by CHRIS BARRY

Sheesh, they’ve got a club for everything these days. All you carrot-tops out there, stigmatized by years of schoolyard bullying or by your lifelong reps as easy bedroom fodder, there is now a place you can go to share your experience: the Redheaded League of Montreal. The first club of its kind in Canada, these randy reds assemble the first Tuesday of every month at Brutopia to celebrate what it is to have red hair.

And lest you think that conversation would grind to a halt after the first hour or so of anguished testimonials about beatings taken or reputations soured, you would be wrong. This ain’t no support group, but a social club open to natural and bottled reds alike. In fact, anyone of any hair shade can join so long as they’re willing to stand up in front of the assembly and declare that they are actually a redhead trapped inside a blonde or brunette’s body.

“It doesn’t really matter what shade of red your hair is as long as you embrace the whole red-headed mentality,” says longtime member Sue U, a dyed redhead herself. “Obviously we prefer redheads because we wouldn’t have much of a redheaded league if we let everybody and their grandmother in who had dark or blonde hair. But we’re pretty open-minded about that—in a fun way.”

Red means go!

Founded in February 2000 by brothers Jason and Johnny Prince, the original purpose of the club was celebrating cultural differences through the one random feature that holds all members together, their red hair. The Redheaded League now boasts 240 members, although they don’t generally get many more than 20 people showing up for their Brutopia drinking sessions. Nevertheless, in the club’s short history they’ve generated a ton of media interest, been the subject of a South Korean television documentary, and inspired the formation of similar redhead groups in Toronto, Banff and Calgary.

Which is all great, of course, except it demands that someone finally ask the question, what the hey is the point of a social club for redheads in the first place? Get over yourselves, fuck. Goddamn, if they can do that maybe I should start my own social club for men with unusually large and attractive genitalia and the women who love us, where we could all sit around and swap stories of our outstanding swordsmanship. A club for criminally well-hung studs and their female admirers would be just as relevant as a redheaded league, no?

Perhaps, but the redheads say relevance has nothing to do with it, people shouldn’t take their club too seriously. They certainly don’t. “We’re just people that want to get out every once in awhile and hang out with a bunch of redheads. It’s really only a social thing,” says Sue. “We talk, network, look at photos from previous events, and it’s fun because it’s not a typical group of people you would generally hang out with. These are not your co-workers, your in-laws or whatever, but a totally different group of wacky people of all ages and backgrounds. It’s just fun to get together, unwind, drink, talk, whatever.”

Paddy waggin’

No doubt these kids have fun, but the Redheaded League have also been doing their bit for the community as of late, going out caroling for charity last year and consistently making their presence known at the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. And not all of their activities revolve around boozin’.

“We’ve got our drinking reds and our thinking reds. The thinking reds get together to do other activities, play pool, go bowling, other fun things. We’re hoping to someday assemble the largest number of redheads ever to do something for the Guinness Book of World Records. But I’m not sure just what, the most redheads at a picnic, at a bar, whatever, we haven’t figured out what it will be yet.”

In the meantime the reds continue to host their monthly Brutopia drinking rituals and have started reaching out to other social clubs in the city looking to engage in mutual mingling sessions. A joint happy-hour adventure between them and the Tall Club of Montreal is scheduled for Oct. 25 at Cluny Art Bar in Square-Victoria metro and Sue swears, in spite of the legendary fiery temper of the righteous redhead, that no meetings have yet to digress into a drunken brawl. Nor does she expect that to change any time soon. •

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