Tag Archives: gay

The Calgary Police Archives

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

The police and the gay community have had a conflicted past across North America for most of the 20th Century. We see this former reality resonating in 2016 as the LGBTQ community debated how police participated in Pride Parades across Canada.

Locally, the Calgary Police have been in the news due to a recently released, unflattering, 2013 internal audit of workplace culture. The Police are one of many state institutions that are grappling with societal change, and increasingly, with reconciliation for prior stigmatization of the LGBTQ community.

A research trip to Police HQ, one week after the Orlando shooting. We were surprised to see the Pride Flag flying at half mast…

A positive development, amidst this troubling news, is that the Calgary Police archives staff have been assisting the Calgary Gay History Project: combing through files looking for references to their relationship with the LGBTQ community in previous decades. The material is far from flattering.

Some samples:

In May 1946, Constable F.C. Shipley was awarded an entry in the merit book and an accelerated promotion due to catching Alfred V. Andrew in an act of gross indecency with another man at the Alexandra Hotel. Andrew subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months hard labour.

In November 1960, the Calgary Police fired one of their own employees, Charles Pippard, because, “it would appear that Pippard suffers from homosexual tendencies, but nothing can be uncovered to confirm this.”

And in Sept 1963, an editorial in the Police’s internal magazine, Patrol, gleefully announced:

Hats off to those members of the Detective Division whose resourceful and perseverance, coupled with a new and revolutionary scientific aid to criminal investigations, closed circuit television, were successful in exposing and subsequently convicting a group of men practicing acts of gross indecency in a public washroom.

The hue and cry that heralded the use of these so called ‘Big Brother tactis’ [sic] by the force, displayed as usual a lack of awareness and understanding of this dangerous trend which prompted the use of this device.

Homosexuality and the perversion it breeds is a social problem that is always with is. When, however, such perverts meet and practice various acts of indecency in any place to which the public have access, then there is no other course open to the Police than to use every means at their disposal to safeguard innocent citizens from this type of environment and ensure that these establishments are protected from such defilement.

It is unfortunate that to gain the evidence required to subject several innocent and unsuspecting citizens using the toilets in question, to the scrutiny of television cameras while engaged in a most fundamental act of nature. That, it has been claimed, was a gross invasion of privacy. Surely we are not such prudes that in the interests of public decency and morality, we cannot accept a little humiliation of this kind and in doing so perhaps prevent a child or young person from becoming the victim of the insatiable lust of some of these mentally sick individuals.

It is important that society-at-large comes to terms with our LGBTQ past, and stares at it unflinchingly, to prepare a space for reconciliation. I thank the Calgary Police for opening up its history to the Project and allowing itself to be stared at.

{KA}

1 Comment

Posted in Gay history, Uncategorized

Tagged bisexual, Calgary, Calgary Police, gay, Gay history, lesbian, queer, transgender

Corporate Calgary & Gay Rights

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Kevin Allen | 2 comments

Back in the early 90s, I was a volunteer writer at CLUE! Magazine. One of the most challenging articles I wrote was: Private sector takes lead with same-sex spousal benefits (January 1995). The reason – I had to cold call more than a dozen of Calgary’s largest companies and ask them about their HR policies: were they gay friendly, and how did they accommodate their LGBTQ employees?

CLUE! Magazine January 1995

I remember that several HR managers were surprised by the question, and some companies registered no comment. It felt a little bit like journalism activism. Some companies were interested in discussing the idea, having never really considered it before, and others were proud to say they already offered same-sex benefits despite complications with the Federal Income Tax Act and Provincial employment legislation.

Nova Corporation led the way here in 1990, and a handful of other Calgary companies had followed their lead by 1995. It was interesting to note that even if same-sex benefits were offered, often very few employees would claim them.

The issue was a high-profile one due to Ontario’s Bill 167, the Equality Rights Statute Law Amendment Act, defeated narrowly in the summer of 1994. Bill 167 promised to revamp adoption right, spousal employment benefits, property rights and survivor pensions for LGBTQ couples, and received national attention.

A June 1994 Angus Reid poll showed that 54% of Canadians opposed the bill – 64% in Ontario – although it was determined that the adoption rights portion of the bill was more frowned upon then same-sex employee benefits.

