Alberta, a bastion of conservatism? Not so, says actress Brigitte Bako.

Edmonton, it appears, is for swingers. The River City has been immortalized as the wife-swapping capital of Canada in Bako’s hit Showcase series, G-Spot. Local tourism authorities may want to update their portfolios.

“I did an episode in Season 2 about it,” she says, adding that her sister, an Edmonton resident, tipped her off about the city’s seamy swing set. “She’s going to kill me. It’s bad enough I made an episode about it. She’s led me to believe that there’s some really sexy swingin’ goin’ on in Edmonton.

“There’s a show I was going to develop called The Swap Meat,” she continues. “It’s about an ex-pat Canadian who lived in New York, gets kicked out of her job, loses her green card and has to move in with her ‘normal’ sister in Edmonton to discover that she’s big into swapping. So, look for that show on a TV near you.”

Truth is stranger than fiction, say Bako, whose experiences as a nice, Jewish actress from Montreal struggling to make good in Hollywood are the basis for G-Spot, a semi-autobiographical sex comedy. Now in its second season on Showcase – Fridays at 11 p.m. (Cable 31) – the Season 1 DVD set will be released Tuesday.

Over the phone from L.A., the 39-year-old says the concept developed out of a sense of frustration she felt being, in her mind, an A-list actress toiling in a B-movie world.

In the show, Bako plays Gigi, a Canadian actress just returning to L.A. after a long absence spent tending to her ailing mother.

Bako’s own mother, a Holocaust survivor, also fell ill and many of the roles Bako took, which were usually more embarrassing than edifying, were a question of necessity. While other actors were scoping out new sports cars, she was sending extra cash home to pay for her mother’s night nursing.

While Bako did return to Canada to be at her mother’s bedside, unlike Gigi she didn’t stay away from Hollywood too long. Regardless, the loss forced her to reassess her ambitions.

“It was very important for me to be successful in my mother’s lifetime, and when she died I didn’t really know whether I still wanted to do this anymore,” she says.

Bako did have a few high points, with regular work on TV’s Red Shoe Diaries series and a break starring in 1995′s sci-fi action hit Strange Days alongside Ralph Fiennes.

The lowest of the lows came on Dark Tide, a torrid sex thriller involving snakes. The low-budget affair saw her lubricating a snake, so it could slither up her breasts. Back then, it seemed sort of sad, maybe even desperate. But now …

“I parody it in an episode and it gave G-Spot one of the funniest moments in its two seasons.”

Such experiences are what initially set Bako to the task of writing. After penning one episode and showing it to trusted friends and producers, few believed she’d actually written it. Too good and too funny, they told her.

Encouraged, she continued writing, quickly racking up five episodes and eventually drawing the attention of a literary agent. First picked up by Movie Central, G-Spot has since found a home on Showcase, where she says the show has exploded in popularity.

The ensemble cast includes Kimberly Huie, Heather Hanson and Ian Alden, and the racy series plays out much like Sex and the City – assuming you got see Sarah Jessica Parker’s breasts every other episode. Part of Showcase’s saucy Friday night lineup, sandwiched between Kink and Porno Valley, G-Spot routinely sees Bako revealing her “ta-tas.”

“I’m making a complete comment on how I’ve been forced to be naked in all these movies,” she explains. “When you’re in your 20s and have tits that stand up in Hollywood, that’s all they really want you for.

“It doesn’t matter how funny you are. I thought of myself as a comedienne, like Carol Burnett or Lucille Ball, and they thought of me as a little sex kitten. I do it for comedy’s sake, never for exploitation. I’ve been exploited in so many movies, so that’s my commentary.”

Despite becoming a hit, Bako says maintaining G-Spot’s integrity has been a struggle. Being a control freak, she concedes, is part of the problem – she continues to write, produce and star in every episode.

The other, bigger part of the problem, she says, is Canada’s backwards approach to the TV and film industry.

