The late American lesbian feminist and author Susan Sontag once said of travel: “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” 

A new Canadian study has found that many Canadian queers also have everywhere on their travel to-do lists, with research showing gays and lesbians spend almost twice as much as straight people annually on travel. 

This is obvious to anyone who’s ever tried to lift the Spartacus International Gay Guide. I’ve been using it to up my bench press. 

Protean Strategies conducted the second such study of queer Canadians for Travel Gay Canada (TGC) and found that gays spend $7 billion annually and spent an average of $1,131 per trip last year, compared to $597 for straight people. 

The study also found that gay Canadians travel more frequently and plan to continue travelling as often.  TGC’s Darrell Schuurman said, “Gay travellers... spend more per trip and are more likely to travel in the off-season than the mainstream market.”   

The top destinations for Canadian queers will be no surprise: in Canada, gays hit Toronto first, then Montreal and Vancouver.  Strangely, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, did not make the list.

Schuurman told Xtra the top American destinations are New York City, Las Vegas and San Francisco. Internationally, queers also love the standards: London, Paris and Barcelona. 

However, a 2010 Out Now global study found that Latin America is the largest up-and-coming gay destination. The region is home to more than 25 million queers, according to Global Travel Industry News. 

The 2010 TripOut Gay Travel Awards voted Rio de Janeiro the sexiest travel spot on earth (it’s where I met my husband, so I’ll have to agree), and Puerto Vallarta is now the number-one travel destination for queer Canadians. 

Madrid Pride scooped TripOut’s award for best annual gay destination party or event, and Toronto took the prize for best breakout destination, beating Reykjavik, Tel Aviv, Dallas and Siem Reap. 

Move over, Mykonos and Barcie, because this last entry, a tiny Cambodian city of fewer than 200,000, is reportedly the hottest new global gay spot. 

A scathing Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) report on police conduct during the G20 has sparked new calls for a joint federal-provincial public inquiry to determine who was responsible for "serious violations of fundamental rights and freedoms." The report was released days after the broadcast of a Fifth Estate documentary that featured shocking videotaped evidence of abuse by uniformed officers. 

Premier McGuinty, busy tweeting about canoe trips, has rejected calls for an inquiry. According to the Toronto Star, McGuinty is staying mum on the arrests that took place at Queen's Park, where he had personally invited people to protest during the G20 in a so-called free-speech zone (add victims of G20 abuse to an angry list that includes queer youth in publicly funded Catholic schools and students demanding queer-positive sex education curriculum).

March 1 editorials in the National Post and the Toronto Star both called for an inquiry. 

A CBC post on the CCLA report has received a whopping 1,453 comments. The most popular, with 1,130 "agrees," reads:

A dark day in Canadian civil liberties and free speech, 1,100 Canadians arrested and few charged. A comprehensive public inquiry is the only way to go. 

Days after the brutal events of the G20 weekend, the Toronto Police Service’s lesbian, gay, bi and trans liaison officer, Thomas Decker, was quoted in Xtra dismissing calls for answers: “The Pride weekend has shown that an overwhelming majority of the community appreciate and support [the] police.”

Decker's comments followed a protest at the 519 Church Street Community Centre against Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair's Pride reception, which was held at the community centre days after the G20.

The executive director of The 519, Maura Lawless, has since expressed regret for allowing police to host their event at the centre:

“In retrospect, the event should never have gone ahead and that’s clear. We were trying to find a balance.”

You can watch the Fifth Estate documentary on the CBC site here or via the embedded video below.

New dad David Furnish talks to Matt Thomas, associate editor of fab magazine, about the internationally acclaimed musical Billy Elliot. It starts its run at the Canon Theatre in Toronto tomorrow, Feb 1, and Furnish is the executive producer.

Reports say Furnish and his partner, Elton John, who wrote the music, will be in Toronto March 1 to attend the Canadian premiere with their new son, Zachary.

Tonight at the Berkeley Heritage Event Venue in Toronto, the Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Youth Line is holding its annual Line Art Auction. This important fundraiser for the Youth Line features work by established artists along with that of emerging and youth artists. If you're thinking of starting your own art collection, this is the place to be. Mingle with art enthusiasts, established art collectors and even the artists themselves.

This year's auction includes work by Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Maurice Vellekoop, Guntar Kravis, Stephen Andrews, Scott McEwan, Barbara Astman and many more.

The evening will also feature a special It Gets Better commissioned work for the Youth Line in honour of the campaign and those who have participated in it.

Also, be sure to congratulate the Youth Line folks tonight for the well-deserved acknowledgement of their work on the Ellen DeGeneres Show's list of bullying resources. 

There are two lessons we can take from behind-the-scenes accounts of Rob Ford's campaign that were published last weekend: first, strangers who suddenly warm up to you on Twitter should be regarded with a healthy dose of skepticism (and if you're in possession of a potentially game-changing audio file that features the leading candidate promising to score you drugs, you should be extra vigilant); and, second, anything written about our new mayor by a certain "friendly" Toronto Sun columnist will be about as objective as campaign brochure copy.

The accounts are heavy on revelations, including a damning bit about Smitherman's campaign team using a provincial Liberal voters' list that Ford’s intel said would be voting for him and not Smitherman. But the most intriguing item involves a member of Ford’s campaign creating a Twitter pseudonym, “@QueensQuayKaren‚” —  posing as a George Smitherman supporter (appropriately twibboned)‚ ”who likes politics, my cat Mittens, and a good book" —  in a bid to deceive another Tweeter. It had come to the Ford campaign's attention that the target, Dieter Doneit-Henderson, had surreptitiously recorded a conversation wherein Ford promised a frantic Doneit-Henderson he would "fucking try to find" OxyContin for him, to alleviate the pain of his fibromyalgia (listen to the recording on Xtra.ca here). Worried that a media outlet might release this recording a week before the election, the Ford camp charged Fraser Macdonald, their 24-year old deputy communications director, with the task of retrieving the recording by any means necessary. 

Thus Macdonald contrived the fake twitter account: @QueensQuayKaren. Using this account, Macdonald slowly earned Doneit-Henderson's trust, through public tweets of support for Smitherman and private messages sent to Doneit-Henderson over the network. Finally, after continued prodding from “Karen,” Doneit-Henderson sent Macdonald the audio file.

But even with the recording in their possession, they still had to figure out how to handle the release of it. While Twitter had proved useful in deceiving a single, naive individual, the campaign needed a way to manipulate on a larger scale; enter the Toronto Sun and columnist Sue-Ann Levy.

"...the team decided to get out in front of the story and leak the recording to a friendly columnist at a local tabloid. A June 17 front-page headline blared that he'd been set up."

Thus, Levy contrived a Ford-friendly spin: “Ford feels 'set up' by drug tape.” Following publication of the Sun piece, Ford held a press conference and spun the story in his favour. 

He even chimed in on QuAIA and Pride Toronto (note: Rob Ford did not participate in the parade):

  For the entire list of the fake tweets, check out this Torontoist post.