By: Bridgette Walker
There have been and will continue to be various types of service and working dogs in educational environments like McMaster University and out in the world at large. I’m Bridgette and I have a dog guide named Estelle.
Please don’t freak out! Properly trained dogs are more effective, efficient and reliable than technology for a lot of physical and mental health conditions. These dogs truly do save lives.
Estelle plays many important roles in my life including going to McMaster University with me. She does many things including listening for certain sounds — especially my snack alarms — and knows where all the really important places are. Aside from deafness, I have anxiety, autism and chronic migraines. Estelle keeps me in check mentally and emotionally.
When meeting service dogs, there are some ground rules: ask first, establish what’s helpful and what are the limits. There are some things Estelle really shouldn’t do for her own sake, and a few things that would actually cause problems for me. Meeting other service dogs is cool too, as long as they're all well-behaved and ready to get right back to work.
Anyway, I don’t appreciate people randomly trying to pet or play with Estelle while I’m walking between classes. In general, all dog guides need to pay attention to where they’re going, and to their person. We're on the move, but she’s still listening for what sounds are in the area, how I am doing and so forth.
Please respect my space. I don’t like being “crowded in” and neither does Estelle. She may be a dog, but she’s also regarded as a medical device — same as a wheelchair or other medical apparatus.
And yes, you can take a picture of us as part of the scenery going by, but don’t stop us to pose for snaps; if we did this every time, I'd be late for everything.
Enough with distracting the dogs themselves! This can be dangerous for other people with more serious conditions when their service dogs are being distracted and hindered from alerting them to potentially harmful or even fatal issues that can crop up at any time. I’m blessed that this isn’t the case for me, so far.
Then there are people with phobias. I don’t know whatever trauma you have endured in the past but we really don’t mean you any harm! Please, stop screaming and whining. It’s not good for Estelle's ears, not good for my anxiety and certainly not good for your throat or mental health.
Don’t project your personal problem onto us like that. You are an adult in university and entering the working world. If you’re going to be like that every time you see Estelle or another kind of service dog on campus or out in the world, you’re not going to live as good a quality life as you deserve. Everyone should be able to enjoy or at least tolerate seeing these dogs on duty — they’re really good at heart!
The secret is that if she weren’t on duty, she'd like to try being your friend! Estelle also likes visiting babies, kittens and even pet chickens. Anyway, since she can’t try comforting you in her doggy-way, try refocusing your perspective of the dog with: “It’s a special animal. It’s somebody’s lifeline.”
From Estelle and me, see you around campus!
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In recent years, Hamilton’s downtown core has changed rapidly, with many businesses closing down and new ones popping up, just as fast. While some may welcome these changes, many others point to a loss for the LGBTQA2S+ community, with many popular gay bars closing down as the city evolved.
In the early 2000s, there were five major gay bars people could go to: The Werx, the Rainbow Lounge, The Embassy, M Bar and The Windsor, all of which were located in Hamilton’s downtown core. Since then, all of these bars have shut their doors.
For James Dee, a McMaster alum and Hamilton resident since 2004, bars such as the Embassy were an important aspect of their experience with Hamilton’s queer community as a place where they could go without threat of violence.
“We maybe have a little bit of drama and be kind of mean to each other….But when the lights came on at the end of the night you know everyone was checking in with each other like 'text when you get home and so I know you're safe,'” Dee said.
While Hamilton’s queer scene thrived in 2004, it was not without violence. In that same year, Hamilton Police Services, among other municipal agencies, raided the Warehouse Spa and Bath and arrested two men for indecent acts. That raid was followed by protests from Hamilton’s LGBTQA2S+ community.
“It felt a lot more dangerous to be visibly queer in 2004,” Dee said. “I think it's easy to kind of romanticize the time when we had brick and mortar spaces but it's also easy to forget why we needed those spaces so much.”
Dee believes that, to some degree, places closed down due to a decline in need, but also points to the gentrification of Hamilton as another key reason these spaces disappeared.
“It's not just the story of queer Hamilton, it's the story of Hamilton in general… a lot of the places I used to enjoy hanging out [at] are now bougie coffee shops,” Dee said.
For example, following the shuttering of the Werx’s door, the building was converted into the Spice Factory, a popular wedding venue.
