Sarah Liss - Army of Lovers: A Community History of Will Munro

About This Book

Will Munro was a legendary artist, DJ , activist and impresario, as renowned for his transgressive, irreverent art as he was for reinventing Torontos nightlife culture. His installations and prints co-opted rock n roll imagery and raunchy gay iconographyyou couldnt look at mens underwear the same way after a Munro showand his outr Vazaleen dance parties brought to the citys stages some of the most notorious performers of the last forty years: Nina Hagen, Jayne County and Vaginal Davis, among them. When Munro died of brain cancer in 2010, at the unfathomably young age of thirty-five, Toronto was robbed of one of its most significant civic heroes.

Army of Lovers collects stories from and about the people who knew and loved Munroincluding Gossip singer and dynamo Beth Ditto, filmmaker Bruce LaBruce and artist Luis Jacobto movingly capture an incandescent moment when Torontos queer community, art scene and independent music universe came of age and collided with one another.

With her characteristic insight, elegance, wit and generosity, Sarah Liss gives us the first account of Will Munroone of the most important queer artists, activists, promoters and community builders Toronto has ever seen.Michael Cobb, author of Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled

Whenever I came back [to Toronto], I felt like home was seeing Will and hanging out wherever he was. There was a warmth and a love and the knowledge that he was magic. Peaches

About the Author

Sarah Liss is the culture editor of The Grid magazine and a former online arts producer and feature writer at the CBC . Her writing has appeared in Toronto Life , The Walrus , Maisonneuve and Macleans , among other publications, and onstage at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Nightwood Theatre. She lives in Toronto.

About the

Exploded Views Series

Exploded Views is a series of probing, provocative essays that offer surprising perspectives on the most intriguing cultural issues and figures of our day. Longer than a typical magazine article but shorter than a full-length book, these are punchy salvos written by some of North Americas most lyrical journalists and critics. Spanning a variety of forms and genres history, biography, polemic, commentary and published simultaneously in all digital formats and handsome, collectible print editions, this is literary reportage that at once investigates, illuminates and intervenes.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Margaret, Ian and Dave Munro, remarkable folks who are able to find a sense of healing and hope in sharing even their most painful and personal stories. Thanks as well to Alex McClelland, who provided invaluable support and amazing anecdotes. I am so grateful to everyone who agreed to be interviewed for this book, in particular those among Wills Wolf Pack of caregivers: Cecilia Berkovic, John Caffery, Michael Cobb and Lex Vaughn, and Peter Ho, who deserves his own extra-special thanks.

I feel very fortunate to be working with the wonderful team at Coach House, who take such care to produce uncommonly beautiful books. Thank you to Heidi Waechtler, for her close reading and willingness to trek to the ends of the earth (or at least Etobicoke). Thanks as well to Evan Munday, a mensch who is supremely creative and compassionate in everything he does. My infinite gratitude to Alana Wilcox, a wicked smart editor and benevolent overseer who is also very, very funny. And to Jason McBride, whose own work is a reminder of how good writing can be, and whose friendship is as dear to me as his superb editorial guidance: Thank you so much for making Army of Lovers exist.

Thanks to my colleagues at The Grid , who laugh at my terrible display puns, and especially to Lianne George, who helped shape an early version of the very first section of this book.

I am thankful for my own army of loved ones, without whom this book would not have been possible. Boy wonder Luc Rinaldi, who worked faster than humanly possible to help transcribe these interviews and was an invaluable cheerleader, even from overseas. My bests Cathy, Danielle, Jackie, Kate, Lindsay for work dates, pep talks, smoothies and so much more. Tara-Michelle Ziniuk, who remembers all my memories better and more beautifully than I do. My parents and siblings, for everything, always. And, finally, to Lisa, my most careful reader and the rose of my heart.

Typeset in Goodchild Pro and Gibson Pro. Goodchild was designed by Nick Shinn in 2002 at his ShinnType foundry in Orangeville, Ontario. Shinns design takes its inspiration from French printer Nicholas Jensen who, at the height of the Renaissance in Venice, used the basic Carloginian minuscule calligraphic hand and classic roman inscriptional capitals to arrive at a typeface that produced a clear and even texture that most literate Europeans could read. Shinns design captures the calligraphic feel of Jensens early types in a more refined digital format. Gibson was designed by Rod McDonald in honour of John Gibson FGDC (19282011), Rods long-time friend and one of the founders of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. It was McDonalds intention to design a solid, contemporary and affordable sans serif face.

Printed at the old Coach House on bpNichol Lane in Toronto, Ontario, on Zephyr Antique Laid paper, which was manufactured, acid-free, in Saint-Jrme, Quebec, from second-growth forests. This book was printed with vegetable-based ink on a 1965 Heidelberg KORD offset litho press. Its pages were folded on a Baumfolder, gathered by hand, bound on a Sulby Auto-Minabinda and trimmed on a Polar single-knife cutter.

Edited by Jason McBride
Designed by Alana Wilcox
Cover design by Ingrid Paulson

Cover photo of Will Munros art, untitled, red thread on vinyl, 12" by 7.5", courtesy of Margaret Munro

Coach House Books
80 bpNichol Lane
Toronto ON M5S 3J4
Canada

416 979 2217
800 367 6360

mail@chbooks.com
www.chbooks.com

copyright Sarah Liss, 2013

rst edition

Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Liss, Sarah, author

Army of lovers : a community history of Will Munro, the artist, activist, impresario and civic hero who brought together Toronto's club kids, art fags, hardcore boys, drag queens, bitchy queens, grassroots queers, crafty dykes, gender warriors, caf loiterers, park sex aficionados, rock'n'roll lovers, needlework obsessives, limpwristed nellies, stone butches, new wave freaks, unabashed perverts, proud prudes and beautiful dreamers / written by Sarah Liss.

(Exploded views)
1. Munro, Will, 1975-2010. 2. Gay activists--Ontario--Toronto--Biography. 3. Artists--Ontario--Toronto--Biography. 4. Disc jockeys--Ontario--Toronto-- Biography. 5. Gay men--Ontario--Toronto--Biography. 6. Toronto (Ont.)-- Biography. I. Title.