'Aaron Webster was a cherished friend whose memory I hold dear. His wicked sense of humour and profound empathy are qualities I will always miss. I hope this project honours his legacy and the important conversations his death sparked regarding hate crimes and LGBTQ+ rights.'
—Tim Chisholm
NOVEMBER 2024
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UNSAVOURY WITNESS [Cont'd]
Curated by PATRYK STASIECZEK
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April 16, 2025
Memorial Bench, Stanley Park
Dear Aaron,
I made an exhibition to be with you.
You are gone and this project fails at changing that—everything does. I have this hope for a loving gesture, but we all like to think we’re good, which is unfortunate—and being bad is never a great option.
You don’t know me—neither I, you. And still, I’d love to know what your voice sounded like, what kind of food you liked, what made you happy or sad, what you longed for, or what turned you on—I mean, besides what was made public, of course. Fair, I don’t have any right, and I have fully accepted that many of my questions are bound to remain unanswered—and yet, I keep wondering where your photo archive remains and, more importantly, where you rest.
Would you be okay with me knowing more? Or, are my questions enough?
For four years, I’ve gathered facts about your life in the press and your wrongful death in the judicial processes that followed. A photographer, you lived in East Van, loved your dog(s?) and were close to Denise and Tim. This year will mark your 66th birthday and the 24th anniversary of your murder. I will be 39 in July, still two or three years younger than you were on the 17th of November, 2001, back when I was fifteen and already out to my family of origin—you know, as if coming out had ever been necessary for any of us.
Tim and I never met, but he knows about this project through some correspondence we’ve kept over the years—he is gentle, tender, and has stayed such a good friend to you—he has lovingly kept the sheltered bench in your memory all this time.
It felt wrong on so many levels to disturb your friends as I peeked into your privacy and public passing. What am I allowed? And with whose consent?
Turning my attention to the trials that followed your homicide felt more ethical, even if it meant spending more time on your murderers and the state than with you. There is something to be said about the shame we avoid to feel for growing accustomed to this world’s horrors—because even if while reading the transcripts I felt horrified, I must admit, I did not stay shook for very long—oh, we say ‘shook’ now.
My capacity to feel horrified drifted, left me, at some point in my life—but I don’t know when exactly. Was it when I numbed myself with my repetitive readings of your trials? Or was it my coming out into the death sentence my mom dictated at me in September 2001? Or, further back, in my surviving the schoolyard where the other boys stoned me out of habit for many years? The efficiency of cruelty as entertainment seems to lie in its power to convince us of our own safety by exploiting someone else’s suffering as spectacle. This might be why we have to take an oath to validate our witnessing…
When I come to the park, in my mind at least, I come to visit you—and worry you might not like me showing up unannounced. Even when I see the peninsula from across the inlet, I think of you—and whether the entire park could be gifted in your memory.
A few summers ago there was this moth infestation in the city which was particularly prominent here in the park. It was both uncanny and beautiful. There were so, so many… have you seen the park cruised by millions of moths before? However bad the situation was deemed, their animated energy all around me felt magical. They looked happy to be alive—as if they knew something I don’t. I look for them every year since then and still wonder if you had anything to do with my experience of that day. If you didn't, you may disregard this, but if you did, thanks for the gift—I appreciate it.
In the park, we’ve grown intimate—beyond comprehension and consciousness—with feeling at once the risk and safety from harm. You know that suspicious throbbing of the silence at dusk that tremors with our bodies as they relax into pleasure, pain and worry…
Would you say we’re safe here now? Because, sometimes, it certainly feels like we are.
Recently, I taught a former provincial Supreme Court Judge and had to let them know that I was familiar with their name—they had come up in my research, and I felt the responsibility to let them know that I knew. They remembered your case but made clear that they didn’t want their status as a former public servant to be in any way known—just a lawyer to everyone but me. Then… they dared ask about the scope of my interest in your murder—to me, they sounded on defence and aware, why not guilty, of how shameful the proceedings were—you know, JUSTICE. I proceeded to lie to them—lesson learned, Honourable Mx. Ex-Supreme—skipping over the parts I care about the most. Fully armed, I art-spoke back, “the project speculates Stanley Park as an epistemology of queer placemaking.” Head nod (theirs)—and found my project interesting. Eye roll (mine)—fuck the whole thing.
I can officially confirm to you that, in the transcript, the words gay, queer and homosexual never come up—or any other euphemism, for that matter, derogatory or otherwise. The closest this official record gets to naming us is—WTF—peeping toms. An appalling and malicious misrepresentation—another one—of how we do what we do when we do you-know-what—and I do my best to DO quite a bit.
Your murderers’ testimonies describe your body, your clothing, and your supposed movements that night in the park. Not only heartbreaking to read, but also gross, really. Their stories don’t add up. They don’t bother—their accounts are unreliable and inconsistent at best. Two coincide in what your last words were, although these versions differ about where exactly in the park you uttered them. Omitted in the ‘that’s enough[comma]guys’ adjudicated to you in the court proceedings, the direct address comma embedded in the statement is denied in print—who knows if you actually said that. Even if but a pause in a potentially false statement, its im/perceptible breadth of silence is the absent halt from an imperative call to stop.
In all that I've learned about silence thus far, a missing break may be nothing but that—silence. However, absent or present, that comma is not a void, or a wordless vacancy for meaning. Its omission transforms your alleged words into a violent homophobic statement. I am tempted to explain here how but, instead, I will directly address the staffer in question—assumed straight and clearly unqualified—, “could you please just fucking write that effing comma down[comma] Mx. Stenographobe?”
Their blatant disregard for the impacts of improper punctuation on this official document has stuck with me since I encountered it in 2021—I can’t help but read it with animosity—theirs, but also mine. Yes, that missing comma affirms a silence that engenders the very actualization of our harm—we learned in the hardest way, after all, that SILENCE EQUALS DEATH. But that silence is not ours. Silence isn’t just that for us, is it? The silence I hear in that unpunctuated space is queer, fully complex, and the leitmotif of this project. Not a false attempt to remediate your murder. Instead, in that silence I find the one thing I can do for you—suspended and misquoted on this officially dishonourable document for posterity.
Would the omitted comma surprise you, though? Would you care, or feel at all represented in my remembering you? Or just laugh and brush it off…? What would you do, gorgeous?
You know… we say that our pleasure is political… some go as far as to say it’s revolutionary. But to whom? What do we owe to public life?
I’m not one to be visible, vocal, or active in public discourse. These days, I focus my silence and try to keep to myself—my art, with you—, in the hopes that my contribution, however small—but also not—, may expand ever-so-slightly our communities' safety and our thriving in it.
But, you know? This time spent with you, now consolidated in this exhibit, is my own demand for safety… not just a matter of clerical error in court—I can’t help but see their negligence as a manifestation of our urgent need for protection which, regrettably, you can attest to… and, sadly, remains unmet.
Since this install is about this hope of mine to connect with you across the boundaries of time, I would like to go for a walk with you, here around the park or elsewhere, unpause your silence and hear all about your day—do they even have days where you are? Maybe dance, or eat together, and flirt over adventures had before your passing and, why not, since then. Would you be interested?
By the way, there’s this miniseries, Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves, that I love. Would you ever watch it with me? I’ve actually seen it many times, but I would love to share it with you, hear your thoughts on it and what Vancouver was like for us during those years. There’s this quote from it—it’s good. The author, Jonas Gardell, writes that those who loved the most were the ones who fell to the frost—and I want to love endlessly.
Anyway… will you join us in the park tonight?
Ale