While the show is set in L.A., it’s filmed in Toronto, which wasn’t a problem for Bako, just so long as the show didn’t look like a Canadian production. Touting shows like North of 60 and Corner Gas as benchmarks, the best Canuck TV has to offer, is a sad joke, she contends.

“I’ve actually lived in the U.S. longer than Canada, but I love my country. You should see me during the Olympics; I want everyone to die except Canada.

“But in production meetings with my crew, I’d say, ‘If this looks like a Canadian show, I will shoot myself and then all of you. We have so much talent in Canada, we can do better.’

“I have no competition, in my opinion. I happen to think most stuff in Canada sucks ass, and you can quote me on that. I don’t like one Canadian show. I watch it because that’s what I’m supposed to do, to see what’s out there. It’s not funny, it’s very politically correct and nobody steps outside of the box. And I don’t know why, but when things are shot in Canada they sort of look like they were shot in a tin can.”

For Season 2, she was forced to make certain regrettable concessions, like toning down the sexuality. It was a move, she says, that “cut the balls of the show” – no pun intended. As a cost-cutting measure, producers were also advocating axing three characters and having whoever was left move in with Gigi.

“I was like, ‘Let’s just put on a play in a barn. Why even pretend we’re making a show?’ In the States, if you’re a hit, you get more money. In Canada, you get less.”

G-Spot’s third and presumably last season will hopefully take the show back to its roots, says Bako, who can’t help but look forward to another deal she’s just inked with HBO.

38 Special, produced by Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Gavin Polone, will follow the adventures of a super sexy spy, who is armed, dangerous and premenopausal.

“It’s like La Femme Nikita with a biological clock,” Bako laughs. “I’m the writer, producer and hopefully star.”

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There’s an old joke that says every woman’s fantasy is to have two men at the same time: one to cook and one to clean.

I couldn’t help but think of it earlier this week when the town was in a tizzy over the notion of a swingers club coming to Windsor.

Even the strip clubs were taken aback by the fact the Toronto-based Wicked Club wanted to locate here.

“The truth is, we’re intimidated by the idea,” said Rob Katzman, who owns a bunch of adult entertainment places and indicated he wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot stripper’s pole.

Councillors and business leaders were looking ahead to the possible complications of allowing such a venture within the city limits, while more than one man let his imagination run wild at the thought of a legal romp with a partner who wouldn’t roll over later and ask him to take out the garbage or cut the grass.

I, on the other hand, had an entirely different picture in my head and started thinking of ways to spin off this concept into other money-making opportunities.

It wasn’t that I was trying to be sexist (who am I kidding? Of course I was) but I chose to assume a club devoted to swapping would be more beneficial to the male than the female.

So why not level the playing field?

“Wouldn’t it be great to open a Naggers Club in Windsor?” I asked. “Just think of the possibilities. One man who thinks he’s getting the night of his life with two women, and two women who get to outline his faults. In stereo.

“Two women telling him to take out the garbage. Two women complaining about his mother. Two women who feel they’re misunderstood and taken for granted.

“The next best thing would be a polygamy club,” I said. “Every guy gets five wives for the night. One’s pregnant, one’s pre-menstrual and the other three are having hot flashes. It’s like Desperate Housewives without the Wisteria Lane.”

The women in my group found this hilarious, but I confess the men were not amused. In fact, they were downright insulted.

“So what if this club’s focus was the other way around?” one fella asked. “What if it was one woman and two men?”

I had no trouble with the concept. “Then it would be called The Listeners Club. One man would be instructed to say, ‘So dear, how was your day?’ and he would listen intently as I gave him the minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour rundown, including a conversation with my father’s neighbour’s son-in-law and the plot line of One Life to Live.

“And when I asked ‘Do you think I should buy two pair of shoes because they’re on sale?’ he would say, ‘Darling, buy three. Think of the savings.’ “

“And the other man?” I was asked.

