By Mikalea Gorman • Halifax • 2022-07 With the return of Halifax’s Pride Parade following the previous few years’ restrictions and reduced events, tens of thousands will once again pack tightly along Barrington and Spring Garden to watch the queer community, its friends and allies, and of course corporate sponsors, march through the city in celebration. For most of those in attendance, either among the throng of marchers making their way in the often oppressive July heat, or part of the assembled masses gathered along the searing sidewalks and crowding onto the edges of the street, the local history of gay pride, queer liberation and acceptance of the LGBTQAI2+ people seems a recent development. From its origins as a march in 1988 as a sparsely attended protest “against the lack of rights for legal protection from discrimination” with just 75 people marching, some with their faces famously covered by paper bags, the Halifax Pride Parade, and the various queer organisations that now make up the modern provincial support network, have grown exponentially in scale and scope - the mid-summer, week-long festival now draws over 100,000 participants. As acceptance beget understanding over the decades, the number of people who identify as some variation of ‘queer’ has dramatically increased, influencing society and culture to be more inclusive. Nearly an entire generation of Canadians have grown up in a country that has had legalized same-sex marriage, have grown up knowing other queer people, have grown up being loved and accepted by friends and family alike. But it wasn’t always like this in Halifax, and as people gather on Barrington Street in fervent celebration of what has been achieved, one building will stand as a silent, often forgotten witness to the time before, prior to the widespread inclusion, the acceptance and corporate sponsorships, the marriage rights, the legal protections, even before the parade, the protests, and AIDS. Fifty years ago, before any of that, there was the Green Lantern building, Club 777/TheeKlub and the Gay Alliance for Equality. ———— “This letter is to inform you that Halifax has now stepped into the ever-expanding movement for Gay Liberation” declared the top line of an untitled newsletter, dated November 1972. “As of June 4, 1972, the Halifax Gay community established an organization known as the Gay Alliance for Equality… we will be working with, and through the community to better facilitate gay/community relations.” Written, signed and distributed by Anne Fulton, identified on the letter as the new group’s secretary, this proclamation sent out to an unknown, likely small number of subscribers and was the first firm step towards community-driven gay rights in the Maritimes. Originally from Woodstock, New Brunswick, Anne had come into her own in the butch/femme bar scene in Saint John before moving to Halifax sometime in the late 60’s / early 70’s to study and work as a day-care teacher. Closeted to her family but otherwise openly gay and by all accounts positively fearless, Anne searched for the same kind of community of women she had known in New Brunswick. When she found a photocopied poster declaring “It’s Time For Gay Liberation” advertising an informal gathering at Dalhousie University to discuss the possibility of forming an organization to represent gay people in Halifax, she leaped at the opportunity to connect with the locals she had been searching for. It was organized by Dartmouth-raised Frank Abbott, who had moved and joined the Community Homophile Association of Toronto after graduating from Saint Mary’s University. That association itself was a barely one year old off-shoot of the University of Toronto Homophile Association which had been founded in the reverberations of Stonewall in 1969. Rather than simply setting up a Maritime chapter of the Homophile Association, Frank seemed more interested in testing the waters for any home-grown activity, and to possibly give the local gay and lesbians a bit of a push in the right direction. QUOTES ABOUT THAT MEETING HERE,TOMMY, NILS? Also in attendance were Tom “Tommy” Burns and David Gray, who unbeknownst to Anne, ran the city’s pre-eminant (and possibly at that time, only) queer hot-spot, TheKlub, aka Club 777, quietly situated on the third floor of Green Lantern building, in an office and residential space rented by David, who lived in the building with his mother, various young gay vagrants, and later co-bar operator/co-renter Tom. There, under the sparkling shimmer of a disco ball, could be found the nascent gay community, closeted or otherwise, gathered in Suite 208 on a Saturday night to dance their cares away (and typically only on a Saturday night, between the hours of 10pm and 3am). Described as “dark and dingy” by some, the club’s dance floor was a large common room, with three smaller joining rooms, that served as seating areas, DJ booth and canteen often on the very same table, with David taking tickets along with Tom, while also selling snacks and spinning the hottest records in town. As it technically wasn’t registered as a club, let alone a bar, events were dry, but by no means boring. THECLUB/777 QUOTES HERE, TOMMY, ? TheeKlub, or rather The Club as it was initially known, was founded on December 31, 1970, either on the northernmost end of Granville Street according to one report, or near the corner of Barrington and North according to another. The soiree was an invite-only affair of 150 party-goers, a crowd made of mostly if not entirely of Halifax’s most eligible “confirmed bachelors,” excited to ring out the old and bring in the new. Only a year and a half earlier, on May 14, 1969, with the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act introduced by then Justice Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau, had gay relations and acts between consenting adults been decriminalized. Before then, such a party would have certainly faced the danger of being raided by police, the resulting charges and press coverage destroying the lives of nearly everyone in attendance, losing their jobs, homes, families, friends, and incurring either hefty fines, cruel prison sentences (such as the indefinite “prevention detention” given to George Everett Klippert, whose case inspired Tommy Douglas to take a stand in Parliament on behalf of gay Canadians, beginning the two year journey to the Ammendment Act), or both, under “gross indecency” laws. Instead, for the first time in Canadian history, homosexuals had won a taste of decency and protection under the law, and they made the most of it. Cruising culture quickly exploded, the observant Haligonian possibly noticing that more friendly, single young men could be seen milling about places like Citadel Hill, the triangle, and various other parks, cemeteries and public washrooms that came and went over the years, including one hidden under the steps of City Hall itself. For Halifax’s lesbian population however, not even these small public freedoms were truly extended, forcing them to stick to clandestine meetings in secret house parties, rarely if ever crossing paths with gay men. While women were less likely, even under the pre-1967 laws, to face prosecution and prison time for homosexual behaviour, they could be made material pariahs, left poor and destitute by patriarcical norms and institutions that had overwhelmingly pressured them into marrying men, and often having children, then stripped them of any support or access to or from those families as unfit mothers. Often either still reliant on the financial support of their husbands, or struggling to make ends meet with the lower wages available to many working women at the time, these house parties would also serve as mutual-support networks, along with chances to hook-up. —DAN DONE TO HERE The men, however, were far more interested in just having some fun. That first New Years Eve night quickly became a regular affair, with The Club, a private (men only) members venue that charged $0.69 admission, quickly opening a month later… and then almost as quickly closing four months later after the owner of the location they were renting from decided to close up shop and move. Looking to keep the party going, David Gray purchased the rights to The Club for an unknown amount to an unnamed seller, and soon after reopened in some of his rented space in the Green Lantern Building, with two major changes. First, he had changed the name from The Club to TheeKlub, a.k.a. Club 777 (the reason for the number seemingly lost to time). And second, he opened it up to everyone, gay or straight, man or woman. It was here that the walls between gay men and lesbians in Halifax finally began to crumble, so naturally, following frank Abbott’s visit, it seemed only fitting to David and Tom that it should play host to whatever came next. POT LUCK QUOTE HERE A few false starts later, a dedicated core group had emerged, returning time and again to discuss the potential organisation to be, along with just exactly what they wanted to actually achieve, and how they intended to do it. While Anne’s signed declaration on behalf of the resulting Gay Alliance for Equality gave a founding date of June 4, 1972, it wasn’t until nearly a year later that a clear look at the group came to light, when an official memorandum of association arrived at the registrar of the Joint Stock Companies of Nova Scotia. The intervening year between founding and filing had been one of either much discussion, or bickering, depending on who recounts the events, over just what the proposed group would actually do, what sort of goals they wanted to strive for, and how to acheive them, along with, allegedly, a not insignificant amount of time figuring out a name everyone could agree on, with the Association for Gay