Capital Xtra! - Xtra! Ottawa

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With the increasing costs and amount of time of maintaining printing of the GO Info periodical, Gays of Ottawa, which by this time was called Association of Lesbians and Gays of Ottawa, asked Pink Triangle Press, publisher of the successful Xtra! newspaper in Toronto, if they would consider an Ottawa edition to cover local queer news in the capital.

Capital Xtra!, as the paper was called for 17 years, was started primarily with Brandon Matheson, and George Hartsgrove, who operated the Rideau View Inn at the the time. Hartsgrove recalls agreeing to work as the advertising executive somewhat naively without recognizing the amount of work involved.

David Rimmer, the owner of After Stonewall bookstore, becomes the first cover model. Early contributors include Alex Munter, Andrew Griffin, Irshad Manji and David Pepper, among others. Blaine Marchand writes a popular column for many years, and later writers include Glenn Crawford, Suki Lee, Ariel Troster and Bradley Turcotte. Publishers include Brian Gallant, Gareth Kirky and Marcus McCann.

The paper changes names to Xtra! Ottawa in 2010, but the Ottawa office is closed down in 2015 after its last print edition. Ottawa news is covered briefly and sporadically on their Web site as the Toronto and Vancouver papers all move online. The office of CapX is at the 177 Nepean building in suite 506 for many years before moving to its last location at 503—251 Bank.

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