Bios

Kevin Allen – Research Lead

Kevin Allen is a Calgary historian, writer, and arts administrator who has spent more than 30 years documenting the lives, spaces, and events that shaped Calgary’s 2SLGBTQ+ community. He founded the Calgary Gay History Project in 2012 to research, preserve, and share the city’s queer past.

Kevin has written for numerous queer publications, including Clue! Magazine, QC Magazine, Xtra! West, and Xtra.ca. His research has informed museum talks, public lectures, walking tours, and media coverage exploring Calgary’s 2SLGBTQ+ History.

He is the author of the bestselling book Our Past Matters: Stories of Gay Calgary, a collection of historical narratives documenting the city’s queer community.

Kevin was the first Historian-in-Residence at the Calgary Central Library and continues to present regularly for cultural organizations, museums, and community groups. His work with the Calgary Gay History Project has been featured in podcasts, television interviews, and national media coverage, highlighting the importance of preserving queer community history.

He holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of Victoria, specializing in non-profit management. In addition to his historical work, Kevin has been active in Calgary’s arts community as a founding member of the Calgary Queer Arts Society, which produces cultural programs including the Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival. Kevin also works as a senior election official with Elections Canada and the City of Fernie.  {KA}

Levin Ifko — Researcher

Levin Ifko is a volunteer researcher with the Calgary Gay History Project. They developed an interest in the project after meeting the team at the National Queer and Trans+ Community History Conference in Edmonton in 2024.

Levin has a strong interest in local History and is currently researching trans histories in Calgary, an area that remains under-documented in existing historical scholarship. {LI}

Dr. William Bridel — Researcher

Dr. William Bridel is a researcher with the Calgary Gay History Project and a professor at the University of Calgary. His work brings a sociological perspective to queer History, particularly exploring connections between sexuality, sport, physical activity, and health.

William completed his PhD at Queen’s University in 2011 and previously held a postdoctoral position at the University of Alberta before teaching at Miami University (Ohio). He moved to Calgary in 2014 to join the University of Calgary.

His research with the Calgary Gay History Project includes work on sport and queer life in Calgary, drawing on archival materials and oral histories to document previously overlooked aspects of the city’s 2SLGBTQ+ past. {WB}

Laura O’Grady – Filmmaker

Laura O’Grady is proud to bring Calgary’s 2SLGBTQ+  stories to screens around the world. She served as a producer on Asexual: A Love Story and produced and directed the award-winning films Queer Hutterite, Gross Indecency: the Everett Klippert Story and Francheska: Prairie Queen. She also produced the TELUS Originals digital series Small Town Queer.

Laura manages Snapshot Studios, which provides a breadth of support production services, from research and writing to producing, production management, producer mentorship (STORYHIVE), and post-production supervision. Productions have appeared on CBC, TELUS, Rogers, MGM+, among many other networks.

Past Volunteers

Danielle Shinbine – Researcher

Danielle is a Master of Science in counselling psychology student at the University of Calgary. Danielle moved to Calgary in 2022 after growing up on Vancouver Island, British Columbia and completing their BA in psychology at Vancouver Island University. Their research interests explore LGBTQ+ well-being and its intersections with aging and are currently completing a thesis on the experiences of LGBTQ+ older adults who grew up amid Canada’s gay rights movement, as well as several other projects examining how LGBTQ+ individuals engage with social media. In their goal of preserving the narratives of the LGBTQ+ Canadian community, they reached out and joined the Calgary Gay History Project’s team. Danielle is also involved with the gender and sexuality subcommittee of their university’s graduate student association. When not working, Danielle enjoys their hobbies of retro video gaming and visiting animal sanctuaries.  {DS}

Sheldon Cannon – Researcher

Sheldon is a medical student with a background in science and an interest in History, politics, and anthropology. Raised in rural Saskatchewan and having completed his BSc in Physiology at the University of Alberta, he is a prairie boy through and through. Having dipped his toe into History as a teenager on his local museum board, it was a workshop with Edmonton’s premier queer historian, Darrin Hagen, that got him interested in gay History specifically. He discovered the Calgary Gay History Project through its video on Everett Klippert after learning that Everett was born in Sheldon’s hometown. Sheldon’s project on the 2002 Goliath’s Bathhouse raid seeks to explore our community’s ever-changing relationship with police and how physical spaces (or lack thereof) impact gay life. Outside of History, Sheldon also assists in medical research and endeavours to develop his artistic side as a beginner dancer and acrobat. {SC}

Nevena Ivanović – Researcher

Nevena Ivanović is a recent arrival in Calgary and Canada. She has worked for years on gender equality and women’s rights issues in Belgrade, Serbia, her hometown, with a focus on strengthening advocacy skills of community organizations and supporting applied research to inform public policy change in the area of women’s economic rights. She is a co-author of a study on the gender pay gap in three Western Balkan countries. Nevena has a BA in History and a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Gender and Culture. In this project, her passionate interest in the past and strong personal commitment to LGBTIQ rights come together.  {NI}

Del Rath – Researcher

Del says, “It is a privilege to assist Kevin with this research–the ever-unfolding History of the GLBT community in Calgary. The findings thus far are proving to be very interesting and fascinating.”

