Mark Tewksbury, Olympic swim champ and co-president of the 1st World Outgames taking place in Montreal, was a guest on tonight’s Rad Can tv show “Les Bons Baisers de France”. It was nice to see how much he clearly loves his adopted city. Speaking unabashedly in his heavily anglo-accented French, he referred to himself as a “nouveau francophone” and praised Montreal for being the kind of place where one could successfully hold such an event. The guy also has a thousand watt megasmile that makes him so darn likeable that you can’t help but feel happy for him. You could tell that he felt genuine pride and joy at being able to bring to reality 5 years of planning and organizing. By staging the games here, Montreal has put itself at the forefront of progressing human rights and has perhaps opened people’s minds to LGBT culture. Well, maybe not Prime Minister Stephen Harper who skipped the Outgames opening ceremonies, but aside from him (who’s from conservative Alberta anyway), I guess that’s what Montreal and Montrealers are all about - accepting people for who they are and celebrating diversity. Montreal has accepted Mark Tewksbury and I think it’s safe to say that he can proudly call himself a Montrealer for the contribution that he’s made to the city.

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