Tag Archives: Skylar Kay

Join the Beltline Walk: Poetry and Queer History

Posted on September 25, 2025 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

October is queer history month! Join the Calgary Gay History Project’s Kevin Allen and poet Skylar Kay on a history walk through the Beltline. We will highlight significant political and social events that affected the 2SLGBTQ+ community—with poetry! The walk on Thursday, October 2, at 5 PM, begins and ends at the Memorial Park Library (1221 2nd St. SW).

Registration is free through the Calgary Public Library: here (spaces limited).

Kevin Allen is a fourth-generation Calgarian who has been documenting and profiling queer people and events for 30+ years. Kevin started the Calgary Gay History Project in 2012 to uncover and preserve stories from Calgary’s 2SLGBTQ+ past. The Project has achieved national recognition and led to the award-winning documentary film Gross Indecency: The Everett Klippert Story and the best-selling book Our Past Matters: Stories of Gay Calgary.

Skylar Kay is an Albertan poet and grad school dropout. Her debut collection, Transcribing Moonlight (Frontenac House 2022), earned a shortlist nod for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for Poetry and won the BPAA’s Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry. Her second collection of poetry will come out in fall 2025. She received a 2024 Lieutenant Governor Emerging Artist Award. These days, she likes baking muffins, tolerating her cat, and reading as much poetry as possible.

Kevin and Skylar thank the Calgary Public Library for hosting this event! Please join us.

{KA}

YYC Pride Roundup

Posted on September 6, 2024 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

Phew. Queer history was popular during Calgary Pride 2024!

The Calgary Gay History Project was featured in The Scene (twice) and on CityTV. A couple of podcasts dropped featuring interviews with Kevin Allen: Late in ’88 and Passing Time With Craig.

To round things out, we hosted gay history walks, a book signing at the Pride Festival, and Pride at Shelf Life Books, which featured history, poetry, and drag.

*Pride at Shelf Life Books: Kevin Allen, Dogiichow, Osmo Cis, Skylar Kay and Bret Crowle on Sept 4, 2024.*

If you missed the sold-out Involve: Stonewall & Carousel event last year, Lawrence Interior Design, just released a video which documents the conversation between Jason Brooks, Martin Boyce and Lois Szabo.

*Martin Boyce and Lois Szabo in conversation at Involve: Stonewall & Carousel*

Finally, until September 23rd, catch the pop-up exhibition about the LGBT Purge at the Central Library. The Canadian government investigated thousands of 2SLGBTQI+ employees, military personnel, and members of the RCMP during the Cold War. Many of these employees and personnel were forced to resign, ruining lives and careers. But they fought back, and survivors won a major class action lawsuit against the government in 2018. The exhibition “Love in a Dangerous Time” is an appetizer for the Canadian Museum of Human Rights’s large-scale museum show in Winnipeg next year.

*David Robert Van Norman forced to resign from the RCMP after being labelled homosexual in 1964. Photo: Elenore Sturko*.

{KA}

Our Past Matters at Calgary Pride

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

In celebration of Calgary Pride 2024, we’re giving away a copy of Our Past Matters. Find it, in one of the inner city Little Free Libraries. {Maybe leave a book for someone else, while you are there!}

*Look for Our Past Matters this weekend!*

Kevin will be doing a book signing from 2-3 PM at the Pride Festival in Prince’s Island Park on Sunday, September 1st, hosted by Calgary Pride at their marketplace booth. Come by and chat about queer history. Book sales support the festival and Calgary Pride.

Finally, Celebrate Pride 2024 at Shelf Life Books on September 4th with a fun-filled extravaganza of local talent including drag performances by Dogiichow & Osmo Cis, literary readings by Skylar Kay and Bret Crowle, hosted by Kevin Allen.