The power of oral history in piecing together archival fragments documenting 2SLGBTQ+ community histories

Meredith J. Batt

I have made an error.

These are not words that come easily to a historian, when evidence is the backbone of our work. However, as Tim Lacy notes in his Society for U.S. Intellectual History blog post On the Failures of Historians, “There is no question that historians in their role as content experts experience failure.  All humans are imperfect, and all historians are human, hence imperfect historians are not always on target.” It is how we correct the misinformation that matters; one way is by using tools, additional records and memories to add context to archival records where incorrect assumptions have been made.  This article thus follows my journey in correcting my own error in historical research using oral history to piece together archival fragments. 

A few years ago, my colleagues stumbled across a photo held at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick. It showed people gathered around a seven-striped, rainbow flag raising ceremony outside of Fredericton City Hall. Taken by the Mullins Photography Studio, it was labelled as “Pride Flag Raising, October 1998.” Based on this description, I was convinced I had come across a 2SLGBTQ+ archival gem: documentary evidence of the first Pride Flag Raising Ceremony in Fredericton and, possibly, in New Brunswick. 

The flag’s seven stripes were intriguing, but there have been many iterations of the pride flag and it is still evolving as the Progress Flag. The original Gilbert Baker flag from 1978 had eight colours, while another iteration in the late 1970s had seven; manufacturers had removed the pink stripe due to pink fabric shortages and looked just like the one in the photo. So, perhaps this was a case of activists using what they had on hand for the flag raising? 

Based on the 150^th anniversary banners in the photo’s background, the year was 1998, which was the sesquicentennial of Fredericton’s founding and a significant year for Fredericton queer history. Early in the 1990s Fredericton Lesbian Gays (FLAG) had been holding pride week events, but the city had not acknowledged them, despite requests between 1992 and 1995.

However, activists had enough in June 1995, when Mayor Brad Woodside refused once again, saying that sexual orientation had no place in the city council chamber. Activists Allison Brewer and Kim Hill, representing the New Brunswick Coalition for Human Rights Reform and FLAG respectively, submitted a Human Rights Complaint under the 1992 added protection for sexual orientation under the province’s Human Rights Legislation. The commission launched a two-year investigation where Woodside claimed his refusal to proclaim a Gay Pride Week was protected under Freedom of Expression in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Held in July 1998 and attended by roughly 40 members of the public, the inquiry sided with Brewer and Hill and ordered Woodside to proclaim Pride Week. 

On Tuesday October 13^th, 1998, Woodside read out the Pride Week Proclamation during the City Council meeting. Except he pushed away his microphone during this section of the meeting and mumbled all of the week’s proclamations to the city clerk. As the Telegraph-Journal reported, Brewer said “It was a childish trick on the part of the mayor. I would have expected more, even of Brad Woodside, who has shown no class during this entire process.” ^[1]According to Woodside, the matter was over; he had read the proclamation, even if the chamber couldn’t hear it. Yet, it wasn’t just Brewer who thought the Mayor acted without class. Two city councillors, Andy Wood and Marilyn Kerton, spoke with the Saint John Times Globe regarding their disappointment in Mayor Woodside’s behaviour. It is likely this pressure from the council that helped him change his mind. Days later Woodside apologized and reread the week’s proclamations. In doing so, he drew a line under several years of obstinance. 

Following Mayor Woodside’s apology and reading of the proclamation, members of FLAG held a vigil of remembrance for Mathew Sheppard, and I was convinced that the flag raising must have been part of it, despite it not being referenced anywhere. With both the mayoral proclamation being settled and the Sheppard vigil occurring at the same time it seemed obvious that flag raising was concurrent with these events. 

Daily Gleaner, Friday October 16^th, 1998

In hope of identifying the people in the photo, I began using this photo in presentations and included it in an education resources kit. I was keen to show it to former activists and recently, the Queer Heritage Initiative of New Brunswick has been conducting an oral history project on the lived experiences of 2SLGBTQ+ Fredericton activists and community members in the late 1970s-early 2000s. A perfect opportunity to show the photo and learn more about the event. 

