The late American lesbian feminist and author Susan Sontag once said of travel: “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” 

A new Canadian study has found that many Canadian queers also have everywhere on their travel to-do lists, with research showing gays and lesbians spend almost twice as much as straight people annually on travel. 

This is obvious to anyone who’s ever tried to lift the Spartacus International Gay Guide. I’ve been using it to up my bench press. 

Protean Strategies conducted the second such study of queer Canadians for Travel Gay Canada (TGC) and found that gays spend $7 billion annually and spent an average of $1,131 per trip last year, compared to $597 for straight people. 

The study also found that gay Canadians travel more frequently and plan to continue travelling as often.  TGC’s Darrell Schuurman said, “Gay travellers... spend more per trip and are more likely to travel in the off-season than the mainstream market.”   

The top destinations for Canadian queers will be no surprise: in Canada, gays hit Toronto first, then Montreal and Vancouver.  Strangely, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, did not make the list.

Schuurman told Xtra the top American destinations are New York City, Las Vegas and San Francisco. Internationally, queers also love the standards: London, Paris and Barcelona. 

However, a 2010 Out Now global study found that Latin America is the largest up-and-coming gay destination. The region is home to more than 25 million queers, according to Global Travel Industry News. 

The 2010 TripOut Gay Travel Awards voted Rio de Janeiro the sexiest travel spot on earth (it’s where I met my husband, so I’ll have to agree), and Puerto Vallarta is now the number-one travel destination for queer Canadians. 

Madrid Pride scooped TripOut’s award for best annual gay destination party or event, and Toronto took the prize for best breakout destination, beating Reykjavik, Tel Aviv, Dallas and Siem Reap. 

Move over, Mykonos and Barcie, because this last entry, a tiny Cambodian city of fewer than 200,000, is reportedly the hottest new global gay spot. 

Yesterday’s Charlottetown Guardian carried a story about the Tourism Association of PEI’s annual meeting. The keynote speaker was Jeff Guaracino of the Greater Philadelphia Marketing and Tourism Association.

It’s great to read so much in The Guardian these past weeks about PEI’s reaction to the firebomb attack against a gay couple in Little Pond. Islanders truly seem horrified.

According to The Guardian, Guaracino told the room PEI would do well to research and develop a long-term marketing plan to attract gay tourists to the province. He pointed to a survey in which 77 percent of gay travellers to PEI said they would recommend the province to others, but 51 percent reported feeling uncomfortable there. He told the crowd that was a problem that needed solving, that it could affect not only gay and lesbian tourism, but also the number of visits from straight tourists.

It’s a convincing argument, and it's essence is, "It's in your best interests, economically and socially, to ensure gay people enjoy being here."

Coincidentally, I visited both PEI and Philly earlier this year. I had a great time, and I’ll tell you more about both destinations another time. But my PEI experience is congruent with the survey Guaracino describes. I loved the place and the people, but sexuality really is an awkward subject for most in PEI. Socially, it’s just not something folks care to talk about. I’m a single gay dude who lives in the gay village and works in the gay press, so you can’t ask me more than one get-to-know-you question without my sexuality coming up. It sits like an elephant in the room, but with some work I found it reasonably easy to get them past it.

Of course, few people want to work on vacation, and there's still that matter of the firebomb and the two guys who lost their house and nearly their lives.

As Ottawa begins gussying up for its ten-day Pride fest, we're seeing more than a few makeovers...

We've all seen those Terminator movies where cyborgs travel back from the future but the photo shoot for Adam Lambert's upcoming album cover makes him look like a Terminator from the Elizabethan era:

Meanwhile, Canada's most famous Mountie is again heading due south -- not to America, but to Hell.  Playing the Devil in the new TV series 'Eastwick,' Paul Gross is looking good in a suit:

Speaking of pretty Canadians, Hayden Christiansen is finally starting to put that 'Star Wars' debacle behind him through modelling, though he seems to have kept his Jedi powers:

Sex advice columnist Dan Savage is already easy on the eyes but we're waiting to see him glammed up for his new TV pilot for HBO.  

Further abroad, even Sweden is getting a makeover -- watching them try to be hip and sexy is adorkable:

But not every transformation is met with delight. Weighing in on the bizarre controversy over South African athlete Caster Semenya's gender, feminist writer Germaine Greer gets nasty:

"Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women's names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn't polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man's delusion that he is female."

Now sure, I could be snotty and point out how such vicious transphobia is pretty rich coming from a woman who looks like this --

-- but hey, Makeover Monday means I should change too, getting serious and putting such snide cheap shots behind me.

Until tomorrow!

Need a vacation?  Of course you do, but where?  Let's see our options...

I'd suggest London but oh no, they're going to film the "Sex and the City" sequel there and the movie sounds dreadful!

How about Paris?  Olympic athlete Romain Mesnil has been running around nude all week:

But avoid Rome, or at least the Vatican -- while the new revelation that they knew about child abuse scandals dating back to the 1950s is no surprise, what is weird is that a church investigator wanted to buy an island where they could send the pedophile priests!  Sounds like the creepiest "Lost" episode yet!

Forget Europe -- maybe a cruise ship would be fun!  You could join John Mayer's voyage and watch him admit to making out with Perez Hilton:

Ugh.  Maybe not.  And while we debate which destination would suck more -- Jamaica or Iran -- note that Afghanistan's new Shia Family Law allows men to legally rape their wives.  Yes tourists, welcome to sunny Kabul, where they'll treat you like family!

But before you cancel your passport application, remember it's not the country, it's the religion -- rarely a friend to gay people or straight women, it seems. 

Here's a game you can play at home or travelling -- see how many minutes you can endure of these wiseguy college kids reading actual transcripts from Christian fundamentalist website forums!  I only made to 1:12, myself...

Today, I'm in Edinburgh, home of the slinky, saucy Shirley Manson and a beautiful place where all the boys look like Glasgow's finest, Franz Ferdinand:

And don't get me started on the accents.  I never want to leave!

But why come back to Canada, anyway?  After the way it's treating Steven and Chris?  It's a tragedy, I tell you!

And our national paper, the Post?  I never expect much from it but who the hell let Robert Fulford write the following about David Hockney?  "As a gay he lost many friends to AIDS."  Oh brother, where do I start with that? 

Well, I could literally turn a page and talk about Jonathan Kay's hit piece on Richard Florida, bemoaning the urban theorist's "self-created (and slightly creepy-sounding) 'gay index.'"  Well, no creepier-sounding than your usual self, Mr. Kay.

Speaking of creepy, the TV show "Supernatural" is back this Thursday.  If you haven't seen the ghostbusting Winchester brothers in action, a clip of this week's episode -- in which Sam and Dean become ghosts themselves -- shows why the series is so easy to love: