Small Town, Big Dreams
Couple overcomes adversity to keep Sudbury's only gay bar running.

"Sudbury is very redneck, a very redneck city," says Gilles Gervais of his hometown. He should know. For four years now, Gervais and his partner, JP Pelletier, have owned and operated Zig's, the only gay establishment in this northeastern Ontario city.

Theirs is not an easy job. Located on the Trans-Canada Highway, 390 kilometres north of Toronto and 483 kilometres west of Ottawa, Sudbury is far from the bright lights of the big cities. And, in terms of social attitudes towards gays and lesbians, the gap is even greater.

"I mean we had eggs thrown at [the bar] just last week. It hasn't really changed," claims Gervais, who, for over 10 years, worked in and managed Zig's predecessors - "the few we've had." After learning the rtopes on his own and seeing how badly a bar could be run, he decided that he could do better. "We were saving for a house, which was JP's dream," Gervais, 38, recalls. "He put his dream on the backburner." To start up Zig's (named for Gervais' nickname), Pelletier, 37, left behind not only a homeowner's dream, but also a career in nursing. Although he spent the first year of the venture stilll nursing part-time, the club eventually demanded Pelleter's full-time attention. He says the sacrifices have been worthwhile. "I discovered that there are nice people out there, even in the straight community. There are very nice people out there who accept people the way they are, which was suprising to me, because being from Sudbury, I didn't think there were that many people that were positive."

Of course, not everybody was positive about the idea of Zig's. Sudbury is a small city, with of a population of less than 200,000, so when Gervais mentioned his plan to the father of a goood friend, the reaction was predictably negative. "[He] said we'd never survive, [that] there's only a dozen gay people in Sudbury."

And according to Gervais, this kind of hyperbole isn't always far from the truth. His own experience has shown that Sudbury can't handle more than one gay bar at a time. There just aren't enough people who are out.

So, when Gervais and Pelletier opened Zig's, there was definately an element of risk, albeit a calculated one. "The owner of the other [gay] bar was straight and wasn't willing to do anything [for the gay community]," says Gervais. "He was just 'take the money and run.' I knew the [gay] community would support me, because I'd worked for the community for 10 years. They knew [Zig's] was gay-owned."

Zig's was also more out and proud than anything Sudbury had ever seen. Putting up a sign bearing the rainbow flag outside the bar went beyond the anonymous hidden entrances that were the norm before. As a result, the bouncers at Zig's were instructed to tell everyone at the door that they were entering a gay establishment (a practice that endures today).

Zig's spent close to four years in it's old location before moving to a new one a few blocks further down the same street. Two months after opening in its original location, a high-capacity straight bar opened it's doors across the street. After a couple of years, closing time became ugly. Patrons from the straight bar hurled beer bottles and shouted insults across the street. Business at Zig's went down.

Eventually, after Gervais and Pelletier went to the local media with the story, the straight bar's liquor license was suspended temporarily and the beer-bottle throwing stopped. The verbal assualts, however, did not. Faced with a declining customer base and a deteriorating building, the couple decided to relocate.

"It's a darker entrance, it's not as well lit, so we're getting a lot of closeted [customers] coming in," explains Gervais. "A lot of people are still afraid of coming out. And I don't think it's any easier than four or five years ago. We have gay pride parades, but they're not very large. They don't have a very huge impact."

Gervais thinks that the biggest challenge for Sudbury queers is the lack of safe spaces. "The only place you can be [openly] gay in Sudbury is at the bar. There is absolutely nothing else. I'm not saying that you won't be served at a restuarant as a gay couple, but I'll guarantee you that two gay men cannot walk a downtown street hand-in-hand. They will be called names and whatnot."

"I don't think Sudbury would ever be able to support a gay café or gay restuarant, because the numbers just aren't there and the people aren't willing to come 'out', completely 'out', during the day," he continues. "A bar's a different story. It's night, a little bit of alcohol loosens them up a little bit and they feel a little better. But I don't think Sudbury would ever be able to support a gay business."

This rather bleak assessement of the state of the city's gay community may also explain what could be termed the 'gay drain' to larger cities like Toronto and Ottawa. "There's a constant flow of people moving to Toronto or Ottawa, mostly to Toronto," Gervais notes. "They go out to Toronto, they learn to be proud about themselves and they learn that there's tolerance towards gay people and they come back, only if there's tolerance or understanding on their families' side. If there's none, they don't come back."

For Gervais and Pelletier, their families are part of what keeps them in Sudbury. Zig's is another.

"The bar will never make us rich. We make a living, but not a killing. But that was the whole plan," says Gervais. "We basically took a chance on seeing if we could pull people out of the closet a bit, and we've succeeded in that."

-Leon Mar for fab magazine
Aug. 30 - Sept. 12, 2001