Pride in the trades: The lives of Toronto’s queer tradespeople in photos
THE GREEN LINE
PHOTO ESSAY
Pride in the Trades: The Lives of Toronto's Queer Tradespeople in Photos
What is it like to be a queer person in a field that's dominated by white, cis, heterosexual men? We asked eight different queer tradespeople in Toronto.
Elyse is a carpenter and landscaper who identifies as bisexual.
: Christian Peña FOR THE GREEN LINE.
Christian Peña
Christian Peña is a Toronto-based independent freelance photographer specializing in online/print news, corporate photography and documentary film projects. His extensive photography and writing work has been featured in publications such as Now Magazine, The Green Line, The Toronto Star, CBC, The Globe and Mail and Rabble.
August 8, 2024
For our Queer Torontonians in Trades Action Journey, The Green Line spoke to many queer tradespeople based in Toronto who work in construction, carpentry, landscaping and electrical.
In this photo essay, you can read more about their experiences at work — the good, the bad and everything in between.
Dot S. working in her garage at home in Durham Region.
She was a trans woman electrician throughout the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s during a time when there were very few women electricians in Ontario. Dot focused on working in traffic lights and controls, which was work that could be done by herself, to avoid discrimination and dead-naming from coworkers.
She had a full career, raised a family with her wife and is now retired.
Elyse is a third-year apprentice in general carpentry. They identify as a bisexual person of East Asian descent. Elyse says they got into trades to escape the constant pressure to present a certain way — a pressure they say doesn’t exist in their industry.
“You don't always have to be in a good mood,” Elyse explains. “It's super rare to be a woman-looking person in the world who doesn't always have to smile and be pleasant.”
“I can put on my headphones and be grumpy and do demolition when I'm in a bad mood, and no one calls me a crazy bitch. They are just like, ‘Wow, cool! You did that fast.’ It's very therapeutic.”
Lenny Olin is a queer electrician who often wears nail polish, and sports gay flags at work.
“He [a foreman] would yell horrible humiliating things at me loudly, so everyone on that floor could hear. I tried to talk to someone above him in the company about it, but got no help there,” Olin says. “I had no choice but to quit. That's just one story, but I have countless others.”
Olin recently co-created a new cross-trade organizing and social space called Hi-Viz, which welcomes union, non-union and informal workers.
Jonas Spring is a queer activist and landscaper who runs Ecoman, an Etobicoke-based landscaping and gardening company that carries a large selection of locally grown native plants.
Castle is a trans carpenter and owner of Three Dollar Bill, a queer bar in Parkdale.
Although many women in trades initiatives are technically trans inclusive, Castle says it feels limiting.
“Ultimately would you want to be lumped into that? I came into my dignity actively being a trans person,” they explain. “If you put yourself in the category of women in the trades, that clumps you into this idea, and the government and funding reinforcing the same binary.”
Michelle Switzer is a trans woman construction worker and union advocate. She’s faced physical threats on the job.
“Men think they need to prove their masculinity on the job site to each other. The easy targets become minorities, people of colour, women,” she says.
Peter Arrow is an electrician apprentice based in North York who identifies as a bisexual and Jewish cis man. He attributes his safety on the job to being so big that no one can threaten or hurt him.
“I am six-foot, two-and-a-half inches and 350 pounds — and that matters,” he says. “It matters more than I’d thought that it did.”
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