Equality, AGE, being the runner up. An a Fifteen people were named as the founding first officers of the society: Thomas J. Miller, Donna Burns, Carol Butler, Stephen Calnen, Nils Clausson, Edmund Slade, James DeYoung, David Gray, Dianne Warren, Ann MacMullin, “Tommy” Burns, Joyce Gehue, Theresa Rowe, Sandra Henley and Anne Fulton. “I kind of stumbled into it because nobody else wanted to chair the first meetings we had” said Tom Burns, MORE TOMMY QUOTES QUOTES ABOUT DIFFERENT AGENDAS While scope and scale of potential goals varied from member to member, all agreed that together, they were the best chance, if any at the time, for gay rights to advance in Nova Scotia, and so adopted an open-ended 8-point list of objectives: to promote education in all aspects of homosexuality, to educate the public regarding problems confronting homosexuals, to assist individual homosexuals, to work to change the prevailing attitudes of society towards homosexuals, to remove public descrimination against homosexuals, to raise funds to acheive their stated goals, to exercise the powers invested in them by the Societies Act (itself a revolutionary Act as there had never before been a society registered based on homosexuality) and to establish a social centre to assist homosexuals and administer the objectives of the GAE. Upon reception by the registrar, the application was rejected, with Joint Stocks responding that they did not understand either their intentions or how they would achieve them. Thankfully this was overturned on review a month later. ——————— STRUGGLE COMING OUT, BEING ALONE, FINDING COMMUNITY, AND THUS PURPOSE OF GAE/KLUB/LINE/BOOKSTORE (passively), EARLY QUEER NETWORKING “It was tough. It was tough growing up differently,” said Tom Burns. While others like ….. had experiences coming out that would seem far more accepting and supportive than ACCEPTANCE SUPPORT/LINE One of the first, most long running, and successful actions of the GAE, created while the ink was still drying on the paperwork, was the creation of the GayLine (429-6969), an information and contact number that served a variety of functions. It was based on the Halifax Helpline, which founding member Diane Warren had volunteered for, an all-purpose help, information, and general outreach line that locals and visitors to the city could contact. Afterwards, they would usually be directed in the right direction. Since the founding of TheeKlub, Halifax’s municipal telephone counselling service, Helpline, had been referring anyone who called and asked about the local gay community to David Gray’s personal phone number. It was then only natural that the first of what would become a dozen homes for the GayLine be the same as the GAE itself: the third floor of the Green Lantern building, just down the hall from TheeKlub, in a small room, a single chair, where a volunteer would sit, a table, and a rotary telephone, that would infrequently ring, but could always be a matter of life and death “NILS AND ED TALK ABOUT THE LINE Also sharing space in the building was the Alternate Book Store, founded in 1975 and run by Tom Burns, offering a small but vital selection of gay magazines, books, pamphlets and other literature that often served as the first queer voices many locals ever read in print, along with mailing addresses, newsletter lists and contact information for the few other burgeoning gay rights groups across North America, from the Toronto Homophiles, to the Mattachine Society in New York City, and even the Advocate out of San Franscico. The shop also briefly offered poppers for a limited time, which quickly became Tommy’s best selling product among TheeKlub-goers, much to his frustration. TOM BOOKS QUOTES While social connections for the community outside the loving embrace of Club 777 and Tom’s list of distant contacts were rare at the time, there were even in the beginning some who were eager to be supportive allies, such as many attending Dalhousie Medical School, brilliant young men and women who, on the forefront of medicine, having very different views than the generations of doctors who had come before, viewed homosexuality more and more frequently as a biological reality of the human species, and not some mortal sin made flesh, who GAE members would speak of often in an attempt to shift the narrative about queer people in medical culture. As well, at least one church reached out not only with words of support, but some much needed meeting space when the group, due to some long-lost internal squabble, was no longer welcome to meet at TheeKlub for free, following David Gray’s exit as the group’s treasurer, and then later second chairperson. The Universalist Unitarian Church, still located on Inglis Street, opened their doors to the GAE on October 24, 1972, and continued to allow usage of their space throughout the following year. Paul Collins was barely out of the closet for