There is a lot less sexuality in the downtown spaces in comparison to Saskatoon and New York’s spaces. While there may be occasional instances of sexual display, and I am not unaware of the attire during night life, but there is more modest dress during the day and less displays of affection in public space.

During the Y-art sale, there was a heat wave that was comparable to Saskatoon’s heat in May this year. While people were in shorts and skirts or open backed summer dresses, no one felt the need to wear full bathing attire to keep cool. Despite being very near the shore of Lake Superior, people were dressed in a non sexual manner. I noted the gender of the people in the space was obvious through their clothing, men having a similar long shorts style while women wore dresses or skirts, but there was not a display of skin and sexuality that I saw in other cities on my travels. There was a modesty that did not present itself elsewhere.

While there is still a difference of male and female attire, there was not a discrepancy in the who was showing their sexuality, the women were not more exposed or singled out than the men.There was a wonderful enmeshing of male and female identities in a way that didn’t accentuate their differences.

This downtown Bay Street area was surprising after my experiences in other cities, I was not expecting such a neutrality of sexuality and gender as among the hippies of Thunder Bay art scene. I wonder now if that is why Thunder Bay has always felt more comfortable to me in the past, or has some sort of influence on my own reflection of the space.

Thunder Bay - Trowbridge

Being in Thunder Bay, I knew I would be able to see a waterfront that would include people in swimwear, similar to the waterfront in Saskatoon but actually at swimmable water rather than a green park at city center. The Prairies have small water sources and don’t have much access to swimming but Thunder Bay has various out of town rivers and waterfalls that allow for a summer dip, changing the way sexuality exists in the city. People wear their bathing suits in the water rather than in a park beside the water. I have never come across people in full swimwear within the city of Thunder Bay.

Trowbridge is a camping site/park that runs alongside a river than empties into Lake Superior to the Northwest of town. The entire length is a series of small waterfalls, coming from a small river at the top. This river has a basin at the head of the falls acting like an infinite pool, pouring over the rocks at eye level while you are swimming in the pool.

The area itself has surprisingly little sexuality because there are enough areas to go into; it is often a private experience rather than a public display. Often you catch glimpses of people in full swimwear, in their private little section. There is hardly any attempt at public displays of sexuality because the area is used for cooling off with a private group rather than a beach-like sun tanning display. Though you will see couples out for a swim, it is unlike the couples walking the waterfront in the evening in Saskatoon, there is no strong classification of the area as heterosexual or overly sexual in any way.

The gender was very reminiscent to Banff’s landscape because it is outside of town, which holds the strongest gender signifiers. Besides the campsite, the place is entirely natural following the shape of the landscape. The amount of people who frequent the place are an even mix of male and female, and both are using the space in a similar manner – for swimming, hiking, using the park for picnics which don’t allow the gender of the space to lean one way or another. I have never come across any strong displays of masculinity or femininity in this outdoor space.

Thunder Bay - Camp

Camp was a surreal experience in that I felt connected with nature in a way that I have missed in the prairies. There were small incidences of gender involved but the experience in the space was entirely genderless, just body with air, water and earth.

Within the social aspect of the camp, gender was brought in by the people attending. The masculinity oozed from my experience on the water because of the manly control of the water toys. Bob brought his fatherly protection while Sarah and I were out in the sailboat; he would drive up in his motorboat providing ‘assistance’ in hints and tips on how to control the sailboat and by providing the safety of a mechanical boat rather than sailboat. We were watched women while we were near Bob’s water.

While water held masculine attention, the camp itself seemed to attract the feminine, with all the women flocking to be baking, making meals and cleaning up afterwards in the female kitchen space, often the only occupied space of the interior of camp in the length of a day. While the men and women mingled for most of the resting and chatting, the women would cycle to the kitchen constantly, filling the space as to not allow any foreign bodies into their space, causing the men to retreat to the deck towards the barbeque or the boats.

Finally, sexuality and gender were obvious through bathing attire and the need to cover our bodies in a gender way while around the water.While in female groups we would not hesitate to strip our uncomfortable spandex, but the diversity of the group prevented as exposure of our bodies, despite the little difference a spandex bikini makes. This need to cover our bodies from the other gender continues to define our daily behaviours, which reflects our mental segregation of the two.