“Pat said ‘yeah for sure– right away.’ And so I just went there after work and I started working on their patio, drawing it out and then painting it and a couple of hours later we put it up in the window,” Shostak said. Shostak, for whom The Beaver has been “a second home” since he moved to Toronto ten years ago, said he got the idea yesterday and immediately called the bar’s general manger, Patrick McKeegan. He pointed out that bars or clubs are often the first “fully queer spaces” people encounter when they come out. “These spaces are not just bars to us they are community centres and community hubs for queer people.” “In the end, every queer space in the city is Pulse, every queer space in the world is Pulse,” Shostak said.
“It’s a reminder that we are still around – we still have our spaces, we still have our bars,” said Rob Shostak, a regular patron at The Beaver who came up with the idea.Īccording to Shostak, the message is that ‘all queer spaces are Pulse.’ On Tuesday, The Beaver, located in the city’s trendy West Queen West neighbourhood, posted a “Pulse” sign in its window designed based on the logo of the Orlando club where 49 people were gunned down Sunday in the worst mass shooting in U.S.
A Toronto gay bar is showing its solidarity with the victims of a mass shooting in Orlando by temporarily adopting the signage of the gay nightclub where the horrific crime took place.