Corporate culture however was in turmoil, independent of public discourse, with activist gay employees taking their employers to task. At Imperial Oil, a gay chemical engineer named David Mitges, who had been working for the company since 1980, started attending his company’s annual shareholders meeting in 1993. For eight sequential years he asked Imperial to offer same-sex benefits, despite the booing and harassment from the audience present. The national press described Mitges’ protracted tussle as “David vs. the Energy Goliath.” In 2000, Imperial capitulated and began offering same-sex benefits, which by that time had become more normative in corporate culture.

Coming full circle this week, the Pride Employee network of Imperial, invited The Calgary Gay History Project to their corporate headquarters to talk about the city’s gay history. About 40 employees came to a lunch-hour presentation at which the company’s management concluded with their expressed commitment to diversity at Imperial.

Greg Cashin and Lisa Fahey of Imperial’s Pride Employee Network with Calgary Gay History Project’s Kevin Allen (centre).

{KA}

2 Comments

Posted in Gay history, Uncategorized

Tagged Bill 167, bisexual, CLUE Magazine, David Mitges, gay, human-rights, Imperial, Imperial Oil, lesbian, Nova Corporation, Private Sector, queer, transgender

RuPaul & AIDS in 1996

Posted on October 21, 2016 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

Twenty years ago, RuPaul was the headliner for Calgary Cares ’96, a benefit for AIDS Calgary. It was the fourth benefit of its kind in the city and raised approximately $50,000 for the agency.

RuPaul at Calgary Cares ’96. Photo: Shelagh Anderson (QC Magazine, July 1996)

RuPaul had then just been discovered by mainstream audiences, with the 1993 music video hit, Supermodel (You Better Work), and the groundbreaking model contract in 1995 with MAC cosmetics’ Viva Glam Couture Colour Collection. 100% of the proceeds from that collection were donated to the fight agains AIDS. In 1996, that amounted to a $5 million contribution which has grown to over $400 million today.

In the summer of 1996, Calgary was averaging about 10 new cases of HIV diagnoses a month and had the fourth highest incidence rate of HIV infection amongst Canadian cities (after Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver).

RuPaul suffered some flight delays, but after travelling 32 hours to get to Calgary made a late appearance, singing “Dude looks like a lady” for hundreds in attendance, and then hosted an impromptu press conference afterwards with local press.

Calgary Herald copy-editor Terri Inigo-Jones asked a few days later if RuPaul was not “a symbol for the best hopes for humanity’s future.”

In a June 19th, op-ed piece titled Lack of caring spawns new dark ages, the copy-editor characterized the mid-nineties as a downward slide towards the end of civilization. Despairing over neoliberal gains in the public sphere, and a perceived intolerance and pettiness in society, the author found hope in Calgary Cares:

Fortunately, modern equivalents of the early European monasteries may exist and, once again, humanity’s best qualities and best hope for the future may lie on the fringes.

Attending the fourth annual Calgary Cares fund-raising event for AIDS Calgary recently, it struck me that the true moral fibre of which society is so proud is at its strongest beyond mainstream thinking.

The event had a community feeling. About 1,300 people attended and many of them would not find acceptance in the mainstream. Every year, elected officials are invited to the event but none have accepted.

It was unconditional love that drove the 10-person organizing committee to put in 3,000 hours of volunteer labor before the show and that made hundreds of others help out on the night itself. Their efforts are expected to raise $25,000 for people in need. There was not a whisper of whether or not they could afford it or should do it. The only thought was that it must be done.

RuPaul was the star guest of the evening at the Max Bell Arena. A seven-foot, cross-dressing black man in a red patent leather bustier and thigh-high boots and a blonde wig as a symbol for the best hopes for humanity’s future?

Deal with it, folks. Our hope as a society and as a species lies in our unconditional concern and compassion for our fellow men, women and children and in our tolerance for diversity.

After all, without diversity society cannot evolve and without evolution there is no future.

It was in that summer that a corner was turned in the fight against AIDS. In July 1996, the success of new anti-HIV drugs, called protease inhibitors, were announced at the International AIDS conference in Vancouver. Almost immediately the death toll from the disease in Calgary came to a virtual halt.

{KA}