Tag Archives: human-rights

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}

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged Beltline, bisexual, Calgary, gay, gay bashing, Gay history, hate crime, human-rights, idahot, Jeff Harris, lesbian, May 17th, queer, transgender

We are in Saskatoon next week!

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

Our planned trip last August to Saskatchewan had to be postponed, but we are finally travelling to Saskatoon April 13-16 to do research in the Neil Richards Collection of Sexual and Gender Diversity located at the University of Saskatchewan.

Not only will be looking for Calgary citations in the collection, but we will also be meeting with Mr. Richards to discuss best practices for setting up our Calgary gay history archive.

Prairie cities in Canada had a lot in common when it came to the gay liberation movement in the 1970s. Activists in Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg met as often as they could, to share information and bolster each other efforts at a time when there were not a lot of people doing this important work.

Calgary’s Gay Information and Resources Calgary (GIRC) hosted the 1979 Prairie Gay Rights Conference, May 19^th to 21^st{The Saskatchewan Gay Coalition hosted the 1978 conference in Saskatoon}. This annual conference over the Victoria Day weekend was preoccupied in 1979 with the imminent Federal Election, and Progressive Conservative (PC) leader and Albertan, Joe Clark’s stand on gay rights. Stan Schumacher, an independent candidate running in Calgary – Bow River alleged Joe Clark was soft on homosexuality. Post-election, a PC spokesperson explained to activists that the (now) Prime Minister’s position was not necessarily opposed to the inclusion of sexual orientation in federal human rights legislation. However wanting to get elected, that position was not made public!

Registration Information for 1979 Prairie Conference

Gay groups across the country during the 1979 election campaign agitated for a gay rights charter distributed by the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Rights Coalition but got little traction. However, a 27-year old Svend Robinson was elected that year in Burnaby; he would become the first openly gay Member of Parliament when he publicly revealed his sexual orientation in 1988.

Any former Calgarians or visitors to Calgary, who are now living in the Saskatoon area, and who have stories about our LGBTQ history are invited to contact Kevin – we are keen on interviewing you!

{KA}