Province to Look at Developmental Services

By Emily Wrigglesworth

The Select Committee on Developmental Services will be holding public hearings to gather information. The meetings will be Wednesday at Queen’s Park in Toronto. The information will be put into a report that will be presented to the provincial government.

The 9-member committee is gathering information about people living with intellectual disabilities and those who have a dual diagnoses of mental illness and intellectual disabilities.

“I want to hear from families, individuals, siblings even who are in a situation and can give us first-hand knowledge,” says committee member MPP Sylvia Jones.

As a select committee, the members are from different ministries within the provincial government. Their goal is to get the ministries to work better together.

The existing programs split the responsibility of care for the individual. The problem is that the programs don’t blend with each other and there is very rarely overlap. This leaves the individual with no access to help for up to a few years. One of the most common cases is when the individual moves from the school system (usually ending at 18, but they are allowed to remain in the program until they are 21) to the next system, which can start at 21.

There aren’t always programs available at 21 though, and when there is, they can include a wait list. The committee hopes to improve the continuity between the programs, ensuring that the individual can always get the assistance they require.

“I’m hearing from… mostly older parents worried about what’s going to happen to their children when they pass away,” say Vice-Chair MPP Christine Elliot.

Elliot has been working to get the committee for over year. It was approved last year but before the provincial government could pass legislation for them to meet, Dalton McGuinty stepped down and the motion died in prorogation. When Kathleen Wynne took over, Elliot proposed the motion again and it went through fully.

The committee is hoping to get travel approval for the winter break. Elliot says they are planning to travel across Ontario, hitting communities in the four corners of the province, and visiting First Nations communities.

“A lot of families, because of the care needs of their family members, are not able to travel to Toronto,” says Elliot. “So we need to be able to get to them in, of course, reasonable limits.”

Elliot says that the First Nations communities are harder to work with because they are the responsibility of both the provincial and federal governments. She says that they want to include everyone in the solution and that means getting First Nations’ input.

The committee hopes to make their interim report in mid-February and have their full report done by mid-May 2014.

The Query Letter Conundrum

By Emily Wrigglesworth

Query letters are something that every freelance writer has to write on a regular basis. Ther problem new writers face however is that there doesn’t seem to be a set way to write one. Many freelancers have developed their own way of writing them, and almost all have changed their approach from the first try to the ones they write now.

“I started off with what I realized was way too long pitches,” says writer Alexander Huls. “They weren’t very focused. Now I’m much more succinct, I get more to the point.”

As with other writers, Huls says that how you approach a query letter is influenced with your relationship with the editor. Many freelance writers have forgone the traditional query letter for a quick note to an editor friend.

“I have editors who I’ve worked with who I’ll send a paragraph saying ‘What do you think about this, this, this and this? Does anything appeal to you, and would you like me to flesh it out so that you have a better understanding of it?’” says freelancer Alex Newman. “… It really depends on what your relationship with the editor is.”

Writer I.J. Schecter disagrees with that approach. He says that even though he’s established himself as a writer, he still frets over the query letter and puts a lot of effort into writing one.

“I never send anything out until I think that it’s as good as it’s going to be,” Schecter says.

Schecter spends hours looking over his query letters, but never in one sitting. He takes a few days, and spends an hour or two each day perfecting what he has done.

One thing that the writers agreed on is that there needs to be research done before a pitch is sent out. Another is that there needs to be a strong idea. Not even the best written query can save a poor idea.

“The number one thing for a query letter is be sure you have a strong story,” Newman says. “You’re pitching to someone who you’ve never pitched to before, and they don’t know who you are, is it a story? Can you tell a story? And that’s pretty much it.”

Even if there is a strong story, all three stress that writers need to be ready for the answer from an editor to be “no.”

“I always joke that pitching is like volunteering to be rejected,” laughs Huls. “Which makes it like dating I guess in some ways.”

For many writers, getting ideas for stories is as easy as sitting down in a coffee shop and just listening to conversations around them.

“The answer to ‘where do you get your ideas,’ the honest answer,” says Schecter “Is everywhere, all the time. I don’t think there’s any other answer.”

For some writers though, it’s harder than that. Some writers have difficulty picking stories out of seemingly thin air. Those writers, Huls included, tend to stick to writing about things they know really well, and often struggle to push themselves too far outside of their comfort area.

Regardless of the topic, the underlying advice the three writers have for writing query letters is know your story, know the publication and make it unique. Most importantly: don’t waste the editors time, or your own.

Oasis Aqualounge: Love Nest or Creep Fest?

