“The SM community is very anonymous, usually… very rigid, very secretive. We opened the doors to all of that, kicked down the walls and it was all exposed, and it lost a lot of its allure, but it opened up doors for other people in the fetish world. It was a win-win… it gave people freedoms to feel freer about their fetishes and the things they wanted to do”.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s Bastian took on leadership roles in various clubs and organizations in Calgary and participated in committees and competitions across the country and abroad. He wrote columns for Clue Magazine and Perceptions Magazine, regional LGBT news publications based in Calgary and Saskatoon, respectively.
In a less flashy and public stream of activism, Bastian was also responsible for advancing the concepts of safety and consent throughout the leather community. Throughout the 90s he hosted workshops and published literature promoting “safe, sane, and consensual” interactions amongst the leather community.
“Safe, sane, and consensual was the very large term within the community about how to play safe, about how to be safe – it wasn’t about just sex, it was about how you interacted and how you were as a community together, and not harm each other. Any repercussions sound familiar today?” he asks somewhat archly, referring to mask mandates put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic and the backlash against them. “We’re still struggling to keep people alive from AIDS today and we find ourselves in another pandemic. It’s so similar, it’s unbelievable to some of us.”
Bastian was honored for his activism and won several awards through the 90s and 00s, including an Outstanding Achievement Awards from C.L.U.B. Calgary (1991); Man of the Year at the Speak Sebastian Awards (Gay Community Awards, 1992); and Mr. NLA International, an ambassadorial role for the National Leather Association (1995).
A prolific activist in Calgary through the 90s in a city where gay culture was still targeted and misunderstood, Bastian helped advance gay rights and gay pride and undoubtedly influenced many lives – of the young, the closeted, and those seeking a place where they could truly be themselves.