Tag Archives: Gay history

October is Queer History Month

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

October is LGBT History Month in North America. Founded in 1994, by Missouri high-school history teacher Rodney Wilson, the event was intended to highlight the lack of queer issues in the education curriculum.

October was chosen by Wilson because National Coming Out Day had already been established (October 11th), and October commemorated the first march on Washington by gay activists in 1979. LGBT History Month is intended to encourage honesty and openness about being queer.

Since 2006, Philidalphia-based Equality Forum has been curating lists of LGBT icons, adding 31 every year to match the number of days in October. In 2022, they are up to 496 people! Although very American in its programming, notable Canadians who have been declared icons include: k.d. lang, Irshad Manji, Elliot Page and Rufus Wainwright.

For educators, there are free downloadable images and bios of every inductee, as well as other resources to teach about queer lives and queer history.

In 2022, one of our favourite authors, Radclyffe Hall, was inducted—something we’re happy to celebrate. Our Past Matters.

{KA}

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged bisexual, Equality Forum, gay, Gay history, lesbian, lgbt history month, queer, Radclyffe Hall, transgender

Protecting Queer History Places

Posted on October 20, 2022 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

The National Trust for Canada is holding its annual conference in Toronto. It starts today, and its title is: The Heritage Reset: Making Critical Choices.

The conference is asking this question: “as the urgency increases to advance decolonization and anti-racism, take bold climate action, and redress economic and social inequity, are heritage principles and heritage places in step, or stuck in the past?”

Specifically relevant to queer history, they are exploring the idea of a social-cultural reset. How can the heritage community embrace a fuller story and confront exclusion?

It’s a good question. Locally, has Calgary’s heritage community done enough to protect queer historic places and spaces in the city? The answer of course, from our perspective, is “no.”

To be fair, the City of Calgary created Lois Szabo Commons last year, and the Lougheed House did queer history programming in 2019. But where are our protected buildings, heritage plaques and interpretations of queer history sites? How do we make our relatively invisible queer history visible?

Earlier this year, the National Trust hosted a webinar on this very subject with Andrew Dolkart from the inspiring NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. We encourage you to watch it.

*Click image for National Trust webinar: Organizing to Identify and Protect LGBTQ+ Heritage Places: Strategies and Lessons from New York City*

In the next year, this will be a thrust of the Calgary Gay History Project. To date, we have been active in building the Calgary queer landscape through mapping projects and walking tours. It is time to agitate for queer inclusion in Calgary’s built heritage inventory.

{KA}

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged Andrew Dolkart, bisexual, Calgary, gay, Gay history, lesbian, Lois Szabo Commons, Lougheed House, National Trust Conference, NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, queer, transgender

Bucking Conservatism Wins Award

Posted on September 29, 2022 by Kevin Allen | 2 comments

At this month’s Alberta Book Publishing gala, Bucking Conservatism: Alternative Stories of Alberta from the 1960s and 1970s was awarded the Regional Book of the Year prize. Calgary Gay History Project researchers Nevena Ivanović and Kevin Allen contributed a chapter to the book with editor Larry Hannant called, “Gay Liberation in Conservative Calgary.”

***Bucking Conservatism*** was produced under a creative commons license and is free to read online or download as a PDF.

About the Editors

Leon Crane Bear is Siksika and a treaty Indian, as well as a graduate of the University of Lethbridge. Larry Hannant is a Canadian historian specializing in twentieth-century political dissent. Karissa Robyn Patton is a historian of gender, sexuality, health, and activism, and is a Canada Research Chair postdoctoral fellow at Vancouver Island University.

Reviews

[A] beautiful mosaic of activist history for many reasons. It’s an intersectional collection that takes for granted the links between social justice struggles. It’s well-written, well-organized and insightful. [. . .] Groups embarking on future projects will benefit from the robust list of references that marks each piece. [. . .] Bucking Conservatism offers a blueprint, a model, for others who want to continue this work, in whatever time period.

—Joe Kadi, Alberta Views

With such a breadth of subjects, there really is something for every reader in the book. This is a book I can imagine picking up off the shelf again and again and looking at for ideas and inspiration.

—Belinda Crowson, Canadian Journal of History

Congratulations, Leon, Larry and Karissa! We’re very pleased for you. Thank you for the invitation to participate.

{KA}