This 91-Year-Old Vancouver Drag Queen Continues to Slay on Stage

It’s a chilly December night just before Christmas, and a couple hundred regulars are packed into the Fountainhead for Coco’s annual Holiday Show. Coco herself, the legendary drag queen and alter ego of Vancouverite Derek White, has been running the annual fundraiser for charities like A Loving Spoonful and Out in Schools since 2002, and the mainly Gen-X audience seems likely to have been in attendance for most of those shows over the years.

The 23 queens and kings performing tonight range from seasoned veterans like Pride Parade emcee Joan-E and Coco’s own drag mother, Carlotta Gurl, to up-and-comers still finding their lip sync and working through the odd costume fail. It’s an on-their-side crowd—tips are held high, cheers are at the ready for death drops and gags—but one queen carves a different swath. Bill Monroe, the self-proclaimed Oldest Performing Drag Queen (we dare you to challenge that statement of fact), takes an offered hand to climb up on stage. Dressed in a made-for-the-event purple caftan, he breaks into a rich baritone of “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You”—no lip syncing for Monroe—while the crowd offers its deference (and an overflowing beer pitcher of tips). As he finishes, he turns back to address the crowd: “Thanks everyone, and don’t worry—you haven’t seen the last of me.”

At 90 (soon to be 91 in April), Monroe is both a living legend and a walking history book. And at a time when we’re short on gay elders—many of Monroe’s friends and peers succumbed to the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s and early ’90s—and when the very nature of drag as an art form continues to be challenged in our current political climate, his continued presence (paired with his own brand of cheeky attitude on stage) is both heartwarming and an inspiration to those performing and in the crowd.

One of his very first drag performances was back in 1959 in Toronto, eight years before our current Trudeau’s dad declared that there was “no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation” and decriminalized homosexuality. “The only time you could be out in drag was Halloween night,” says Monroe. “The rest of time you could be picked up on the streets for soliciting.”

But Monroe and a few friends were attempting to build a private club for the gay community in Toronto, and a show was one of the best ways to fundraise—they wanted to apply for a liquor licence for a coffee shop that was above a laundromat on Yonge Street. “There was no place you could dance together,” says Monroe. “Men couldn’t dance together—it was against the law. Women could, but men couldn’t. So a whole bunch of us decided to put on a drag show to raise money, and apply for a liquor licence.”

The show was a hit, until it wasn’t: everything came to an abrupt halt when the makeshift club was raided by police officers. “We all went to jail in drag,” he says. “They told us to plead guilty, and we’d be charged $10 because it was an illegal show, because the guy didn’t have a licence to have a dance production.”

Monroe didn’t feel he was in a position to argue, but wasn’t happy about pleading guilty, either. “It was a couple of my friends in the show, so we pleaded guilty,” he says. “But then they changed the charge to an immoral one without letting us change our plea, and fined us $250.”

Before the authorities had a chance to collect, he bought a one-way ticket to London, England. “There was a warrant out for my arrest for 20 years,” Monroe says with a laugh. “I wanted to be somewhere I didn’t know.”

He danced with Arthur Murray Dance Studio over the years—in New York, L.A., Philadelphia—and in 1965 found an opportunity to get back to Canada through a friend: “He was opening up a studio in Winnipeg, and I thought, well, nobody will ever look for a drag queen in Winnipeg.”

Dancing helped him put himself through hairdressing school, and then a teaching degree, landing a job at a community college in the city. And by 1980 he’d found his way to Vancouver, and eventually, a position as an operator at Telus, where he worked until retirement—even performing at the company’s anniversary party in one of his most-requested roles as the Queen. “I was fortunate. I’ve been told I have stage presence—I walk on the stage and it’s mine, and it’s still that way. You know, you either have it or you don’t. And you can’t buy it,” says Monroe.

While Monroe is now known for his live singing, he lip synced when he was starting out. “But when tracks started coming out in the disco era, disco was a saviour,” he says. “Everybody put out those great big 33 records with one hit and it played forever with the singer on it, Donna Summers or whoever it was. And then to save money, they just put the tracks on the back without her.”

Monroe and his late partner, Chris, “bought every instrumental record ever made,” he says. “I still use one, ‘That’s Life.’ I’ve been singing that for over 40 years.”

He still performs a couple of times of year, and follows his own set of rules: shows start on time (“I’d say to the audience, I’ve been asked to hold the show for half an hour. And you know, I’m never late, so we’re starting now”), and dressed to the nines  (“I never hit the stage with the same outfit twice,” he says. “I’ve changed as much as 13 times in a night.”)

But it’s more than just the rules that keeps Monroe’s popularity strong, seven decades into his career. “He just lights up when he’s performing—you see it in his eyes, he just loves what he’s doing,” says longtime friend and fellow drag performer Derek White. “Long live the queen!”