By Emily Wrigglesworth

 

Normal clubs have loud music. Normal clubs have alcohol. Normal clubs have guys who get a little too touchy feely with the girls. Oasis Aqualounge has all of that. But it’s a sex club, and most people there are already naked. Those people are usually only women and couples at the club.

Oasis only allows single men into their club one night a week: Wednesday. For most clients, this night is not a problem. In fact, some of the women that go to the club make light of the fact that single men seem to flock to the club on those nights.

“I have a friend who calls it ‘Weiner Wednesdays’,” laughs Skye Fraser as she sips a drink at the bar, wearing a towel around her legs, black fairy wings and nipple rings glinting in the light. The lights from the strobe pulse almost in time with the beat of the club music coming from the DJ table behind her.

She doesn’t find the amount of males at the club disturbing though.

“I’ve never had an issue. It’s a decent place.”

Fraser (who did not want her real first name used) was a regular at the club when she lived in Toronto. Since moving to Ajax, she only comes to Hot Springs Wednesdays. She says that there isn’t a noticeable difference with the club atmosphere between the nights that men aren’t allowed and those when they are.

“They know that no means no,” she explains. “ And (the staff) are right on top of things.”

 Even the guys have noticed the overwhelming number of men.

 “There’s too many fucking guys!” says Franco Ace (who did not want his real name used).

 “I don’t mind them as much,” says Renthu Rishigan with a smirk. “I like to mind the ladies.”

 The club is quiet during the day, with a smattering of people throughout the club, chatting around the bar downstairs. There’s usually a guy or two who takes advantage of the couch sitting next to the bar and has a great view of whatever porn movie is playing on the big screen behind the DJ booth and stripper pole. These are the guys who usually walk around without towels or clothes and stroke their manhood whenever they catch someone glance over.

 When the sun goes down, the club starts to fill up. This is when the hot tub fills up with seven or eight naked men, and one or two naked women. The crowd gets younger – the daytime crowd tends to be between 45 and 65 years old, while the night crowd dips to around 25-50. The drinks start flowing. The towels start to come off and the girls start to moan. Couples playfully run up and down the stairs, smacking each others bums, bouncing from the hot tub to the bar to the third floor, which is restricted to just women and couples. Single men can only go up there if they are accompanied by at least one lady.

 A couple or two play in the dungeon on the second floor, tying each other up, spanking or flogging each other, while six or seven men stand at the door or sit on couches, with their jaws on the floor, wide-eyed and hands moving at a steady rate around their genitals. Up and down. Up and down. Faster now.

 This type of attention isn’t for everyone though, and some of the women feel uncomfortable with hordes of gaping men watching them while they try to relax and reach their climax.

 “For a single lady, it can be a little intimidating,” laughs Esther DeVille, a long-time patron at the club and the Human Resource Manager. “Not that I can’t deal with the guys, but it’s sometimes wrought with desperation.”

 Desperation is the word of the night, as the men generally outnumber the women 7:1. Some of the single women go to the club on Wednesdays to try to pick up the single men and have a nice night of drinking and playing, but the men tend to expect to have sex.

“Obviously there are times that certain guys come in and think that they can just go in there and just have sex,” says Kitty Fung, who goes by the name Ms. Kitty and hosts Hot Springs. “But, of course, everything is with consent.”

 The guys that go to Oasis have even started to refine their approach to women in order to get more action. Some have found that being polite and gentlemanly will go a whole lot further than being in-your-face about their intentions.

 “When I first came here,” says Ace, “I was aggressive, and it didn’t get me anywhere.”

 That’s because Oasis is all about making people feel comfortable and safe. It’s why the club is geared towards women and couples. When the club was founded, then-owner Toni Johnson decided that there were already enough sex clubs and bathhouses that were geared towards men.

 Due to the area that the club is situated in (The Church-Wellesley Corridor, commonly referred to as “The Gay Village”), many of the bathhouses that surround Oasis cater to the gay male crowd.

 Oasis Aqualounge was opened under the assurance that they would not steal the clientele from the surrounding gay bathhouses.

 “We want to be good to women and their partners,” says an employee who does not want his name used because he also works with children. “And it’s a concept which hasn’t existed until now.”

 They’re good to the guys too, but even the club can’t work the kind of magic the single men are hoping for.

 At the end of the night, there are many men who leave just as sexually unsatisfied as when they came. The difference is that they’re slightly too drunk to notice now. Hopeful shouts of “So you’ll be coming back next week?” echo across the changeroom as many guys try a last ditch effort to take a girl home, or at least get her number.