Tag Archives: Gay history

1989 – Burning Down The House

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

Arson in the Old Y, is our third and final post in advance of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia coming up next week on May 17th.

On the evening of April 20th, 1989 a fire was started in the basement office of Lesbian and Gay Youth Calgary (LGYC), one of several gay and lesbian groups housed at the Old Y, 223 12 Ave. SW (now called CommunityWise). Firefighters were called around 8:30 pm to extinguish the blaze which fortunately was contained to the LGYC office. There were no injuries, but about 40 people were evacuated from the three-storey brick building. The LGYC office was heavily damaged by smoke and there was approximately $1000 worth of structural damage to the building.

“Quick extinguishing of the blaze kept damage to a minimum,” said fire department Captain Gord Cantley to local press.

Arson investigators determined the blaze was deliberately set. The fire was started in a garbage can and was made to appear as an accident. None of the contents of the office were disrupted and it occurred about an hour after volunteers had left the LGYC office.

Modern Pink Cover Illustration: Joey Sayer

Stephen Lock, who worked at Gay Lines upstairs in the Old Y, speculated that LGYC had been targeted. He said: “The fact that the offices are tucked away in the basement in a maze-like area indicates to me somebody searched them out.”

The LGBT community was bracing for an increase in violence that summer due to the very high profile Gordon Summers case in Calgary. The 24-year old, who knowingly was HIV positive, faced three counts of aggravated assault for allegedly having unprotected sex with one man and two women, one his girlfriend. This precedent-setting legal case made Summers a household name that April, and a source of AIDS panic locally. {He later pled guilty to the lesser charge of being a common nuisance and was sentenced to a year in jail.}

The arson investigation seemed dormant for a couple of months but then police started questioning members of LGYC. In June, the group received a letter from the city stating that the investigation may reveal that LGYC was responsible for the damages to the city-owned building, surprising everyone at the Old Y.

That same day as receiving the letter, the Police arrested 19-year old Robert John Girouard at the LGYC office, who was carted away to the surprise and shock of the other LGYC members present. LGYC later released a public statement: “It is the position of Lesbian and Gay Youth Group of Calgary, that the arrest was unjust and that the accused is completely innocent.”

Girouard went to court July 11th and pled not guilty. The court set a preliminary inquiry date for October 18th, but it is unclear that he was ever convicted.

{KA}

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged Arson, bisexual, Calgary, CommunityWise, Fire, gay, Gay history, Gay Lines, Gordon Summers, human-rights, lesbian, Lesbian and Gay Youth Calgary, LGYC, Old Y, queer, Robert John Girouard, Stephen Lock, transgender

Anti-Mother’s Day in Calgary

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

{Please join us for this week’s upcoming Beltline Gay History Jane’s Walk (May 7th at 10am) with special guest artist Bogdan Cheta performing! – Kevin}

IDAHOT-for_partners_official_handles-2015-EN This is our second post in advance of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, May 17th: our focus is society’s war on lesbian mothers in Calgary.

Well into the 1990s in Canada, lesbian mothers who had children in prior heterosexual relationships had trouble retaining custody of those children. For most of the 20th Century, Canada’s courts did not favour homosexual parents in keeping custody of their children; most judges viewed homosexuality as a negative factor in child rearing.

Consequently the stakes were high for lesbian mothers in coming out: many suffered isolation, fear, and often kept to the closet. In 1978, the first Lesbian Mothers’ Defence Fund was started in Toronto, and a chapter started a few years later in Calgary.

The Lesbian Mothers’ Defence Fund (LMDF) offered advice, support, referrals to lawyers, and financial help to lesbian mothers struggling to keep or win custody of their children. Advice in child custody cases included: going to court is the last resort; do not leave your children behind; beware of ex-husbands kidnapping your children. The LMDF also advocated for social change in the judicial system, proclaiming that the straight court system failed lesbians.

Calgary LGBT publication, QC Magazine: Dec. 1995

Club Carousel founder Lois Szabo remembers lesbians in the 60s and 70s utterly broken after the loss of their children – and with no access rights – to embittered former husbands. Marilyn Atkinson, one of the Calgary LMDF organizers, was a mother herself. As a volunteer, she provided peer support to lesbian mothers and women during their custody struggles.

The LMDF was a low-budget, grass roots organization located at the Old Y. Pot-luck suppers and community dances were its main source of funding. In 1982, two Calgary lesbians took pledges to cycle across the county in order to raise money for the LMDF. It took them four months but they made it to St. John’s that summer after starting in Vancouver.

As the LMDF developed, Marilyn was hired to organize lesbian conferences which proved quite popular with many lesbians coming from afar to attend. The first conference in 1985, was largely funded by the local lesbian community itself. When the conferences finally began to attract public funding, protest was heard.

Maureen Buruill, a lobbyist with REAL Women of Canada in January 1987 wrote a newspaper editorial complaining about her own organization’s lack of funding:

Women’s groups across Canada receive funding from the Secretary of State’s Women’s Program. One example was a grant to the Calgary Lesbian Mothers Defence Fund to set up a “lesbian-gay” workshop collective. This organization also received a grant to arrange a lesbian conference. Why is our tax money given to these groups and refused to a group seeking to preserve family values?

Despite vocal opposition, the LMDF, made a huge difference in fighting for lesbian mothers and moved social justice forward in Calgary.

Gay-Bashing in YYC. We remember.

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Kevin Allen | 3 comments

As we approach May 17th, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, we thought it might be a good time to reflect on troubling moments from our city’s past.

The 1980s and 90s in Calgary were a particularly bad time for gay-bashing. Attacks were concentrated in the Beltline: one had to stay alert when walking there for thugs with baseball bats and a grudge to work out. As AIDS deaths mounted in Calgary – they hit their crescendo in 1994 – society at large had a lot of anxiety about the now visible gay community in their midst. Many bashings went unreported. Some people lost their lives.

In 1990, one Calgarian named Jeff Harris, recounted to a Calgary Herald reporter his nightmare which had occurred three years prior. Harris, then a 38-year old nurse, was on his way to meet some friends at a club, strolling there on a warm Friday evening in June. Then, near the intersection of 13th Avenue and 1 St SW, a baseball bat swung out from behind a garbage dumpster and connected with his face.

The first blow unhinged his jaw and knocked out some teeth. Several repeated blows sent even more teeth scattering down the sidewalk, and pulverized facial bones. His assailants then proceeded to kick the downed man for several minutes.

Finally, two men who had seen Harris’ three attackers from a nearby apartment gave chase to the assailants. Other samaritans came to Harris’ aid and called police and paramedics. Harris was just able to write his name on a cigarette package before he blacked out.

Source: Calgary Herald Sunday Magazine, January 7, 1990

By coincidence, the ambulance delivered Harris to the same emergency room where he worked; his co-workers did not recognize him through the damage. Nine doctors, attended the beaten man, trying to preserve his tenuous hold on life. They estimated that he had lost more than six pints of blood and had severe brain swelling.

When the swelling was brought under control, it took more than 6 hours and 280 stitches to close Harris’s wounds and wire together his 27 facial fractures, including 11 breaks in his jaw.

Nine weeks of recovery in hospital, left Harris whole, but substantially changed and forever haunted.

The three assailants were found through a tip from a gay neighbour who lived in the same apartment complex as the thugs. The baseball bat, with Harris’ dried blood still clinging to it, was found in their apartment. Not only were the three charged in the Harris attack, they were also tied to other gay-bashings in the neighbourhood. The three roommates, who had formerly worked as bouncers at a local bar, pled guilty, and expressed surprise that Harris lived. The oldest attacker was 22.

{KA}