“He would get lunch.”

A grassroots poll suggested this would never work. Not in Windsor. Probably not anywhere.

While men might be enticed to make an initial visit, they would never buy a membership. “They’d run out of that club screaming and never come back,” said a male.

I had no trouble with that concept either. If all the men left the club — Wicked, nagging or otherwise — only the women would be left.

In which case we could call the club a spa, get a facial and still have lunch. So, like, thanks Wicked Club. Sign me up.

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A Canadian man who has been kidnapped in Haiti after recently being shot in another abduction incident appears to have gone from running a bawdy house in Ontario to running an orphanage in his adopted land.

Kidnappers are demanding a $100,000 US ransom and are threatening to kill Edward Brian Hughes, according to Nelson Ryman, co-director of the Tytoo Gardens orphanage in the village of Simonette, near Port-au-Prince.

On the advice of the United Nations and Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, no ransom will be paid, he said.

Hughes, 72, was recently involved in another kidnapping attempt that cost him his right arm. He was shot when kidnappers snatched Daniel Thelusmar, a Florida-based missionary delivering supplies to the orphanage, in December. The pair’s truck was surrounded by a gang armed with M-16s in Port-au-Prince.

Hughes was abandoned at the side of the road after being shot. His arm was later amputated about six inches below the shoulder. Thelusmar was released after his supporters paid a $10,000 US ransom.

After that incident, supporters urged Hughes to leave Haiti because of increasing violence.

“To go where?,” a Haitian radio station’s website quotes him as saying. “My life is in Haiti with my children. Who will take care of them if I go? I would be ashamed to leave them over such a little thing.”

Ryman said he thinks the kidnappings are linked.

“This is twice now in six months that he has been a victim of this kind of stuff,” Ryman said from his home in Zephyrhills, Fla.

“What’s to say that if they turn him loose today, if they were paid a ransom, that they won’t (kidnap) him back again saying they want another $100,000 US? Where does it stop?”

Thelusmar, who speaks Creole, is now helping to communicate with the kidnappers, Ryman said. He is convinced the two events are related.

A spokesman for Foreign Affairs said the department is keeping in touch with Hughes’ family and friends but would not provide any further details.

Hughes appears to have led a colourful and varied life. A man of the same name and age ran a bawdy house for adventuresome couples near Hamilton, Ont., that was raided by police in July 1981. The operation was run inside a circus tent. Nearly 100 swingers were charged in the raid.

That Hughes and his wife, Jeanette, were originally convicted and fined $3,000. The Ontario Court of Appeal later upheld the finding of guilt but granted absolute discharges to the couple. Hughes would not have had a record for a criminal conviction and would have been free to travel internationally.

A lawyer who represented Hughes in the case Wednesday viewed a photograph of the orphanage worker held hostage in Haiti and recognized him.

“It appears to me to be the same person who was my client,” Michael Caroline said.

How Hughes would have gone from operating a bawdy house to an orphanage is not clear. A 1988 press report said the Hughes had “traded their campground for a boat and headed for the Caribbean.” Indeed, Caroline ran into his former client on a plane headed for the Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti, in the late 1980s.

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TORONTO — A 2005 Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for swingers’ clubs appears to be bringing out Canada’s more, well, adventurous side.

Those who prefer life closer to the edge of the conjugal bed say the high court’s reinterpretation in December of the definition of indecency has fuelled a growing interest in private clubs that feature group sex, partner swapping, voyeurism and exhibitionism.

The high court effectively legalized such clubs when it ruled that consenting adults who engage in sexual activity behind closed doors while like-minded people look on are not committing indecent acts.

Five months later, their operators say more aggressive advertising and marketing efforts in the wake of the ruling have attracted significantly more people to their events.

“I think there’s a great opportunity to provide a safe environment where couples can really enhance their sex life,” said Linda Fox, who operates Club Eden in Vancouver with partner Jason Walters.

