RadclyffeHall

Radclyffe Hall

Opening Day! Back row: No.1, FredRowe, ScottThompson, No. 4, No. 5, PatriciaMartinson, PatryshaColp, DarlWood, and PatDingle. Front row, l. to r., WaydeBrown, LynnMurphy, AnneFulton.

It had long been the Gay Alliance for Equality's ambition to own a community centre, and for some years a portion of membership fees to the first Rumours Club was set aside for the purpose. At last, in 1985, we took the plunge and purchased a house on the north corner of Isleville and Macara Streets, which we named for early twentieth-century British novelist Radclyffe Hall, author of the much-censored lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness.

In what had been the downstairs flat, a room was reserved for the GayLine, beside a kitchen with a patio door looking out to what could have been a very nice back yard. The former front and dining rooms housed the staffperson's desk and filing cabinets, a meeting space for perhaps a dozen, and the GaeGalaLibrary.

It was used for meetings of GAE and other gay-related organizations, for workshops, for alcohol-free social events, and one summer for a youth outreach project with two part-time employees. One of the events held was the first (perhaps the only) Halifax gay/lesbian commmunity observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom ha-Shoah), looking back to lesbians and gays persescuted by the Nazis. A Gay/Lesbian-friendly AA group met at Radclyffe Hall, paying a small rent as it is their policy not to accept free meeting spaces.

Upstairs was an apartment, whose tenants looked after cleaning, snow removal, etc in return for reduced rent.

Radclyffe Hall was sold and the proceeds applied to the mortgage when GaeGala bought 2112 Gottingen and moved Rumours from Granville Street to there -- approximately two years later in 1987.

HistoryProjectTodoList: fill out rest of info - when we bought and sold, how much we paid for it. ChrisAucoin, BrandonMatheson?, and DarlWood worked here half time. Get some info from them.

DanielMacKay writes: I remember working the GayLine and having a cockroach fall off the ceiling onto my notepad. Something tells me that the GayLine may have moved out for this reason, and not when we sold the building - not sure.

Tags: NeedsResearchCategory

• who are the rest of the people in the picture? Answer : bottom picture left to right : Patricia Martinson, Pat Colp, Lynn Murphy, person almost completely obscured is Pat Dingle, Darl Wood, Anne Fulton [in plaid shirt].
• who took it?
• what's the date?

This page is part of the HistoryProject.