So this 4:20 is in no way an endorsement for George Smitherman for Mayor of Toronto – I’m pretty sure there’s some CRTC regulation that prohibits me saying I’d vote for him on-air.

(Wait – I said I’d vote for him – on air!)

No, this 4:20 is just about how inspired I felt when I got Facebooked by a friend inside George’s circle who told me of the plan to announce this morning he was going step down from provincial politics and put forward a bid to run Canada’s largest city.

I felt inspired because I knew George when we were both young men who went to the same YMCA at the same time of day years ago, and like many I knew George when he ran a camera store downstairs and around the corner from PROUD FM.  When I recall these times and I think about how far he has come – especially so as a gay man in a typically heterosexual power dynamic like politics – I can’t help but feel moved.  And now here we are – he may run the city before we know it.  Go, gay go.

But it’s not just a gay man who inspired me today, there’s also a woman a lot of gays love: Dolly Parton.  I had her new Live From London album on this morning just to get in the groove to interview her later in the show and as I listened to what is a fairly retrospective release, the magnitude of the life THIS person has led hit me pretty hard in all the right ways.

Whether it’s George or Dolly, both have come a long way, baby, and having them in the sphere of the earlier part of my day was a duet of a reminder that for anyone and every one, be they a backwoods Barbie or our gaybourhood’s George, you or me – anything is possible.

You can hear The 4:20 daily at … 4:20 on The Shaun Proulx Show 103.9 PROUD FM.

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