Tag Archives: Gay history

The homes of Everett Klippert

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

A few weeks ago the Calgary Gay History Project spent an afternoon with Donald Klippert, exploring the city landscape and the history of the Klippert family. Donald’s Uncle Everett became infamous in the 1960s with his high-profile incarcerations which led to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada in 1969.

Together in a Car2Go we orbited the older communities of Calgary and saw the houses (some still standing) where Everett grew up. It was interesting to anchor Everett’s story in the actual streets of the city and added depth to our understanding of his life.

Everett was born in 1926 in Kindersley, Saskatchewan but his family moved to Calgary when he was 2 years old. Their first house was on the North Hill, but the family moved around frequently in those first years, always staying on the north side of town. Hillhurst, Bridgeland and Crescent Heights were their neighbourhoods; there they lived, worked and attended church.

Here is a photo essay of the Klippert family homes in Calgary from 1930-1947.

The Klippert Family Home from 1930-1932 in Hillhurst.

The Klipperts rented this home in 1933. Everett’s mother died in May of this year, while living in this recognizable 14th Street house.

The Klippert family bought this Crescent Heights house and lived here from 1934-1942.

The Klippert family standing in the front yard of their Bridgeland house. They lived here from 1943-1947 (Everett is pictured on the far right with the Bridgeland School behind him.)

{KA}

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged bisexual, Bridgeland, Calgary, Crescent Heights, Everett Klippert, gay, Gay history, Hillhurst, history, human-rights, lesbian, queer, transgender

Gay History @ Congress

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

Congress, a huge academic conference, is coming to the University of Calgary from May 28th – June 3rd. There will be approximately 8000 delegates representing 70 scholarly associations in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

The Calgary Gay History Project is participating in a couple of ways.

Calgary professor Dr. Nancy Janovicek and the Canadian Historical Association have invited us to run campus gay history walks during Congress. We have developed a 50-minute tour which will takes delegates, and members of the public to key sites of queer culture and politics on campus. We will explore how students organized to challenge homophobia and fought to make the university a place of tolerance. This tour is co-sponsored by the Faculty of Arts, Department of History, and the Q Centre.

The walks will take place, Monday, May 30th, Tuesday, May 31st, and Wednesday, June 1st at noon leaving from the Q Centre at MacEwan Hall Room 210 on the U of C campus.

We are also in the program for the Sexuality Studies Association on May 31st. Working with Third Street Theatre and playwright Natalie Meisner, we will be presenting a play reading and panel discussion about: 69: Legislating Love & The Everett Klippert Story. Klippert’s famous 1967 court case has been in the news recently, as the Prime Minister considers a posthumous pardon for the man whose court case led to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada. The panel will feature Natalie Meisner, Jonathan Brower, Tereasa Maillie and Kevin Allen representing both the artistic and research driven aspects of the project.

There are two film screenings at Congress exploring international aspects of the LGBTQ struggle for human rights. Nancy Nicol, a documentary filmmaker and scholar, is presenting two films: And Still We Rise (2015, 70 min.) co-directed with Richard Lusimbo, and No Easy Walk To Freedom (2014, 91 min.) created with the Naz Foundation India Trust in Delhi. Click the links for screening times and tickets info (tickets are free).

We will leave you this week with some photos from our recent Gay History Jane’s Walk, thanks to Ashley Bedet from The New Gallery. Let’s hope the weather is as nice next week for the walks at the U of C!

Kevin Allen, gay historian, is very “hip” with his new belt microphone.

Artist, Bogdan Cheta reading from his recent New Gallery publication: a manifesto has come to light…

A beautiful morning for a Calgary Gay History Walk.

{KA}

The Archives – We’ve got stuff!

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

For the past two years the Calgary Gay History Project has been dutifully collecting donations from community members to build a local gay history archive. The collection is diverse: we have publications, books, organization documents, news clipping, audio tapes, video tapes, clothing, buttons and other ephemera that represents the history of the LGBTQ community in Calgary.

We recently over two Sunday’s catalogued all of the donations to date. “Archive blitz days” we called them, and it proved to be a huge but rewarding task. Now we have a simple but searchable database, which already has proved helpful in solving research queries related to our history.

Calgary Gay History Project’s Rosman Valencia and Jonathan Brower finished cataloguing the archive recently.

The long-term home for the archives, will be in one of our Calgary collecting institutions, such as the Glenbow Museum, the University of Calgary or Mount Royal University – we have been in conversation with all three. However in the meantime, while the gay history book is written, the collection is slowly filling up Kevin Allen’s apartment.

If you have something that might be of interest to the Calgary Gay History Archive, please contact us. We will take just about everything as well as pick it up from your home. A few times, we have heard:

“I just threw out those old things a few months ago, because I did not think anyone would want them…”

This brings tears to our eyes!

If you are saving treasures you are not ready to donate, that is fine too. Let us know about them, and we will keep you apprised of where the gay history archive collection ends up. You may want to contribute to the archive later down the road or contribute to it as part of your estate planning.

The archive is a treasure which will become even more valuable to historians in the decades to come. Please consider donating to it.

{KA}