a year when, at the invitation of his then-boyfriend, he attended a GAE meeting at that church. PAUL COLLINS HERE ——————— Not every step forward would be as easy or so welcomed by those in the city. It was rare at that time that any gay person, open, closeted or suspected, could go through their life without facing some form of homophibic abuse, harassment or assault, sometimes at the hands of the very police meant to protect those endangered by the violence of society. REBECCA HERE Contrary to popular belief, rather than laying the ground work for protecting queer Canadians, Pierre Trudeau’s grand gesture of keeping the state out of the bedroom actually increased attacks, both illegal and extra-legal, along with causing a marked upswing in anti-gay actions by police. To say ‘Rebecca wrote the book on early Halifax queer history’ is to be quite literal: their book Before The Parade, available at many fine local stores, details not only the origin and eventual end of the GAE, but also early Lesbian organisations, various night clubs, dozens of the attendees, and their many struggles for recognition and respect. MORE REBECCA Even when not faced with overt violence, the state of rejection and non-existence was constantly thrust upon the GAE and the queer community. A commonly heard response to the very idea that there could be gay people in Nova Scotia, let alone Halifax, “I don’t think we have those here”, belied the persistent belief that ‘those types’ were only found in bigger, more decadant cities, like Montréal or Toronto, and were an infectious import. One of the first proactive battles fought, and lost, by the GAE, was with the provincial Legislature and the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission itself. In a water-testing moon-shot, members drew up “A Brief Regarding the Human Rights Act”, which demanded the government take the then radically progressive position that people should not be descriminated against based on their sexual orientation. The paper, delivered to the Legislature on March 5, 1973, lead to a meeting with the Human Rights Commission on March 28, where representatives of the Alliance, some of whom likely had been victims of homophobic abuse, were told outright that the Commission would not be taking on the fight for queer rights, as they did not believe gay people were discriminated against, at least enough to be an issue, and so would be an unnecessary drain on their already overstretched office. It wouldn’t be until 1991 that the province of Nova Scotia finally adopted sexual orientation as a protected right, and in 1996, the federal government did the same. A few months later, in May, the GAE’s first true newsletter since Anne Fulton’s declaration, ‘GAE/Y Information Service’, took issue and aim at conversion therapy, a then common and popular “treatment” for homosexuality in both some religious and medical circles. “Where our existing sexual standards deny people the right to happiness, freedom, and love, we would do better to change our standards than to try to change our fellow human beings”, wrote Tom Burns. Again ahead of its time, 39 years would pass before the Nova Scotia government would agree with this sentiment, and another 5 years for the rest of Canada to catch up. Media releases sent to the various news outlets, announcing and detailing the work of the Alliance, would go unpublished, while attempts to buy ad-space to promote the GayLine would be met by outright rejection, often based on “moral principles” about promoting the deviant homosexual lifestyle. This rejection by local media would lead directly to the first openly gay protest in Nova Scotian history, when in 1974 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation decided not to air a public service announcement on the radio for the GayLine, promoting it as a counselling service for gay men and women. A year later, the GAE tried again, and were again denied time to air their spot. In 1976, an article in The Body Politic: the Gay Liberation Journal, a CBC employee was quoted as claiming that the corporation had a national policy “against accepting public announcements from homophile organizations”, and that such messages were “offensive to CBC’s general audience”. On February 17, 1977, 21 people picketed up and down the corner of Sackville and South Park, where once stood the old CBC Radio building, setting off a series of nation-wide protests, from Montréal and Toronto to Ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver, against the crown corporation, with the Dalhousie Gazette and the Canadian University Press uniting to throw their weight behind the GAE’s campaign. While the protests ultimately failed and the PSA spot never ran on the air, the group had managed to grab the attention of national and local media, and CHNS, CFDR and the Chronicle Herald / Mail Star joined the CBC in refraining from