Category Archives: Gay history

Exploring Transgender History at CIH Pride Lecture

Posted on August 6, 2026 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

Our favourite annual event during Pride Week is the Calgary Institute for the Humanities (CIH) Queer History Lecture—always free!

This year, on September 2nd at 7 PM, the CIH welcomes Dr. Howard Chiang from the University of California, Santa Barbara, for a public lecture titled “Decolonizing Transgender History: The View from the Asia Pacific.“ Presented in partnership with the Calgary Public Library, UCalgary Alumni, and the Calgary Foundation, the event explores new ways of thinking about gender, history, and identity.

Dr. Chiang asks a thought-provoking question: Does Asia have a trans history? His research challenges the idea that gender-nonconforming people are missing from the historical record, while also questioning whether the Western concept of “transgender” is the best way to understand gender diversity in Chinese-speaking societies.

Using examples from the Sinophone Pacific, Dr. Chiang explores how a decolonial approach can open new perspectives on transgender history and encourage us to rethink how history has been written.

An internationally recognized scholar, Dr. Chiang is the Lai Ho & Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies at UC Santa Barbara and Director of the Center for Taiwan Studies. He is the author of the award-winning books After Eunuchs and Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific, and was recently named a 2026 Dan David Prize laureate in History.

Curious to learn something new? Join us for a stimulating conversation that challenges conventions about gender and history. This free public event is open to everyone—register today to reserve your spot.

{KA}

1 Comment

Posted in Gay history

Tagged bisexual, Calgary Institute for the Humanities, CIH, Dr. Howard Chiang, gay, lesbian, queer, transgender, University of California

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}

1 Comment

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.