Club Eden, which opened last weekend, is a so-called “on-premises” club, which means private and shared rooms are available for members. Other clubs typically meet in hotel rooms or private homes.

The Supreme Court decision allowed Club Eden and others like it to stop being so discreet about what’s been going on behind their closed doors — and to try to open people’s minds at the same time, Fox said.

“There’s a lot of perceptions about [the swinging community]. One of the things we’re trying hard to do is to eliminate the negative perspective that does surround it and really bring forward the positive.”

At the Taboo trade show in Vancouver in January, Fox said she and her husband heard just one negative comment from the more than 30,000 people who made their way on to the convention floor.

Members of Club Eden are educated and respectful of others, she said. Guests are required to follow strict rules about conduct and privacy. No drugs are allowed; even smoking is restricted to the back deck.

Most clubs typically charge an annual fee of their members, but no money ever changes hands for sex. The bulk of the X-rated action takes place in “play rooms” that can host small or large groups.

At the largest swingers’ club of its kind in the city of Toronto, the play rooms apparently aren’t big enough: Wicked Club’s membership list has grown so long it will be moving to a significantly larger location by the end of the summer.

Wicked, Ontario’s only on-premises swingers club, has 13,000 members from all walks of life and a rapidly growing public profile that included a feature appearance last week on MTV Canada by its owners and founders, Aurora Ben Zion and her husband, Shlomo.

Since the ruling, the couple has fielded a “huge number” of calls from people interested in opening branches of Wicked across the country, Ben Zion said.

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TORONTO — A 2005 Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for swingers clubs appears to be bringing out Canada’s more, well, adventurous side.

Those who prefer life closer to the edge of the conjugal bed say the high court’s re-interpretation last December of the definition of indecency has fuelled a growing interest in private clubs that feature group sex, partner swapping, voyeurism and exhibitionism.

The high court effectively legalized such clubs when it rules that consenting adults who engage in sexual activity behind closed doors while like-minded people look on are not committing indecent acts.

Five months later, their operators say more aggressive advertising and marketing efforts in the wake of the ruling have attracted significantly more people to their events.

“I think there’s a great opportunity to provide a safe environment where couples can really enhance their sex life,” said Linda Fox, who operates Club Eden in Vancouver with partner Jason Walters.

Club Eden, which opened just last weekend, is a so-called “on-premises” club, which means private and shared rooms are available for members. Other clubs typically meet in hotel rooms or private homes.

The Supreme Court decision allowed Club Eden and others like it to stop being so discreet about what’s been going on behind their closed doors — and to try to open people’s minds at the same time, Fox said.

“There’s a lot of perceptions about (the swinging community). One of the things we’re trying hard to do is to eliminate the negative perspective that does surround it and really bring forward the positive.”

At the Taboo trade show in Vancouver this past January, Fox said she and her husband heard just one negative comment from the more than 30,000 people who made their way on to the convention floor.

Members of Club Eden are educated and respectful of others, she said. Guests are required to follow strict rules about conduct and privacy. No drugs are allowed; even smoking is restricted to the back deck.

Most clubs typically charge an annual fee of their members, but no money ever changes hands for sex. The bulk of the X-rated action takes place in “play rooms” which can host small or large groups of people.

At the largest swingers club of its kind in the city of Toronto, the play rooms apparently aren’t big enough: Wicked Club’s membership list has grown so long it will be moving to a significantly larger location by the end of the summer.

Wicked, Ontario’s only on-premises swingers club, has 13,000 members from all walks of life and a rapidly growing public profile that included a feature appearance last week on MTV Canada by its owners and founders, Aurora Ben Zion and her husband, Shlomo.

Since the ruling, the couple has fielded a “huge number” of calls from people interested in opening branches of Wicked across the country, Ben Zion said.

Those opposed to the Supreme Court decision and to the lifestyle in general say they’re not surprised by the surge in the popularity of such clubs, and pledge to fight back against what they see as an assault on family values and the country’s sexual health.

