Rebecca’s Books By Heart Tour Notes


Start at Halifax Convention Centre


Opening remarks: 
* Leading up to today’s walk and roll, I have been thinking about why this type of history tour is important. In our current context - rise of anti-gay and trans hate and laws in U.S. and other countries such as Russia and Uganda - feels even more urgent. 
* One of the ideas that underpins the current anti-2SLGBTQIA+ rhetoric is that Queerness, Transness is something new being pushed on people, interrupting the natural order of things ie heterosexuality and the gender binary. 
* But the truth is that there is nothing new about any of these identities. There have been same sex attracted/loving and gender variant people in Nova Scotia/Mi’kma’ki for as long as Mi’kmaw people have been here; 13, 000 years. Gender binaries, heterosexual relationships, and binary gender roles are all European Christian imports. In that context, heterosexuality and the gender binary are actually what’s new.
* One of my favourite quotes is by Trans author, artist, and activist Alok Vaid Menon. They say: “My faith comes from the fact that I know what came before.” They said this on the Laverne Cox podcast talking about the long history of Transness in various cultures, but I also like to think about it in terms of 2SLGBTQIA+ history; we know what is possible because we know what was possible. 
* This is why - I think - butch, trans and socialist icon and author of Stone Butch Blues Leslie Feinber I think wrote that “recovering collective memory is in itself an act of struggle”. [2mins]


* Jury Room
   * Not a “gay bar” but frequented by many gays. Site of 2nd (known) LGB picket in Halifax, the first being of the CBC when they refused to air an Public Service Announcement for the GSA. 
   * The CBC pickett sparked the first nationally coordinated gay pickett with events in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Vancouver.
   * April 22, 1977 a dozen gay men were kicked out of the Jury Room for being or looking gay. 
   * They were told the bar wouldn’t serve “people of your kind” and to “take your Queens and get the F out of here”. They obviously didn’t say “F”. 
   * Chris Shepherd was there that night and was charged with being drunk and disorderly, because they couldn’t charge him for being gay he says. 
   * GM of bar told the 4th Estate Paper that the men were “undesirables” and that they were “so obvious it’s pathetic.”
   * Went on to say “society hasn’t accepted them and I certainly haven’t. I think I’m probably speaking for the average straight person. How can you be sympathetic to those people?”
   * April 23 Anne Fulton, Deb Trask, Robin Metcalfe, and Jim McSwain from the GAE returned with “GAY RIGHTS NOW” pins. 
   * Robin and Jim were turned away “trouble with your movement” last night. Would let Anne and Deb in because they knew what the men “did”. 
   * A week later on April 30, 35 GAE members picketed the Jury Room. 
   * As Anne Fulton said in The Body Politic, Canada’s gay newspaper of record in the 70s and 80s, the pickett and subsequent media attention served a larger purpose:
      1. “There are many people in the city who know we have been discriminate against and that gay people have no protection in the Human Rights Act. The first step to eliminating repression is to make our oppression known. The gay community in Halifax is more aware than ever that the GAE and APPLE (the less active autonomous lesbian organization that Anne founded) and other groups and individuals will stand behind them and that we can fight for our rights.”
   * [3 minutes].


* Green Lantern and Turret
   * During the 1970s, this block, these two buildings - The Green Lantern and then The Turret - was the hub of the gay community.
   * Green Lantern: Club 777 - first long-running gay bar. When I met with Club 777 owner and GAE founding member David Gray last summer he told me that that Tony Saulnier opened first gay club on Lower Water Street. 
   * Originally further North on Barrington Street, Club 777 was opened by a group of gays on NYE 1970. 
   * David Gray bought Club 777 from Bernie Feener and moved it to the GL building. Called Thee Klub or David’s it was the first stop for many LGB folks when they first came out in the early to mid 70s. 
   * Open Thurs, Fri and Sat eves. Didn’t have a liquor licence, had to get a series of special event liquor licences. 
   * Mike Sangster called it “liberating” to be with other gay men and women. “There wasn’t the pressure to be straight, to pretend” he said.  
   * Lorne Izzard, an ANS gay man from Amherst, first went to Thee Klub in 1974, and said it was a “thrill” to be asked to dance by another man. Lorne later DJ’d at Thee Klub. 