queer content. However, there were media-savvy members of GAE who knew they could use this controversy to get their message out, one way or another. NILS Nils became the unofficial spokesperson of the GAE throughout the 70’s, not because he felt a calling to be the voice of an unheard minority, but rather because everyone else had pretty good excuses not to. He had come from Vancouver to study at Dalhousie in 1970, and had actually been at the school during the Toronto fact-finding mission, but was not in attendance, Nils had no local connections, no family to embarass or job that might fire him for being publicly gay. “A self-confessed homosexual” as one radio host once described him, he and other GAE members bravely came forward at a time when being publicly recoginized on the streets as a gay person could quickly lead to violent reprisals. He appeared on shows like Take 30 and was featured in the press like The 4th Estate, showing up publicly to loudly and unmissably protest discrimination against gays and lesbians, from gay patrons abused and kicked out of bars, to gay employees who were outed and fired, and the ever-present harassment and arrests of gay people by the police. He provided funding for the early days of the Gazette, which eventually became Wayves Magazine. NILS Not only did the GAE take a stand on their own, they also grew connections with other gay rights groups, many having recently begun like themselves, attending and hosting conferences on homosexual activism such as the Conferece for Lesbians and Gay Men, the first of its kind hosted in Atlantic Canada, and the Atlantic Gay Conference, which on October 10, 1977 culimated in Halifax’s first gay march, from the now-Khyber building to the Provincial Legislature, alongside members of APPLE, the Atlantic Provinces Political Lesbians for Equality. NILS For the first time, gay Nova Scotians were visible and vocal, and together with other groups across the country, began rewriting the public narrative on homosexuality. NILS - MEDIA TOM - GAE ITSELF ED - DISINTEREST PAUL - STEADY —————— The end of the Gay Alliance for Equality did not come suddenly, but rather was a gentle fading as times changed. Some people moved on with professional lives, others moved away from politics. Nova Scotia culture adapted to openly queer members of society, and the challenges faced shifted from bare-bones survival to more nuanced needs. [a][b] While those at the GAE were used to making a dollar stretch, providing resources like the GayLine and housing support cost more than TheeKlub/Club 777 could bring in, especially after the group and David Gray drifted apart. Having already nearly collapsed in 1974, due to what was perceived by some as internal squabbling that resulted in exhaustion and disinterest, the organization’s position was more precarious than any would have liked. In 1976, David Gray sold TheeKlub/Club 777 to Condon MacLeod, later of Cafe Ole and Pavillion fame, who turned the Green Lantern space into Condon’s Bar, essentially continuing TheeKlub, but with occasional special events liquor licences. That same year, the group hosted a community dance on the third floor of what is now known as The Khyber, resulting a year and a half later in Halifax’s second gay bar, both in the city and on Barrington Street, The Turret. Aside from a committed safe space for Halifax’s queer community to meet up, organize and relax, it served as a minor[c][d] revenue stream for the GAE, GayLine and other projects, along with giving much needed jobs to otherwise destitute gays rejected from normal employers. Though The Turret itself would close just 5 years later, it essentially would be reopened that same year as Rumours, on Granville Street, later moved to Gottingen. JOBS FOR THE BOYS The Alternate Book Shop would join The Turret in the Khyber Building in 1977, before Tom Burns sold the shop to Emerald Gibson, who continued to run it until the store closed in 1983. The growing AIDS crisis also provided a strain, as again pressure was put on gays and lesbians who were seen as dangers to public health, while many sick or dying from HIV/AIDS required expensive medical and end-of-life care, and day-to-day community support also called for above-and-beyond resources, resulting in the 1985 purchase of a Macara Street house that would become Radclyffe Hall, a GAE run community centre. In 1988, to better reflect the change in language, identity and representation, GAE changed its name to GALA, the Gay And Lesbian Association, going on to successfully back the Lesbian and Gay Rights Nova Scotia campaign to include sexual orientation in the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act in 1991, just as they had declared they would fight for decades previously. That same year, the first Halifax Pride Parade occured, with 75 in attendance, to draw attention to the lack of government and healthcare