This year, the Calgary Pride Festival is scheduled to run August 26th – September 5th. Typically the Calgary Gay History Project does two or three events to celebrate local queer history during the fest. We had the innovative idea—before we schedule anything—to ask YYCgayhistory readers and supporters what they would like to see. We’re crowdsourcing history programming!
Fill in this free and anonymous survey to nudge us into the programming that you want to experience, now that we can gather in person again. Let us know by July 21st—your input is valuable to us.
Kevin leading a Beltline Gay History Walk 2017
Ayanna and Kevin at the Calgary Pride Festival History Booth in 2016
One’s personal gay history is part of a larger gay history narrative. Having just returned this month from a long trip to Greece, where I lived in my early 20s, I’ve been combing through my personal archives to recollect my former life abroad. Fortunately, there is a written record—I volunteered for the ’90s local queer publication, CLUE! Magazine, and after I left Calgary I wrote a column called “Notes from Greece.”
Reading my 22-year-old musing does induce some cringing but the part of the column that haunts me the most is what I have forgotten. Broad strokes are remembered but a few important details have vanished over time. As someone whose research leans heavily on oral history accounts, the vacancies in my own story give me pause. Our stories have holes.
Kevin Allen: first time in the Mediterranean Sea, age 22.
Academic historians, of course, enumerate all sorts of limitations in historical research: issues of memory, subjectivity, privilege, etc. However, when your own story has gaps, you feel this limitation profoundly. Yet, I’m thankful for the written word, the fact that this column even existed, and that the magazine has been collected and preserved. I can read it 28 years later and learn something about my own gay history—a “clue” about who I was.
I’m uploading a few of the columns for interested readers—feel free to cringe! Perhaps there is a hint of a future historian in the making…
{Note: the column was handwritten, mailed to Canada as a letter, and then typed into CLUE!’s graphic design program. Email was not a widespread thing then—true story!}
We’ve returned from a three-month hiatus to celebrate both pride month and ten years since the Calgary Gay History Project was founded. We began as a tiny project for Calgary 2012 and have been growing ever since due to an active and engaged community.
Book Launch in November 2018
One of Kevin Allen’s first public history presentations in 2013
In gratitude, Kevin has reflected on a number of special moments from the decade’s deep dive into local queer history.
Gay History Walks. Ever since 2013, situating queer history in the Calgary landscape on a warm summer night with enthusiastic walkers is a slice of heaven (although we had a snow squall once that added a decidedly different frisson).
Everett Klippert. His life story has been a focus of the Calgary Gay History Project since its inception. However, everything deepened when his family got involved with the Project in 2015. Together we excavated Everett’s very profound role in changing Canadian history in 1969. His story continues to have posthumous impact, most recently with the expungement of his criminal record in 2020.
Club Carousel. Calgary’s original gay bar founded in 1970 was arguably the most formative queer space the city has ever seen. Our first commemorative Club Carousel Cabaret was held in 2014 at the High Performance Rodeo thanks to Third Street Theatre and our impresario Michael Green (RIP). Our second Cabaret was held in 2015 thanks to One Voice Chorus—sold out each time!
Gross Indecency: The Everett Klippert Story (2018). Saying “yes” to filmmaker Laura O’Grady was one of the best decisions we ever made. Not only did this short film garner festival laurels, but through the process Laura became a good friend. We made another great film in 2021, called Undetectable. Laura has our highest esteem.
Our Past Matters. The book had a difficult birth. It took four years to write—not one year, as planned. However, it was embraced in pre-production by a successful Kickstarter campaign and since has gone on to be a local best-seller as well as on the curriculum for some University of Calgary undergraduate classes. We are ever so grateful both for insightful readers as well as independent bookstores.
Legislating Love. Natalie Meisner’s play about the life of Everett Klippert was history turned into sublime art (I wept). Sage Theatre mounted the world premiere in 2018, and the play continues to gather praise, most recently winning an “Oscar” at this year’s Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival.
HiR. Kevin was honoured to be the inaugural Historian in Residence when the New Central Library opened in 2018. It was a high water mark for the Calgary Gay History Project and a terrific experience. The Library graciously hosted the book launch of Our Past Matters—an incredibly special memory now.
Lois Szabo Commons. Last summer the City of Calgary unveiled a new park dedicated to Lois Szabo, the only living founder of Club Carousel. The park is a public and permanent commemoration of queer history in our city. We were honoured to participate in the nomination process and count Lois as one of the dearest people we know.
Lois Szabo Commons Opens July 21, 2021
No historian is an island. So many people have contributed to the success of the Calgary Gay History Project. In closing, we would like to give a shout out to project volunteers past and present: Nevena, Del, Rosman, Matt, Ayanna, Sheldon, Laura, Jonathan, Nolan, and Tereasa!
Calgary Gay History 