“All across the board, [the gay bars] catered to people with less money,” Dee said. “They don't survive downtown anymore.”
For Sophie Geffros, another long-time Hamilton resident and McMaster graduate student, the loss of brick-and-mortar spaces has meant a segregation within the community.
Geffros, who spent their teen years in Hamilton, had many of their formative experiences at bars such as the Embassy, where they met older members of the LGBTA2S+ community in addition to those their own age.
“There is still an isolation that I think that can only be combated by in-person interaction,” Geffros said.
“We're a little more fragmented. Like if I'm going out… I'm going to be going out with people I already know who are members of the community,” they added.
For Geffros, the loss of Hamilton’s queer spaces is especially harmful, as these spaces were often the most accessible hangouts for queer people living in rural communities that lack direct bus service to Toronto.
“Those are people who are particularly isolated, who are often closeted throughout the week and would come to Hamilton on the weekend to blow off steam and be amongst themselves. That's a real loss,” Geffros said.
While there are no longer any physical LGBTQA2S+ spaces, there are opportunities for Hamilton’s queer community to converge. Dee is one of the founders of Queer Outta Hamilton, a collective that runs monthly queer pub nights, typically at Gallagher’s Pub.
In addition, there are other organizations that offer workshops and events, such as Speqtrum Hamilton, the NGen Youth Centre, Pride Hamilton, the McMaster Students Union Pride Centre and others.
There are also many LGBTQA2S+-friendly bars and clubs, such as Sous Bas, which offers queer events, typically in partnership with Queer Outta Hamilton.
While Hamilton may have lost its major physical queer spaces, the community continues to support each other the best they can.
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wMany Welcome Week representatives will do anything for a donation in their faculty’s name towards Shinerama. Typical activities include selling popsicles in the sweltering heat, a song or dance to entertain a Hamiltonian doing their groceries or even a back massage to a tired fellow-rep.
Shinerama is the annual campaign many Canadian universities fundraise for during their Welcome Weeks, with the money ultimately going to Cystic Fibrosis Canada
But while most of these creative fundraising techniques are sanctioned by the university, provided the person solicited for the donation provides consent, one common fundraising technique involving alcohol expressly forbidden by the university has been driven underground.
Shinerama Keggers are a lucrative enterprise. For a small entry fee (usually $5-$10 dollars) student houses provide unlimited beer from a keg until it runs out, or the police come to shut it down due to noise complaints or public drunkenness.
These events are promoted through Facebook, or more covertly through text or word-of-mouth of the address where it will be held.
I thought about writing a news article on this phenomenon, reporting on specific Shinerama Keggers held by specific faculties that friends or I have attended. But pinpointing any one faculty would be unfair. This practice is widespread among all faculties, it’s been normalized in university culture, despite attempts by the Student Success Centre to emphasize safe alcohol consumption.
I’m not here to be a party pooper. In fact, for some people parties are an integral part of feeling welcomed into the McMaster community. But Shinerama Keggers are not the way to go about this and are problematic in several ways.
Firstly, while the primary audience is usually faculty Welcome Week representatives (especially for the Shinerama Keggers that happen in the summer), it is not uncommon to hear of first years being invited to the ones that happen during Welcome Week. This contributes to constructing partying and binge drinking as a necessary part of the university social experience, which it isn’t.
Such events are also explicitly forbidden, meaning organizers go to extreme lengths to conceal them. Shinerama Keggers are sometimes referred to as “Apple Juice Parties” or “Charity Keggers” in order to have no official association with Shinerama fundraising. It is kind of ridiculous that mature university students feel that they have to host an “Apple Juice Party” in order to raise donations to compete for Faculty Cup glory that is quickly forgotten.
Finally, the irony of fundraising for a health cause, Cystic Fibrosis Canada, by profiting from selling alcohol is rich. Proponents of Shinerama may argue the ultimate goal of raising money for Cystic Fibrosis research justifies the means but many have questioned whether fundraising should even go to CFC or whether it could be more effectively directed.
I’m hoping this article will spark an open discussion on the extreme lengths students feel compelled to go to in order to raise money for Shinerama. Although this practice may gradually cease as university Welcome Weeks are increasingly scrutinized, they might also be simply pushed further underground.
