Backlot Commemoration

Posted on April 18, 2024 by | 1 comment

The Backlot, a historic Calgary gay bar, will be moving (again). Founded in 1976, its current and third incarnation at 10th Avenue and 1st Street was established in 1996. However, the City has approved this site for redevelopment despite organized resistance last year called “Save Our Backlot.”

Interestingly, the developer is keen to acknowledge the history of the site—both its contemporary importance to the queer community as well as its location in Calgary’s second Chinatown from 1901-1910.

The queer history commemoration proposal (Brief) includes a commissioned mural at the site of the Backlot and an information panel and wayfinding bench.

A rendering of the future intersection from the Brief.

Senior Urban Planner Zack Hoefs is looking for community feedback through a survey.

He writes:

On behalf of Truman Homes and in partnership with FAAS Architecture, I’m reaching out today to share an opportunity for discussion on a commissioned piece of art for a recently approved development called Gallery at 1001 1 ST SW and 209 10 AV SW.

The approved project involves redeveloping the Calgary Gas Co. Workshop building, which is significant to the Queer Calgarian community in its use as The Backlot and the significance of The Backlot’s name to Queer Calgarian history. There is a Brief that, on pages 16-17, outlines what our project team currently knows about the site from the perspective of Queer Calgarian History, links to documentation that we used in our research, and a description of the location of the art.

What we are missing in this work is valued feedback from the Queer Calgarian community and Backlot ownership on what they would like to see in this commissioned art. We are looking for your opinions and feedback! Our team will combine this feedback with the history we know to create a brief that future artists will interpret when bidding on the work. The main questions we will be asking are included in the Brief.

The survey will be available to complete until Friday, April 26.

The first Backlot bar at 808 9 Ave. SW circa 1980. Photo: Philip Hannan.

{KA}

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Blue Jeans Day had April origins

Posted on April 11, 2024 by | 1 comment

In April, wear blue jeans to support gay rights—so says history!

One of our earliest Calgary Gay History Posts was about Blue Jeans Day at the University of Calgary in the early 1990s. However, we recently discovered details about how the event echoed a gay liberation initiative first begun at Rutgers University by the groundbreaking Rutgers Student Homophile League.

The first Blue Jeans Day occurred in 1970 at Rutgers (although the first advertised event happened in 1974). Blue Jeans Day was traditionally held on a Friday in April and, by the late ’70s, had spread to dozens of campuses in Canada and the United States.

Vintage Poster, Campus Unknown

When it was resurrected at colleges in the late 1980s, the event migrated to October to align with National Coming Out Day. Although we have yet to find evidence that the U of C hosted Blue Jeans Days events in the ’70s, we found them on many other campuses.

1978 Poster from the Saskatchewan Archives

International Blue Jeans Day was often declared at the University of Saskatchewan with little advanced notice. The event forced heterosexuals to find something else to wear! This hilarious event was held by the Gay Academic Union, which existed from 1975-1982.

Saskatchewan Archives Board — Neil Richards Collection

{KA}

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With Downcast Gays Anniversary

Posted on April 4, 2024 by | 1 comment

The gay liberation manifesto, With Downcast Gays: Aspects of Homosexual Self-Oppression, by Andrew Hodges and David Hutter turns 50 this month. You can read it online: here.

The slim 1974 treatise, first published in London, England, was reprinted multiple times in many countries. Pink Triangle Press, the publisher of Canada’s gay liberation newspaper, The Body Politic, produced the first North American edition in 1977, selling out its 6000 copies in less than two years. A second edition was printed in 1979.

Pink Triangle Press 2nd Edition Cover, 1979

With Downcast Gays is an articulated call to action for gays everywhere: You must fight for your pride and self-respect. The authors explain that self-disclosure (coming out) is essential in overcoming self-oppression. This message found an eager audience in its readers and paved the way for the outing movement and debate over its practice in the 1980s.

The authors make an example of the famous novelist and social commentator, E. M. Forster, whose gay novel Maurice (written in 1914) was only published posthumously in 1971. They write:

The novel which could have helped us find courage and self-esteem he only allowed to be published after his death, thereby confirming belief in the secret and disgraceful nature of homosexuality.  What other minority is so sunk in shame and self-oppression as to be proud of a traitor?

At times angry, and at times thoughtful, With Downcast Gays is still worth reading. Hodges asserts: “Gay people have no country.” Although many human rights have been gained since 1974, what spaces and places belong to us today? And which places do not?

Hodges concludes:

No homosexual is an island.  When gays say that they have to be ‘discreet’, they support the idea that homosexuality – our homosexuality – is offensive; when they describe themselves as “a typical case”, they label us as ‘cases’.  Oppression is as much the creature of self-oppression as the converse.  External oppression we can only fight against; self-oppression we can tear out and destroy.

{KA}

Postscript: In 1992, Andrew Hodges wrote a book about Alan Turing, which became the basis for the 2015 Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game.

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