Tag Archives: Mount Royal University

Awards & Bad Blood

Posted on June 18, 2020 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

Our Past Matters: Stories of Gay Calgary was selected as a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the category of regional non-fiction. We must give a massive shout out to Calgary Gay History Project supporter, Lolly de Jonge, who encouraged us to enter. The award ceremony this year is being held virtually on June 26th at 6 PM on Facebook Live. Thank you, Lolly, we feel grateful for the honour!

Collage from Bad Blood

In January, we were approached to participate in a journalism multimedia project by students from Mount Royal University. They were interested in exploring the history of Canada’s blood donation ban from men who have sex with men. The creative team consisted of Nathan Woolridge, Karina Zapata, and Riggs Zyrille Vergara. They recently published an interactive website titled: Bad Blood. It takes a deep dive into the history of the tainted blood scandal, the current legal context for gay donors, and the champions who are trying to progress the country forward. It is well worth a read. Congratulations, Nathan, Karina, and Riggs!

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Posted in Gay history

Tagged Bad Blood, bisexual, gay, Karina Zapata, lesbian, Lolly de Jonge, Mount Royal University, Nathan Woolridge, Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Our Past Matters, queer, Riggs Zyrille Vergara, transgender

Tracking YYC Gay History in BC

Posted on June 29, 2017 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

This week Kevin is in Vancouver and Victoria with a long list of former Calgarians to interview. He is learning more details about the 620 Club, early Club Carousel days as well as the Gay Liberation Front in Calgary and the People’s Liberation Coalition. Thanks to Marlene, Doug, Jesse, Dawn, Russ, Brian, My, and Ruth for their great stories and long memories!

Also, the Calgary Gay History Project would like to give a shout out to Mount Royal University History Professor, Dr. Jarett Henderson, who paticipated with over 100 authors in a new book called: Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer. It looks great.

This map of “Gay Toronto” originally appeared in The Body Politic, a monthly gay magazine published from 1971 to 1987. Photograph courtesy of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives

To see the full table of contents and to order online: click here.

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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.

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