support for the queer community. Within 20 years, attendance at the Halifax Pride Parade would dwarf the entire collected membership of the GAE/GALA by over a hundred times. Eventually a debate over who could and could not go topless in Rumours without violating (or antagonizing) the Liquor Licensing Board was the final nail in the coffin, ranging over the early 90’s, and killing off any residual interest and patience those in the community had for those then involved with the Alliance/Association, and the accompanying decades of baggage. On February 15, 1995, an obituary of sorts ran in the Mail-Star, announcing the bankruptcy of the GAE/GALA, and 23 hard fought years. The GayLine would move into the basement of The Studio Bar, back on Barrington Street, where it all began, eventually closing along with the bar on June 14, 1996. SPRINKLE WITH “WHAT I DID AFTER”s THROUGHOUT LAST SECTION NILS QUOTES - “I arrived in either late August or early September of 1971. And at that point I wasn’t aware of a gay community in Halifax.” “It was very dingy when I was there” “I think it started either two or three weeks before I got wind of it,” said Nils. “The first meeting I attended was a short walking distance from where I lived in the heart of downtown Halifax. So I walked down, and I distinctly remember that, because it was a big moment for me. This was my first contact with the gay community, and they’d already held their election. David Gray was Treasurer, Anne Fulton was secretary, Tom Burns was chair and Dianne Warren was the Vice-Chair.” “It was kind of a revolving door of drag queens… the epicenter of the early gay movement in Halifax” “My connection with the gay community, before I went to my first GAE meeting, was through the newspaper, The Body Politic. There was a store in Halifax that sold it, and there were of course listings of gay organizations in Canada, but the GAE hadn’t formed yet, so there was nothing that would point me in the right direction.” “When I attended my first meeting in 1972, one of the items of discussion was that a gay line was going to be set up, an information line so people wouldn’t have to call the regular help line to find out what was happening in Halifax. That was a major step forward. This was the first major achievement, in view of the fact that it was advertised quite effectively in the city with posters.” “There was no objection to the organization being called the GAE (with the word “gay”): the women in the organization, i.e. the lesbians, used the word ‘gay’ to refer to themselves. We didn’t have the term ‘transexual’ and all that back then.” -PAUL REVISED UP TO HERE “Someone from the CBC had approached the GAE to do a half hour program that was gonna broadcast locally in Halifax. I should point out… by default I sort of became the public relations person for the GAE because Dianne Warren and Tom Burns weren’t willing to go on television and radio and write letters to the editior.” “I was interviewed, and I think John Marr was interviewed as well. We went to the reporter’s house and we sat on his porch. He interviewed us, and they also went to TheeKlub on a special night when it wasn’t the regular night for it to be open, and we were able to get enough people willing to, well some were in drag, some were in other ways to disguise themselves, and they filmed us in there, in TheeKlub on Barrington. And it was later picked up by a Program hosted by Adrienne Clarkson, who later became Governor General.” “I have a distinct recollection [of the fist time], because one of the women who called in told me that I should be picked up by the Halifax garbage detail and taken to the dump.” “I never heard of people getting beaten up going into the Green Lantern Building” “I would say the gay community [in Halifax in the 70s] evolved to the point where it was comparable to say a city like ottawa or Hamilton.” “I don’t recall any fights… my recollections of the early meetings of the GAE as that we were all committed, enthusiastic, cooperative” “I knew it was going to come eventually… unfortunately I think [it took] until the mid-90s. It still got there, eventually, and I wrote the first brief, so for what it’s worth for the historical record, we got our foot in the door…. It certainly confirmed my belief that the wheels of change turn slowly, but they turn, and it had to start somewhere. And Robin Metcalfe, he came to me and said ‘We’re going to do this again, we’re going to make a second approach.” “None of the legislators knew a single homosexual or lesbian, all they had were stereotypical images of child molesters or diesel dykes or whatever. That was their idea of what gay people were. I remember in the aftermath of a presentation, we met with a number of officials and they asked me who I was and I said I was a PhD student at Dalhousie, and one of them asked ‘do your professors know that you’re homosexual?’ And I said ‘How could they not know? I’m on television!” “It has taken half a century, but there is progress. Things do change. It’s just that the people who initiate change sometimes don’t live to see the full results of them… I’m one of the fortunate ones.” One founding member who after spending a full career as a gifted and respected counsellor in Halifax, died suddenly on November 2, 2015. “I moved to Regina in 1984… and I was a founding member fo AIDS Regina… and it was because of the 1970’s gay movement that by that time there were established gay communities and organizations in every major city in Canada. We had the political experience, we knew how to deal with government, we knew how to organize, we can fight this thing.” “David Gray was the first gay person that I had voice contact with in Halifax. He told me the date of the next meeting, and where it was.. and the rest is history” EMERALD GIBSON - “I started abstaining on stuff because I couldn’t make up my mind, so they called me The Lady of Abstentia. Sometimes I would just say yes and people would be shocked” “It was well worth the while, there were things that had to be done that couldn’t have been done without money, and you couldn’t raise it in the normal means.” “The gay men and women did not at all get along. Most of the meetings were attended mostly by men. It wasn’t closed off to women, it was just that was the way the community was,” noting that a lot of partygoers who visited TheeKlub and later The Turret were far more interested in having fun than organizing. TOM BURNS QUOTES “My goal at the time was to educate people. I didn’t want people to go through what I had gone through, growing up gay, thinking I was the only one. Everybody hated you, even god and all that nonsense. And I thought, ‘if I could help somebody have an easier time coming out than I, that’s what I’m here for.” “Some nights i would open and there would be no customers, some night it would be some customers come in and when I opened during club ours, that was the best business. It was right next door and I was only paying $50 a month in rent, so you know, what the heck?” “I heard from people later in life who stood across the street to listen to the music, because we had the newest music and the best music in Halifax.” “Somehow we had a disagreement with David, we didn’t see eye to eye, so we decided to have our meetings somewhere else” “My personal goal was education, and to spread the word that we were not all bad people.” “When you think you’re all alone and nobody else in the world is like you, and everybody hates you, you’ve got this great secret that you can’t tell anybody, it’s awful, it’s a burden. So that’s why I decided to help somebody else, that was my goal, and that was my goal especially with the [GayLine].” “They were absolutely useless” “I thought it would take longer than it did. I was surprised, we’ve come up, we’ve come a long way. I think there’s still a long way to go, but we’ve had a long run in [the last] 50 years. I figured I’d never live to see the day of gay marriage and stuff.” “We all knew people who were first from their jobs, from their positions, because they were gay. Not because they did anything, just because they were gay” “In those days it was hard. ‘There are not fruits in Halifax’, fruits existed in Montreal and Toronto” “I didn’t like the fact we were invisible” “We had a lot of gay people, especially in those days, just sort of drift away from each other” ED SLADE QUOTES When Ed was younger, he worked up the curiosity to check the Encyclopedia under “gay”, was was disturbed by what he found. “I thought people would hate me, but finally I compared myself to other people, and, well I thought I was a pretty good person, good as anyone else around here, maybe they were wrong in that encyclopedia, that we were just terrible creatures” “I didn’t even know what guys did together” confessed Ed Slade Ed had actually written into the Dalhousie Gazette to place an ad looking for other gay men and women, “if you said gay they wouldn’t have had a clue what you were talking about, so I said homophile”, only to soon after be told not only was there no reply to the posts, the editors at the time didn’t think there were any homosexuals in Halifax to begin with. It wasn’t until Ed visited a gay club in Toronto while visiting that he met someone from Dartmouth who told them of Club 777. “I had no idea!” “I remember going to a get-together at the club and people would show up, I think it was a pot luck, and the idea was to see how many people, if anybody, was interested.” The first event was a smash, and a second meeting was immediately planned, though turn out very quickly began to dwindle. “There wasn’t any food at the other meetings” joked Ed, “but the people who came ot the second meeting were more interested, more committed.” “At the start, iot was just regular, working