During a recent interview that my student and I conducted with activist Alison Brewer, I was keen to show her the photo. I hoped she would be able to fully identify the people in the photo and a few people I had shown it to had identified Alison’s mother, Jackie Webster, in the back row. I was so excited and eager for her to see the image. This quickly evaporated when she didn’t recognize anyone as being part of FLAG.  Then came the missing clue, “I think these people might be part of the Credit Union….”, she said. My heart sank; it can’t be, I thought. The Credit Union?! But it looks like a pride flag and it happened in October 1998 the same month as the Woodside-Pride Week debacle! After doing some digging on Newspapers.com, there it was: the seven striped rainbow flag was raised for National Co-op Week and Credit Union Day appearing in The Daily Gleaner on October 15, 1998.

Left with several questions, I started to try to find out about the history of the flag and what it represented for the Credit Union and the Co-op. I reached out to the local Credit Unions and the Canadian Credit Union Association a few times for comment. While staff have responded and have been very interested and shown care, unfortunately, they weren’t able to respond to my query about the flag and the representation of what it means to the Credit Union. However, as I prepared this article for publication, my editor was able to send me the missing link. From 1925-2001, the 7-striped rainbow flag was used as a symbol of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) as a symbol of harmony and unity for all. The ICA was founded in 1895 to defend cooperative principles and promote international trade. 

This information on the flag’s origin still leaves us with a few questions. Co-operatives, Credit Unions and Caisse Populaires have been the backbone of the community and standing in solidarity with various minority groups. I did wonder at first if this could have been a move in solidarity with lesbians and gays, but more likely it is simply a powerful irony that a rainbow flag was hung outside of Fredericton during this pivotal week. 

Additionally, this episode sheds light on accidental mislabeling of photos by archivists that can occur when there is little information regarding the provenance of the record. It is not the archivist’s job to write the history of the record, but mislabeling can then have the effect of historians perpetuating historical errors. Therefore, it should be the case of a historian speaking to archivists when they find an unintended mistake to correct the description. This is where the symbiosis of the professions need to work in tandem. 

So, that still leaves the question of when was the first pride flag raised in Fredericton outside of City Hall? Reference is made that the first raising took place in 2004 during the Fredericton Pride Week June 1^st-7^th. The month previous, Woodside was reelected as Mayor for his fourth term and proclaimed Pride Week during the first council meeting on May 25, 2004.^[2]

Researching this image has been an important lesson in seeing how the power of oral history can be used to reveal historical inaccuracies. As John D’Emilio writes in the Afterword of Boyd and Roque Ramirez’s Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History, “The interviews themselves are compelling and revealing. They provide evidence to skeptics, converts, and advocates that oral history as a method has the power to enrich, deepen, and expand enormously the historical record.” Telling the histories of resilience in underserved and silenced populations is no small feat and getting it right matters to avoid perpetuating harm. In this world of quick information— Tik Tok histories and AI generated essays— we all need to slow down and think about the sources we are consulting. Are there additional sources? If possible, have we spoken to all of the people involved?? Could there be another angle that hasn’t been represented or that the record does not represent? 

Having search functions for newspaper databases is great, but text searchable functionality and AI can only go so far. In my case, I wasn’t flipping through each page in the way I would be looking at newspapers on microfilm so without the tip from Brewer, I was completely reliant on search function. 

While uncomfortable, it is important to own up to historical errors and mistakes when they are made. Information at our disposal is constantly changing and the lens through how we interpret things has been vastly altered over decades. However, sitting in silence, sweeping it under the rug, or deleting comments on posts so the narrative suits your purpose, buries the truth further. It is  owning the mistake and being honest that leads to accuracy and truth. 

Meredith J. Batt is an archivist at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick as well as a co-founder and Queer History Research Archivist Advisor for the Queer Heritage Initiative of New Brunswick (QHINB). They are currently pursuing their MA in Archives and Records Management at University College Dublin and working on their second book exploring the 2SLGBTQ+ History of New Brunswick.

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^[1] Telegraph-Journal, October 15, 1998. 

^[2] Daily Gleaner, May 26, 2004 and August 20, 2004. Woodside also made history by showing support for the 2SLGBTQ+ community and walking in the Fredericton Pride Parade in 2011, 16 years after first declining to proclaim a Pride Week.