Throughout Del’s working life, she was employed as an educator and worked for several years in the non-profit sector. Before her retirement in 2010, Del was the manager of the Old Y Centre for Community Organizations (an office building dedicated to providing office space for non-profit organizations). As a retiree, Del has been pursuing her passions as a visual artist and as an actor. Currently, Del is a member of two theatrical endeavours, Seniors A-GoGo (Seniors and Sexuality) and the Seniors Action Group (A Wise Journey). {DR}

Rosman Valencia – Researcher

Having grown up in the Philippines, Rosman is new to Canada and comes with a Bachelor of Secondary Education in History (Minor in Reading) and experience as a High School Teacher in Manila. After running a successful campaign, he was elected as Youth Leader in his local community, where he helped initiate a scholarship program for underprivileged students. This Fall, Rosman will be back in academia at the University of Calgary, majoring in History. He enjoys volunteering for Non-Profit Organizations such as Calgary Reads and Calgary Gay History Project. Passionate about History and eager to explore Calgary’s LGBTQ history, Rosman is enthusiastic to dig into archives and narratives. {RV}

Matthew Gillespie – Researcher

Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Matthew has always had a love of History, based on tracing the arrival in Quebec City in 1690 of his earliest ancestor. With a background in Urban Studies and Political Science from McGill, he has used those talents sparingly. Instead, he found his calling in sales, marketing and world travel with Royal Caribbean for many years.

He has called Calgary home since 1988, except for those 2 years in the ’90s when he thought Vancouver was the place to be. A former President of Apollo Friends in Sports, he also enjoys a great game of volleyball, for which he won a silver medal at the Gay Games in New York in 1994. A past singer with the Rocky Mountain Singers, Calgary’s first LGBTQ chorus, he currently sings with both the Calgary Men’s Chorus and One Voice Chorus. Matthew is also the President of the Unison Festival Unisson, Canada’s LGBTQ choir festival, which takes place every four years and will be in Calgary in May 2018. Matthew is currently a Design Associate with a local boutique design and renovation company. {MG}

Ayanna Smart – Researcher

Ayanna Smart came to Canada from Trinidad and Tobago at sixteen and continued her lifelong love of learning here. She has a BSc in Biochemistry and a diploma in Medical Laboratory Technology. In her past life as a medical lab technologist, she enjoyed researching and writing training materials and keeping up with the continually changing nature of laboratory work. She is currently a student pursuing a pharmacy program and continues working on her visual art. Her involvement in the LGBT community has included serving as a Peer Facilitator for the InsideOut Youth Group and volunteering with the Fairy Tales Film Festival. As a researcher for the Calgary Gay History Project, she is reviewing the Canadian Gay newspaper The Body Politic, which offers a truly fascinating look at the culture and events of the 70s and 80s in Canada’s LGBT community. Her passion for volunteering and the ability to do detailed work have made this project a real joy.  {AS}

Jonathan Brower – Researcher

Jonathan is the Artistic Director and co-founder of Third Street Theatre, Calgary’s Queer Theatre Company. He holds a BA in Communications and a BFA in Drama from the University of Calgary. He has worked in communications and arts for many non-profit organizations in the areas of radio, theatre and ministry. A born-and-raised bilingual Calgarian, Jonathan is a playwright, director, producer, actor, and musician. He pursues the arts as a vehicle for discussion, education and activism primarily concerning LGBTQ issues. Recently, his artistic interests have focused on creating, discovering, and preserving LGBT history to better inform our future community. Jonathan is also passionate about finding the common ground upon which relationships, faith and sexual orientation can co-exist peacefully.  {JB}

Nolan Hill – Researcher

Nolan is a student, activist, and a born-and-raised Calgarian. He is currently pursuing a BA in History and a BA in Philosophy at the University of Calgary. An aspiring museum curator, he hopes to help shape the future of museums to be more inclusive of LGBTQ stories and to be agents of social change. Nolan is a coordinator of the Coming Out Monologues YYC and a volunteer at the Q Centre at the University of Calgary. His interest in the Calgary Gay History Project aligns with a background in History, heritage, and community engagement, and with how the past helps shape a community’s experience of the future. {NH}

Tereasa Maillie – Researcher

Tereasa Maillie is a writer and researcher. She also has a very un-secret life as a producer and playwright. Her work has appeared in various poetry and short-story anthologies, most recently in the Found Poetry Review and Beyond Imagination. She has a background in historical research, having attended the MA program at the University of Alberta. Her previous work includes the History of oil and gas in Alberta, Chinese medicine, First Nations and Métis History. She was the Historian in Residence for the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society in 2012, developing a historical program for that organization.  {TM}