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Read Queer History over the holidays!

Posted on December 5, 2024 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

{The Calgary Gay History Project is on hiatus in December. Look for new queer history content in 2025!}

Stories connect us to community. Having a shared narrative increases a sense of belonging—especially in minority communities. For 2SLGBTQ+ people, the holidays can sometimes be alienating. One antidote to this is reading stories about our “rainbow elders.” Reading queer history can help us make sense of the present as well as our place in it.

**Our Past Matters** *Author Kevin Allen in front of Shelf Life Books*

Here are a handful of reading recommendations:

Our Past Matters: Stories of Gay Calgary hit #1 on the Calgary Herald bestseller list in 2019 and has been selling well ever since. Giller Prize-winning author Suzette Mayr wrote: This book makes me proud to be a Calgarian.” We are ever so grateful for independent bookstores Pages on Kensington and Shelf Life Books, who’ve sold so many copies that we’ve lost count. You can also find Our Past Matters at Polar Peek Books in Fernie, BC.

Out North: An Archive of Queer Activism and Kinship in Canada is a fascinating exploration and examination of queer history and activism, and Canada’s visual guide to 2SLGBTQ+ movements, struggles, and achievements. Written by Craig Jennex and Nisha Eswaran, Out North was a project of The ArQuives and has lots of cool pictures interspersed with the text.

A personal favourite is Len & Cub: A Queer History. After discovering a treasure trove of old photos of this couple, authors Meredith J. Batt and Dusty Green delve into the lives of Leonard Keith and Joseph “Cub” Coates and their long-term same-sex relationship in the early 20th century.

Valerie Korinek’s Prairie Fairies is a vitally important academic read. Prairie Fairies focuses on the queer history of the Prairies’ five urban centers: Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, and Calgary. Korinek, with insightfulness, explores how the leading activists from these cities both informed and impacted Canadian national gay liberation debates. Korinek also finds the outlines of those who lived in prairie shadows–urban and rural–explaining how their existence added to the complex reality of queer communities.

Find these books at your favourite independent bookstore or find them for free at the Calgary Public Library.

Bonus read: Historian Sarah Worthman has uncovered Canadian queer stories from an era where sexual and gender identity was quite different. She has put together an engaging website called QUEERING THE WESTERN FRONT: A guided queer history tour of the First World War.

Happy holidays!

{KA}

Len & Cub: Book Review

Posted on September 22, 2022 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

While on holiday this year, I was pinged by Calgary playwright Natalie Meisner about a book that had just come out, about a rural gay couple living in New Brunswick—more than 100 years ago. Meisner, originally from the Maritimes, explained, “I just found this [story] so lovely, uplifting….” That is how Len & Cub: A Queer History ended up on my books-to-read list.

Through an amazing find in the New Brunswick archives, authors Meredith J. Batt and Dusty Green delve into the lives of Leonard Keith and Joseph “Cub” Coates and their long-term relationship in the early 20th century. Len, an amateur photographer, created a photo documentary of his life with Cub. The images show a striking intimacy, and authors Batt and Green start with the refreshing premise that Len and Cub are in a relationship. This queer lens informs the incredible detective work that follows. Through assiduous research, the authors uncover many more details about the men, their families, and their life events. Impressively, Batt and Green are frank about what they cannot know but still weave a tapestry of their subjects’ lived experience in relatively unknown terrain for queer studies.

The book is beautifully designed with archival photos of Len and Cub given pride of place. Batt and Green write intelligently and accessibly about their subjects. The text struggles with the lives of Len and Cub gracefully and avoids presentism—the impulse to judge the past by present-day standards. However, the authors reflect on how this old story connects to contemporary queer life in New Brunswick, including what Len and Cub mean to them personally.

Many queer historians are acutely aware of how sexual and gender identity concepts have changed over time. Len and Cub were secretive about their love, but this was largely divorced from politics. The men would never have had a sense of being part of an equity seeking minority community. For modern-day queers, it’s hard to imagine what that would be like.

I enjoyed this book immensely and was delighted to learn that Batt and Green have also founded the Queer Heritage Initiative of New Brunswick. This archival and educational initiative will collect further queer histories of 2SLGBTQ+ people; I hope that means future books from these authors.

One can find Len & Cub in stock at Pages on Kensington or Shelf Life Books in Calgary. Support local independent books stores!

{KA}