Tag Archives: Atlantic Canada

Queering Histories of Divorce and the Family in Nova Scotia

Erin Gallagher-Cohoon  In June 1968, a young woman petitioned the Nova Scotia Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes for a dissolution of marriage on the grounds of legal cruelty. She had lived with her husband in both Halifax and Western Shore in Lunenburg County for five years before briefly separating in 1965 and then again, this time for good, in 1967. They… Read more »

Gender Dysphoria Across Borders: The Archival Pasts and Potentials of Erica Rutherford

by Jess Wilton Threads of gender dysphoria unite the yellowing pages of adolescent diaries with the smudged print of typewritten letters in the Erica Rutherford fonds at the Prince Edward Island Public Archives. A trans artist who settled on Prince Edward Island (PEI), Rutherford passed away in 2008. She left behind numerous artworks that have been on display at the Venice Biennale as… Read more »

A Beacon of Light: Hidden 2sLGBTQ+ Histories in Saint John’s The Lighthouse

by Meredith J. Batt Atlantic Canadian port cities have some of the most colourful and vibrant queer spaces and stories. Saint John, New Brunswick is no exception. In 2020, the first summer of the pandemic, I celebrated my 25th birthday in Saint John by attending a drag show hosted by Justin TooDeep (portrayed by Alex Saunders) and Saint John’s jewel of… Read more »

Gender Diversity, Organizational Obliviousness, and Queering the Archive in Newfoundland and Labrador

A Conversation with Sarah Worthman Sarah Worthman is executive director of the NL Queer Research Initiative (NLQRI), a social science research collective based out of Newfoundland and Labrador. In February 2025, she sat down to talk with series editor Jess Wilton about her work on queer history in the province. Jess Wilton: What type of work do you do at the NLQRI? Sarah… Read more »

A Queer Road Trip through Atlantic Canada

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by Meredith J Batt and Jess Wilton The queer history of Atlantic Canada is embedded in the region’s landscape and its people. As we guide you across the region exploring some queer nooks and crannies along the way, we will introduce you to the way queer pasts, presents, and futures collide and overlap.  It’s spring and we begin in Northern… Read more »

Queering Atlantic Canada: Stories, Histories, Archives

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by Jess Wilton Cradled by the Atlantic Ocean, the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island (PEI), and Newfoundland and Labrador occupy a unique place in queer and Canadian history. “Queering Atlantic Canada: Stories, Histories, and Archives of Atlantic Canada” is an ActiveHistory.ca series guest edited by Jess Wilton. Over the next year, this series will offer an introduction to the work… Read more »

Is the gay steel mill closed? Reflections on queer histories of deindustrializing Cape Breton

by Liam Devitt In 1991, the AIDS Coalition of Cape Breton was founded. Cape Breton Island, a small industrial region, was a far cry from the perceived metropolitan hotspots of the AIDS epidemic. It did not have the cosmopolitan queer nightlife of these cities and little activism that could be called “gay liberation” manifested in any visible way. In short,… Read more »

Black Identity and the Great War: History from the Bottom Up

by Roger P Nason About a dozen years ago, I began researching community identity. I was expanding on questions I asked as an historian and trained archivist who was studying the settlement of St. Andrews, New Brunswick (NB) after the American Revolution. While most tend to focus on military campaigns, political leaders, and elites, I wanted to figure out the… Read more »

Podcast: Cosmopolitanism in James Barry’s Diary: The Atlantic World Views of a 19th-Century Nova Scotia Miller

https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Episode-07-Dan-Samson.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadOn April 22, 2017, Dan Samson delivered his talk “Cosmopolitanism in James Berry’s Diary: The Atlantic World Views of a 19th-Century Nova Scotia Miller.” The talk was part of “The Other 60s: A Decade that Shaped Canada and the World,” a symposium hosted by the Department of History at the University of Toronto as… Read more »

The Year of the Flood: Hurricane Matthew, Oral Narratives, and Climate History

By Lachlan MacKinnon The tail-end of Hurricane Matthew battered Nova Scotia and Newfoundland on Monday afternoon and through the evening. Although the damage does not approach the devastation wrought by the system in the Caribbean and other points south, for many in Cape Breton it will be remembered as the storm of a generation. As I drove around the streets… Read more »