“We believe it’s an important issue because Canadians are concerned about swingers clubs,” said Janet Epp Buckingham, director of law and public policy for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

“They’re concerned about the fidelity of relationships, but they’re also concerned about the spread of disease.”

Ben Zion said she believes the ruling’s biggest impact wasn’t so much in changing Canadian attitudes as it was about making like-minded, sexually liberal people aware that gathering places such as Eden and Wicked even existed in the first place.

“When they hear about us, they’re interested in discovering this kind of lifestyle,” she said.

“They think, `I’m not a freak, it’s okay to do this, and I’m going to try it out.’ It not only legalized it, I think it legitimized it in the eyes of public opinion.”

Reive Doig, an organizer with a Vancouver company that promotes events dedicated to the swing lifestyle, said attitudes about sex and sexuality are changing partly because of a proliferation of sex-friendly information and positive media coverage.

“People are starting to realize that these are parts of normal human sexuality,” said Doig, whose company, BIO Event Productions, hosted the annual Conference of Kink this month. “The media is no longer always portraying us as serial killers and freaks.”

The conference boasted a “Tickled Pink” play room for its 200 attendees — something Doig likely would have steered clear of promoting too aggressively in the days before the decision for fear of charges of operating a common bawdy house.

“We were able to openly advertise the fact that we had this room, whereas in the past that’s something that may have worried us.”

Previously, the organizers could have been charged under the common bawdy house law. The decision made in December expressly made that an impossibility, he said.

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TORONTO — A 2005 Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for swingers clubs appears to be bringing out Canada’s more adventurous side.

Those who prefer life closer to the edge of the conjugal bed say the high court’s re-interpretation last December of the definition of indecency has fuelled growth in private clubs that feature group sex, partner swapping, voyeurism and exhibitionism, a trend reflected in last week’s opening of Club Eden in Vancouver.

“I think there’s a great opportunity to provide a safe environment where couples can really enhance their sex life,” said Linda Fox, who operates Club Eden with partner Jason Walters.

The high court effectively legalized such clubs when it rules that consenting adults who engage in sexual activity behind closed doors while like-minded people look on are not committing indecent acts.

Five months later, their operators say more aggressive advertising and marketing efforts in the wake of the ruling have attracted significantly more people to their events.

Club Eden is a so-called “on-premises” club, which means private and shared rooms are available for members. Other clubs typically meet in hotel rooms or private homes.

The Supreme Court decision allowed Club Eden and others like it to stop being so discreet about what’s been going on behind their closed doors — and to try to open people’s minds at the same time, Fox said.

“There’s a lot of perceptions about [the swinging community]. One of the things we’re trying hard to do is to eliminate the negative perspective that does surround it and really bring forward the positive.”

At the Taboo trade show in Vancouver this past January, Fox said she and her husband heard just one negative comment from the more than 30,000 people who made their way on to the convention floor.

Members of Club Eden are educated and respectful of others, she said. Guests are required to follow strict rules about conduct and privacy. No drugs are allowed; even smoking is restricted to the back deck.

Most clubs typically charge an annual fee of their members, but no money ever changes hands for sex. The bulk of the X-rated action takes place in “play rooms” which can host small or large groups of people.

At the largest swingers club of its kind in the city of Toronto, the play rooms apparently aren’t big enough: Wicked Club’s membership list has grown so long it will be moving to a significantly larger location by the end of the summer.

Reive Doig, an organizer with a Vancouver company that promotes events dedicated to the swing lifestyle, said attitudes about sex and sexuality are changing partly because of a proliferation of sex-friendly information and positive media coverage. “People are starting to realize that these are parts of normal human sexuality,” said Doig, whose company, BIO Event Productions, hosted the annual Conference of Kink. “The media is no longer always portraying us as serial killers and freaks.”

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