   * Table of women, just one.
   * Gay men lived in not-so-legal offices cum apartments in GL. David decided who to rent to. 
   * The building was also the venue for early GAE meetings, and housed the first office for the Gayline, the GAE’s Gay phone line, which provided counselling and referrals.
   * Tom Burns - another founding member of the GAE - opened first known gay bookstore in Nova Scotia - the Alternate Bookstore- in GL. It later moved to Turret and he sold it to Emerald Gibson. 
   * The Turret: Started as a one night disco in Jan. of 1976. After Robin Metcalfe and John Lewis were banned from the Heidleberg German Rest. on SG for dancing together in ‘75. 
   * Pooled their money and kept beer on roof to keep cold. 
   * Officially the GAE signed the lease for the space Sept 1977. 
   * Walter Borden “You knew that the moment you stepped into the doors you were stepping into your world. You could just be, you could just be”. 
   * Sweet spot, after gay lib and before AIDS. 
   * Disco, drag shows, folk shows (Faith Nolan), meetings, conferences, panels, movies. ANS Gay man Chris Shepherd was DJ. Closed in 1982 and GAE opened Rumours bar on Granville. 
   * The mere existence of a LGB owned space, for an by community, allowed activism to flourish. Not a coincidence that first march and first two pickets took place in ‘76 and ‘77. 
   * [5 mins]
* Women’s Marches
   * When I first started researching and writing about LGB activist history in this province, I focused on the Gay Alliance for Equality, our first gay advocacy group. Founded in 1972, last year we celebrated it’s 50th anniversary. 
   * I soon found out though that not everyone, particularly women, felt like GAE was where they fit. 
   * As lesbian feminist Diann Graham said “I think there were the lesbian feminists that tended to work with women on the issues the women’s movement was working on” ie abortion, rape, employment equity “and there was another whole group of lesbians who saw their allies as gay men. I think both tracks were equally as engaged and involved in the changes we have seen in our lifetime.”
   * Many lesbian women were afraid that they would lose their children if their former husbands found out they were gay. Grounded in reality, in ‘74 a Saskatoon lesbian lost custody of her children to her ex-husband, and it was a precedent setting case. The Body Politic reported that hundreds of lesbians lost their children each year. In ‘78 Wages Due Lesbians based in TO created the Lesbian Mothers’ Defence Fund.  
   * The 1st IWD march in Halifax was organised by socialist group In Struggle in 1975
   * 1st Reclaim or Take Back the Night organised in October of 1978 to draw attention to the fact that women couldn’t walk alone safely at night. 
   * Same year as Reclaim the Night marches in Ottawa and Vancouver. 
   * Organized by the local Anarcha Feminist groups, aware of Gerald Regan - Premier of NS - sexual assault allegations. 
   * Refused to get a premit, didn’t tell the cops, didn’t allow men, they could do childcare
   * Route: Started at Red Herring Co-operative Bookstore, Hollis, Inglis, Queen, University, SP and SG to Barrington.
   * Chanted “We want streets without creeps”. 
* Rumours
   * Opened fall of 1982. 
   * Early 80s context: Called the chapter Rising Fear, Rising Up: rise of right-wing politics and extremism. Nationally: anti-abortion and KKK organizing. In 1981 locally the KKK attempted to set up a local headquarters and a coalition of groups, including GAE, organized a protest of 200 people in North End Halifax.  
   * Toronto bathhouse raids 1981, and protests. 3K ppl protested. 
   * Of course, the early 1980s also marked the first reported cases of HIV/AIDS, the first in Canada being March 1981.
   * I understand that the 2SLGBTQ+ Purge, from the military and federal public service between the 1950s and 1990s is a focus of this conference. 
   * For the book I interviewed local lesbian Darl Wood, who was interrogated, harassed and then purged from the military due to her sexuality. Darl first began speaking publicly about her experience in 1983. Darl’s experience with the military propelled her - like many 2SLGB+ women in the 80s - into peace organizing. 
   * Rumours was the successor to the Turret, named so from a name the club contest that the GAE held. 
   * Wall to wall people on weekends. Bad ventilation, blanketed with smoke. 
