Category Archives: Uncategorized

Calgary Gay History Project News

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

It is a busy time in Calgary for queer events and happenings. You can catch the end of the Fairytales Queer Film Festival this weekend as well as Third Street Theatre’s Stars of the Stage and Screen Gala.

One Voice Chorus, whom we partnered earlier this year to present the Club Carousel Cabaret has a concert coming up featuring a local Gay-Straight Alliance – topical given recent history in Alberta! Rainbow Connections: A Pride Concert will be held on Sunday, June 7th at 3 PM.

Close on the heels of the Third Street Gala is Calgary’s Outlink’s Glitter Gala on June 13th. The Calgary Gay History Project has been invited to participate for a second year. Our researcher, Tereasa Maillie, will be exploring the history of YYC Pride in a short presentation.

We are planning a couple of research trips as well. Kevin Allen will be on the West Coast again (Victoria and Vancouver) from June 14-18 to gather more interviews for the project. If you or some one you know has a Calgary gay history to share, please contact us. We also are tentatively planning a trip to Saskatoon (and Regina?) in the first week of August, to check out the Neil Richards Collection of Sexual and Gender Diversity at the University of Saskatchewan. Again, if there are any former Calgarians in Saskatchewan whom you know, please have them get in touch with us.

Now that the Provincial election has concluded, stay tuned to the website for weekly history vignettes, and updates to the project.

Have a great summer!

{KA}

Know Your Roots + U of C Symposium

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

The Calgary Gay History Project will be taking part in the upcoming Gender and Sexuality Diversity Symposium next week, March 28th & 29th. This University of Calgary event is being produced by the Institute for Gender Research and the Women’s Studies Program and is open and is free to the public to register.

There will be a lot of interesting research, material and discussion – be sure to check the program out: here.

We also wanted to give a shout out to the Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival in Calgary, who at last year’s festival embarked on a history project of their own, called, Know Your Roots (KYR). Filmmakers Madeleine Hardy and Matt McKinney produced 10 short videos talking about queer history in Calgary, which screened in front of the festival’s feature films.

Know Your Roots Trailer (2013)

Both filmmakers were former Youth Queer Media program participants. Fairy Tales has an internet channel on Vimeo where you can watch them all!

[KA]

Worker’s Pride: Labour Unions and our History

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) was one of the supporters of Calgary’s 2013 Pride Parade. A volunteer association of unions and employee organizations, the AFL also has a Pride and Solidarity Standing Committee, “…to encourage active involvement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons in union activities and other activities affecting them, to promote, audit and organize educational programs concerning gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons in the workplace…” among other elements. This has not always been the case. The bond between labour and LGBTQ people has developed slowly over the last 30 years and the rise of public service associations.

Unions began to grow in importance in the 1960s with massive strikes that lead to long term change, such as the Federal Public Service Staff Relations Act, 1967, which gave public servants collective bargaining rights. The push for ongoing dialogue between union and employer served as examples to gay and lesbian activists on how to get organized, and created the avenues for their own dialogue in the work environment. As well, they saw the workers as member of the locals as needing to have their rights protected. According to historians Gary Kinsman, the rise of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the formation of the Public Service Alliance of Canada in 1966, began to make it more difficult for RCMP and employers to ask about a person’s sexuality. Kinsman states that:

“Because one of the things the new unions challenged was the sort of paramilitary or quasi-military hierarchy that was in the public service, and the various forms of discipline that took place. And that obviously opened up some more space for lesbians and gays who were employed in the public service to begin to organize and, eventually, begin to speak out.”

[TM]

Sources and Further Reading

Canadian Labour – http://www.canadianlabour.ca/human-rights-equality/pride

Troster, Ariel. “The Canadian War on Queer Workers”, Our Times, Vol 29 Issue 3 June-July 2010. http://ourtimes.ca/Features/article_127.php

Highlights in Canadian Labour History – http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/highlights-in-canadian-labour-history-1.850282

Tom Warner. Never Going Back, a history of queer activism in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile. The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation. UBC Press, 2010.