people. We had no knowledge about legal assistance” “I was a bit surprised when I first started hanging out with gay people. I thought everybody woyld be thinking like I did, and i was very comfortable with all these hippie ideas”, like love, acceptance and free expression. “ I just assumed if you were part of a minority, why wouldn’t you?” “I found it was uncomfortable to be in a situation where I wans’t enjoying it and I didn’t feel like I was able to contribute in it. “I would say there was probably infighting” “We could be doing things, but we’re spending most of the meetings rehashing stuff, and to me it was just going no-where…. Human nature is what it is.” “I just felt [the GayLine] was important, and I felt it was something I could be helpful at”. While he stepped away from the GAE itself due to the internal-issues, he would continue to volunteer his nights to the GayLine well into the mid 1980’s. REBECCA QUOTES “People were not protected by the law, and could be refused housing, could be refused a job, could be fired from a job simply for being gay, lesbian, bisexual etc. And on top of that, there was a great amount of violence, specifically against gay men. Just about every gay man I spoke to for Before The Parade had been gay bashed, and people would say “oh well I was ONLY gay bashed” and that gives you an idea of how prevelant it was” “Police harassment was a thing that happened all throughout the 70’s, particularly when it came to men who were cruising… They would be called over to a police car and asked to present ID,” then eventually told to move along, their information recorded for unbknown uses. “And the police were also not helped when it came to gay bashings, I definitly heard from serveral men who did not find the police sympathetic or helpful after they were badly beaten, because they were gay” “The bars were massively important, so was the cruising scene. I mean, you can’t understate the importance of sex as a way of connecting, you know? And Jim DeYoung said in an interview with Gay Halifax, for gay men, the cruising scene was the gay community before the GAE, and for lesbian women, the community was the post parties, primarily” “Folks created these little enclaves where they were safe” “Much ado has been made of the quote-unquote decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969, and Trudeau Senior’s famous quote about staying out of bedrooms, but homosexuality itself wasn’t decrminalizzed. It was only decriminalized if it happened in private between two folks over a certain age. The criminality of homosexuality actually increased after that, because of the criminalization of thinks like crusiing and bath houses.” “At the time, who was having sex in their apartment or house? You were either married and closeted or liviing amongst people that you didn’t want to know you were gay, so you had to have sex in more public places” PAUL COLLINS QUOTES “I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t really know what it was about until I got to the meeting, you know? I tagged along” “I was very conscious that I was different before I came out, but I didn;t know exactly why, and I didn’t want to know why, almost.” Picked up while hitchiking to his then-girlfriends in Halifax, Paul soon fell into a short-lived relationship with the driver, who lived off Park Victoria. “We had sex and agter it was all over, I stood naked on his balcony, overlooking the park, and said to myself “I guess I’m gay”. It was a friend of this unnamed aquaintance, Glen Fredericks, who would a year later take Paul to the Unitarian Church to sit in on a meeting of the GAE. Community member, though never formally in the GAE, Paul Collins’ first reaction to seeing TheeKlub and the members of the GAE was a positive shock. “My god, all these people are dancing together! It was very odd to see, but very pleasurable at the same time. And it struck me [about the members] that everybody’s different… and it was like, they were happy to be there and excited to be their. It was their only place to themselves, and that was really enlightening.” “I remember one night in particular” says Paul Collins. “It wasn’t exactly gay bashing, but one night guys drove by in a car and started threatenbing, and there was this one guy from the club, what would you call him? He was feminine, but he just picked rocks and he goes “Come back here, buddy!” And I just thought ‘oh, you’re good’. It was a quiet community hiding awa, but there were people who were fiesty, who were fighters.” “People were just so happy, it was so alive, and it was just so very exciting.” [a]This is out of place, should be much later eh. [b]Yeah, popping it forward to the next section might work? The narrative goes back and forth a bit for a sense of discovery [c]major or massive, I think [d]Yeah, massive for the group, meant more minor as in meagre, but lets change it to “primary”