Calgary Gay History

Spilling the tea about Dorothy at Historic Calgary Week!

Posted on July 23, 2026 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

One of the highlights of every Calgary summer is Historic Calgary Week, running July 24 – August 3, when history enthusiasts gather to explore the stories, people, and places that have shaped our city. This year’s theme, “Chinook Country: Influences and Icons,” will explore the places, events, and personalities that have been important to our city.

Readers of the Calgary Gay History Project know Kevin Allen for his work uncovering and preserving Calgary’s queer history—like his parkside chat with Lois Szabo at Historic Calgary Week 2024. But, like many historians, Kevin’s curiosity extends well beyond a single subject. A love of history often leads in unexpected directions, revealing the connections between families, communities, and the city we all share.

On July 29th, Kevin is stepping away from queer history to present Fare Exchange Revisited as part of Historic Calgary Week. The presentation tells the story behind the cookbook created by his great-aunt, Dorothy Allen-Gray, and explores the history surrounding her work. The research for the project has been undertaken in collaboration with Julie Van Rosendaal, one of Canada’s best-known food writers, cookbook authors, and culinary historians. Together, they have combined family history, archival research, and a shared passion for food and storytelling to uncover a fascinating chapter of Calgary’s past.

*Dorothy at home (not spilling the tea) in the 1960s*

Whether we’re documenting Calgary’s 2SLGBTQ+ community or exploring stories from other corners of the city’s past, Kevin’s goal is the same: to preserve memories before they’re lost and to better understand the lives that shaped our community.

Historic Calgary Week is the perfect place for stories like these to come together, and the week is chock-o-block full of amazing programming. Events are free, but registration is required. The opening ceremony of Historic Calgary Week is this Friday at 9:30 AM at the Central Library—see you there!

{KA}

Late in ’88 Returns for a Second Season

Posted on July 9, 2026 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

Memory is a funny thing. We remember the big moments, but it is often the smaller details that tell us who we were and how we survived.

That is one of the great strengths of Season Two of Late in ’88, the podcast created by Bronwin Parks and Elinor Svoboda. This new season jumps ahead to 1998, their senior year at a Calgary high school, and asks what had changed for queer youth in the decade since 1988—and what had not.

Elinor Svoboda and Bronwin Parks: *Late in ’88 Podcast Hosts*

The Calgary Gay History Project’s Kevin Allen was pleased to join Bronwin and Elinor again in Episode 2, “The Decade That Changed Queer Canada.” Together, we discuss the AIDS crisis, Calgary’s first Pride parade in 1990, the Delwin Vriend case, cultural backlash, queer community spaces, and the activism that helped reshape Canada in the 1990s.

The episode is a reminder that queer history is not abstract. It lives in classrooms, bars, courtrooms, bedrooms, hospital rooms, community meetings, and the memories we carry with us. The 1990s brought meaningful legal and social change, but that progress was hard-won. It came from people willing to organize, speak up, care for one another, and imagine a different future.

Podcasts like Late in ’88 matter. They do what good oral history should do: they connect personal memory to a larger historical moment. Bronwin and Elinor are generous and thoughtful guides through their own past. They understand that memory is complicated—and powerful.

Season Two of Late in ’88 is well worth your time. Listen, share it, and then ask yourself: whose story still needs to be recorded?

{KA}

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged AIDS, bisexual, Bronwin Parks, Calgary, Elinor Svoboda, gay, High School, Late in '88, lesbian, podcast, queer, transgender, William Aberhart High School

Stampede Queer History

Posted on July 2, 2026 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

Every July, I find myself with mixed feelings about the Calgary Stampede.

As a kid, I loved it. I remember the excitement of the parade, free pancake breakfasts, and the feeling that, for ten days, Calgary became a little more joyful and a lot less predictable.

*Our WORD emerged on 17th Ave. in recent days…*

As a historian, though, I also know the Stampede is more complicated than the nostalgia. It’s a carefully crafted story about Calgary and the West—one that celebrates some histories while overlooking others.

Maybe that’s why I keep returning to it.

This month at The Confluence, I’ll be diving into the Stampede’s surprising queer history: the thousands of images of impossibly handsome cowboys, ranch hands, rodeo athletes, and almost naked “beefcakes” that fed into 1950s and 1960s physique photography. They were meant to celebrate rugged western masculinity, but they were also creating the network for a nascent North American gay community.

Join me on Thursday, July 16, for How the West Got Shirtless: Beefcakes, the Stampede, and Queerness. We’ll look at vintage photographs, postcards, and moving images to explore how queer people found themselves reflected in the Calgary Stampede.