Breaking Water with Adam Barrett
Swim Drink Fish is highlighting members of our incredible ecosystem. This Breaking Water segment features Adam Barrett and is an ode to Pride Month and the Queer community. We asked him five questions pertaining to water, connection and safe spaces:
Can you please introduce yourself and tell us where you work/what you do?
Hi! My name is Adam and I’m a community-engaged artist and live performance producer. Right now, I get to have the very cool job of being a full-time programmer for a large arts festival. It’s very fun.
Could you tell us about your personal connection to the water?
I’ve lived within walking distance of a lake or a river for my entire life. I think it’s impossible here in Ontario, where there’s water everywhere, not to feel connected to it.
Why is it important to know which beaches are safe and inclusive spaces?
For a long time, it’s mattered that we have exclusively queer spaces for the sake of protecting our physical safety, but there’s also richness in sharing geography with our ancestors. There’s power in knowing that these beaches and trails have felt like home to people like me for many years.
Hanlan’s Point, Toronto Island, Ontario
There’s a lot of queer history around Toronto Beaches. Hanlan's Point was the site of the first Pride picnic, and has been a safe space for many years; Cherry Beach to has a long and complicated history with the queer community-albeit one with less joy and more police brutality.
Cherry Beach, Toronto, Ontario
What kind of role do you believe safe and inclusive spaces have on the LGBTQ2+ community?
Recently, as Hanlan's has been physically eroded by wind and water (and maybe more than a little by climate change?) And as the lakefront neighbourhoods have seen development and population increase, there have been incidents that make it feel less safe. I wish this wasn’t so.
Do you have anything else that you’d like to share about your work, your connection to water, or how we can encourage LGBTQ2+ to join the movement for a swimmable, drinkable, fishable future?
Water is life.
Listen to Indigenous women.
