CBC report spawns magazine column
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Oct 13/00) - The North, a hot subject for southerners since division, attracted attention to itself for a sizzling hot topic last week -- its sexual habits.
From a syndicated sex column called My Messy Bedroom by Josey Vogels, running in a dozen alternative downtown rags from Vancouver to New York, the south has learned that we Northerners, aged 25 to 35, are having sex because of booze and boredom, with no qualms about performing fellatio in licensed establishments.
| Exaggeration at best
Malcolm Gorrill Inuvik -- Brian Desjardins, tourism co-ordinator for the Town of Inuvik, said the article seems to rely upon a lot of hearsay. "She refers to in several instances in this article about 'rig pigs,'" Desjardins said. "The last I heard of 'rig pigs' being in Inuvik was in the '80s," Desjardins said. "A lot of the people she's talked to or know of all these sexual public experiences are the people that lived in the '80s here or know about that time period, I don't know. Stories of public sex are in every community. You just hear more about it up here because we're a small community, we're in isolation," he said. "This is exaggeration at its best." Another resident, who did not wish to be identified, strongly objected to the article. "It's quite degrading. My whole concern with it is this is a perception of a lot of people down south when I go to visit my friends and stuff like that, and it's really degrading to the community in general. It's not just a sex article, it's an article that gives the people the wrong perception of Inuvik," he said. "It generalizes the whole population." Inuvik Town Council debated the article during Wednesday's council meeting. Councillor Derek Lindsay referred to it as a "disgusting article," and Mayor George Roach assured council he would be contacting CBC North management in Yellowknife to pass along the concerns. |
"The assignment was based on an article I read in one of the national newspapers," says CBC North program manager Peter Skinner.
Skinner explains that the article talked about the program Sex in the City, and how life in Manhattan, as described in the show, was not like life in Manhattan as the writer experienced it.
Thomas is still working on the multi-part report. A broadcast date has not yet been set.
According to Thomas, who has been in the North for four or five months, there is no dating scene here, there's sex.
"Well, let's just say you're not likely to see anyone in Manolo Blahnik's oh-so-trendy shoes at The Zoo, Inuvik's main watering hole," reads the story, entitled Northern Reflections.
Thomas went on to offer a graphic description of a woman offering oral sex to a oil rig worker.
"Rig pigs are guys who spend like three months with an all-male crew out on an oil rig out in the middle of the Arctic Ocean," explains Thomas. 'They come into town and go absolutely wild.'"
Though Thomas' report includes Whitehorse and Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Inuvik are the main focus of Vogel's column.
"I think in small towns back home (Nova Scotia), people keep their pants on a little longer. And they might at least pretend it's a date. Maybe even have dinner, you know, at least feed the person before having sex with them," Thomas is quoted as saying.
Vogels says it was Thomas who contacted her.
"I'm reporting on a report that she did. She's talking to me as a reporter, in the same way that I would interview somebody who's done a study about something and they've come to their conclusion," says Vogels.
Asked if the column fairly documented her conclusion and analysis of the material she had accumulated for her report, Thomas says, "Yeah. I can't really comment on it. My boss says not to talk to anyone about it. But yeah, I didn't see much problem with it."
Yellowknifer passed the column around at a few bars in town this weekend, asking patrons and bar staff in their 20s and 30s if they agreed with the portrayal.
Though two small groups tended to agree, and one person insisted that a friend had walked into a local bar's restroom and witnessed a couple in the act, so to speak, most disagreed vehemently and echoed the following statements.
"Maybe women are not wearing Manolo Blahnik shoes, but I think they certainly comport themselves differently than is portrayed in this article," says one male patron.
"I don't think it's particularly representative of the North that I know. I think there's very much a dating scene here, just like anywhere else. It's the licentiousness that referred to that I can't relate to."
Another patron, a woman in her 30s who has lived in the North for over 10 years, feels the comments made by Thomas must have been made by "quite a young person."
"I think it's one view," she said, adding that she thinks "there's a lot of truth in what this story wants to say. But I don't think it's the whole story. I think it depends on the point of view that you see it from. I mean, this happens everywhere you go. I think there are a lot of people that have loving relationships. I think there are people that do meet and date in a very romantic way."
Yet another 10-year Northerner, when asked if this reflected his reality, replied, "No. Not at all."
Most people questioned agreed that one difference that exists here in the North is that we live in smaller communities, and are more apt to run into people we've dated.
"It's a normal crowd. Normal people live up here."
"It's trite. She should go back to Halifax. Sex in the North is fuelled by alcohol and boredom? Jeez. Good. There's only three bars in Yellowknife? Get your facts right. And it's not this flagrant, tap you on the shoulder, 'you want to come back to my house' scenario. I don't think it's the whole story."
"This is not very flattering. I've been here 12 years," says another, adding that's it's hard to find people to date, never mind have sex with, "because everyone is married. No, I don't think this is realistic."
"I think this is rude. I work in a bar and I have never seen anything like this happen in the bar. Never, ever have I seen it happen. I think it's very rude. I think Yellowknife has more to offer in the winter, rather than drink and sleep around. I've been here two years this summer and I've had a boyfriend a year and a half. I didn't drop him when spring came along. This is belittling. And it's absolutely ignorant about what the North is about.
"And I think it's ridiculous that she's saying they (AIDS Yellowknife) are going around flinging condoms at people. They hand out condoms when they're doing campaigns to promote safe sex. They do that in schools in other provinces."
Because Vogels is published in youthful, alternative papers, Skinner thinks that the questions Vogels asked his reporter "were probably question to elicit something that would be of interest to that audience."
"What we're doing," he says, "will probably be tailored to a wider audience that would listen to CBC across the North.
"Some of the raw quality of what was in the Vogels column obviously won't be in what we do on the air."
