I blame stephen harper for this….

That is horrible.

One good thing… it is heartening to see that all 16 comments (and the vast majority of the approve/disapprove voters) on the original article are sympathetic… even though this attack happened in Thunder Bay (not that far from Duluth MN), not Toronto.

Everytime I see a photo like this, it sickens me.

i thought Canada was safe for gays. And that Canadians were cool with gays. Apparently it's not as safe as I thought.

It's pretty safe for gays in the major Canadian cities, particularly Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. However, in other parts of Canada, in the small towns, not so much. It's similar to small town, mid-western or southern America. Religion is a big community player and external influences or anything outside the realms of their realities is not always greeted well. It's not like that in every small town but that mentality exists here. I grew up in a very small farming town (population 1300) in Ontario and moved to Toronto because I had had my fill of the small town state-of-mind and I wasn't able to feel safe or be myself. It all comes down to educating people of small towns about diversity and the spectrum of humans that exist outside their often very secluded walls.

Its so sad, the whole episode. I have been wanting to drive across Canada for a while and Thunder Bay is one of the stops (almost inevitable because of its location), and it just makes me nervous of what to expect outside the cities. People already hate Torontonians enough, as a gay Torontonian I am a little worried. Some things seriously need to change and Stephen Harper is the major one. As a nation we vote 56-70 percent for left-wing parties, so why do we have a Conservative government….Coalition anyone?

@big_red737: Thanks for the info.

I hope Jake is able to recover from this, physically and mentally. It's pretty horrible.

Perhaps Queerty's editor's don't realise that Ontario is about twice the size of Texas, so it could use a bit more detail in the story. Thunder Bay is a relatively small city in the Northern part of the province, although to me it is still surprising.

@holla:

True. Thunder Bay is in Northwestern Ontario. Though because of the way the border runs it is only a few kilometers from the U.S. border.

It is a fact that this kind of shit can happen anywhere. There may be a difference in the number of bashers per capita, but it only takes one to fuck you up.

I'm a Canookie and this happening in Thunder Bay doesn't surprise me one bit. It still happens in Vancouver, which has a large,highly visible gay community. It just still happens. Until het men big up and get over themselves, it always will happen.

@scott ny'er:

Well… we're just a country full of people, not some utopian, Platonic republic where everyone is perfectly wise and just :-P In very broad and general terms, Canada is kinda more liberal and gay-friendly than the U.S., but just because we have marriage equality and more legal protection from discrimination doesn't mean that we don't also have plenty of gay-hating, stupid, violent jackoffs too.

Well, for everyone that lives in the city, they are pretty egocentric to believe Canada is safe for gays. When most people live outside of urban areas where the attitudes are backward, your fellow gay men that live in the suburbs are the ones on the front lines of all this ignorance and hatred. Try to live as an openly gay man in one of these towns. I have. And trust me, even though Canadian law may be more forward and protectionist toward homosexuals, homosexuals are the ones not taking advantage of their rights here. If you think you can keep going to party every weekend and take your party drugs and everyone and everything is FABULOUS because your life leads you to think so, then get your head out of your ass. When stuff like this happens to one of us, it means that it is so much more easier for it to happen to you because we stood there and did nothing to help this guy in the aftermath. Sue the fuck out of these bastards for him and send a strong message that this should never happen again. Instead, you'll probably go back to your online profile to find your next hookup and forget about it.
We, in part, do this to ourselves.

I stopped in Thunder Bay on my move out west from Toronto.
We camped in Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.

After a couple of beers around the camp fire, at around 10pm, the camp rangers dropped by our site to inform us we should refrain from our conversation. It wasn't that we were loud (we were splitting a 6-pack after all) but more-so the content of our conversation, which was openly critical of the Bush regime and supportive of gay marriage which was at the fore of Canadian politics at the time. We were told "this is Blue Country" and reminded that the Ontario conservative premier at the time was from not too far away.

Not all places in Canada are gay friendly.

Later on the trip, we had stopped in Kamloops BC and both of us needed haircuts so we dropped by a barber downtown. As Eric saddled up in the barber's chair, he noted the front page headlines that gay marriage had succeeded in Canada – and was openly ecstatic about it. I began reading the local editorials and recognized the name of one of two strong opponents of gay marriage in Kamloops… I began trying to discreetly point at the barber's licence on the wall – which Eric wasn't quite getting. When the phone rang I stepped over and showed him the article. It was even funnier when ten minutes later the local Bishop walks in. Clearly they had talked about national politics the night before and the barber had invited him in to get his hair cut so they could discuss it further. A couple of strange males vocally appaluding gay marriage in the shop squelched their morning conspiring for the next phase of their game, but after we got out of there we felt like we were soon going to be run out of town by some lynch mob. Kamloops is small enough, and in the BC bible belt enough to have that sort of thing going on.

Our one regret was not having visited the Brokeback Mountain film sites on the way out – right in the heart of Canada's Texas (near Calgary, Alberta). Sigh…

So to everyone who thinks Canada is gay friendly – while we have less problems than in the USA – we're by no means clear. Watch your back when you're not in one of the bigger cities.