   * Big drag and variety show 4x a year. People and Mtl and NYC would attend. 
   * Women’s nights. Andrea Currie - Metis Indigiqueer woman - from Manitoba described herself in those early days of coming into her sexuality as a baby dyke, clad in lavender high tops, a labrys ring, and necklace with interlocking women’s symbols. Andrea calls those women’s nights “precious”. An article in the GAE newsletter said of the women’s nights “the music is ours, there’s dancing, freedom, and simply the joy of meeting other women.”
   * Brenda Bryan, manager of Rumours at the time, things that women’s nights lead to increased women’s involvement in the wider community. 
   * Some men call the nights “sexist” to which some women shot back that was because it was not filled with an “overwhelming majority of men.”
   * Moved to Gottingen - the old Vogue Theatre - in 1987. Was there until 1995 when both Rumours and GALA wound down. Meant that Halifax had a 2SLGBT+ bar run by the lesbian and gay community group from ‘76 to 95, nearly 20 years. 
* Province House - First March & Conferences
   * Halifax is first known gay and lesbian march took place on October 10, 1977 as the grand finale for the first annual Atlantic gate conference. 
   * You always marched at a conference, said Robin Metcalfe.
   * The march called for Sexual Orientation to be included in the NS Human Rights Act and ended here at Province House. 
   * At the same conference, John Damien spoke, who had been fired from his job with the Ontario racing commission, because he was gay.
   * Not even a year later, the GAE and Atlantic provinces, political lesbians for equality hosted the sixth annual national  conference for lesbians and gay men.
   * The conference took place in the context of a “developing crisis situation, according to the body politic. In 1977, former beauty, queen, singer, an orange juice, spokes person. Anita Bryant lead a successful campaign to repeal a Florida ordinance, prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people in housing and employment. She then took her anti-gay campaign on the road, including to Canada.
   * That conference also featured the play the The Night They Raided Truxx written by Paul Ledoux and Terry last and directed by Rosemary Gilbert.
   * The raids at Montreal gay bar Truxx led to the largest mast arrests at that time in Canada since the war measures act in 1970. The bars owner was found guilty of keeping a common body house and giving jail time in a fine.
* Argyle and Prince, Cruising
   * For gay men in the 60s & 70s in Halifax, cruising for sex was an important way to find community. 
   * “Community was basically a cruising scene” said GAE Founding member JimDeYoung. 
   * “You can’t divide community and sex” said activist and archivist Robin Metcalfe of the importance of sexual networks for developing friendships, relationships, community space and identity. 
   * Citadel Hill, the Halifax Commons, The Triangle (Queen, Dresden Rowe, Spring Garden), Camp Hill Cemetery, the Public Gardens and the Meat Rack (South Park and Spring Garden) were all popular cruising spots. 
   * A 1978 Body Politic article on the upcoming national gay & lesbian conference in Halifax had that following to say about cruising: 
      1. "This city offers a unique opportunity to join a two-hundred-year-old cruising tradition on Citadel Hill...If the action fails, there's always the view."
   * Jim DeYoung noted that that when a cruising area became well known and gay-bashers moved in, they would relocate. 
   * Activist and archivist (and dear friend) Robin Metcalfe wrote in the Dalhousie Gazette in 1976 that “rude cops will drive up, bark out ‘c’mere, demand ID, tell us to move on, ask why were are where we are etc.”
   * Many people believe that Pierre Elliott Trudeau decriminalised homosexual sex in 1969: Actually, it was only “decriminalised” between 2 people, who were over 21, in their own home. Gay/anal sex under 21 and in public were both still illegal. 
   * There was a differential age of consent of 21 at first and then of 18 in Canadian Criminal Code for anal sex until 2019. 
   * There are many reasons gay men/people would not be having sex in the “privacy” of their own home: they may have been married, they may not have been out and couldn’t out themselves to roomates, neighbors, family etc; or - if they were military members or associated with one - they could be being watched by the military.  
   * And so, according to historian Tom Hooper, charges for consensual queer sex actually increased after 1969 and large mass arrests - primarily under the bawdy house law - took place in locales such as bathhouses.
   * [HOW TO END?]