Bent on the Drive: Queer residents ponder their place in the Drive's past, present and future

Natasha Barsotti / Xtra West / Friday, June 08, 2007

When Denise Sheppard and her partner decided 14 years ago to pull up their Ottawa stakes and move to Vancouver, they called The Book Mantle, a lesbian-owned bookstore on Commercial Dr looking for signs of lesbian life.

"We were moving to a city where we had no contacts," recalls activist journalist Sheppard. "We wanted to rent in the right area, and where I like to live is in my community."

Not only did the shop's co-owner, Bonnie Murray, tell Sheppard she had called the right neighbourhood, she also invited Sheppard and her partner to stay in the basement apartment of her home until they found digs of their own.

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