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 »
Margaret Ross Late one evening in January 1923, police descended on Millie Jones’s bawdy house at 757 Mercer Street in Windsor, Ontario. She was forty-eight years old, and ran the house with her husband, George.[1] The couple was Black, and they employed two other Black women. The entire group was arrested, including two clients who were being entertained at the… Read more »
By Sean Graham Black & Immigrant Communities in Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley | RSS.comIn the 1930s, Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver was home to a vibrant community, which was slowly displaced through the construction of the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts. This is the settling for Junie, a historical fiction that explores the complexities of community, race, sexuality, substance abuse, and, most importantly,… Read more »
by Meredith J. Batt On Wednesday, July 1st, 1981, Dominion Day, a group of 250 gays and lesbians met in Centennial Park, in Moncton, New Brunswick. All attending as individuals, some hanging out near the fringes of the park in case any trouble kicked-off, while police officers looked on, surveying the crowd. This gay picnic was the cause of huge… Read more »
Walter T. Cassidy February 2021 marks the fortieth anniversary of one of the largest gay rights protests in Canadian history. On February 5, 1981, over 150 Toronto police officers raided four local bathhouses, known as gathering places for members of the gay community. Almost three hundred men were arrested that night, sparking a series of highly publicized rallies and mass… Read more »
Tom Hooper, Gary Kinsman, and Karen Pearlston (The Anti-69 Forum is taking place March 23-24, 2019 at Carleton University. See www.anti-69.ca for more information) When we say we are Anti-69, we are referring to the mythologies surrounding the 1969 Criminal Code reform. We are not Anti-69 in all contexts. There are many important events from 1969 that deserve to be… Read more »
By Casey Burkholder During a late fall afternoon of syllabus writing, and distracted Googling, I came across the activist archival work of Dusty Green, who has developed the New Brunswick Queer Heritage Initiative (NBQHI). The NBQHI emerged after Dusty came across pictures donated to the New Brunswick Provincial Archives of rural New Brunswick boyfriends, Leonard and Cub, photographed between 1905… Read more »
