[URBAN NOTE] "Landed: Together in Canada tells stories of same-sex couples who found refuge here"

[rfmcdonald]

I'd seen the photo exhibit Landed: Together during Doors Open. Nicholas Keung's Toronto Star article highlighting this project will hopefully bring it more attention.

They are “love exiles” from around the world, and they have come here purely for love.

A new multimedia installation titled “Landed: Together in Canada” tells the stories of couples who decided to make Canada their home — though neither partner was Canadian — because there was nowhere else where they could settle legally as couples.

“When I was dropping off my partner at the airport, I wasn’t sure if we were going to see each other again. It’s like watching somebody drown.” That’s how one Indonesian-American gay couple described their separation before they reunited in Canada.

They found refuge in a country that recognizes same-sex marriage and embraces them with a relatively open immigration system.

Landed, which can be seen and heard now at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre, was inspired by artist Sarah Foy’s own experience as an American love exile in Canada — though in her case her partner, Luise Heyerhoff, is Canadian.

“Within a couple of weeks of my arrival in Canada, I met another couple who landed here for the same reason. This inspired me to find as many couples as I could who immigrated to Canada because they could not live together in the U.S. or the country where the foreign partner is from,” said Foy, who met Heyerhoff in the U.S. in 2009 and landed here last year.

“It made me think that this is a pretty special place. If Canada hadn’t worked out, it’d have been the end of many of these relationships. It’s Canada or nothing else. I thought there’s a story to be told, and I wanted to find a way to share the struggles these couples went through for love.”