Rebecca’s Books By Heart Tour Notes


Start at Peace and Friendship Park


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]
1. Forrest House a Women’s Place:
   * When I first started researching and writing about LGB activist history in this province, I focused on the Gay Alliance for Equality, our first Lesbian, Gay (and later Bi) 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.”
   * Forrest House was a YWCA-owned Victorian building at 1225 Barrington Street that was turned into a women's centre in 1977. Lesbian and feminist activist Brenda Bryan worked with Alexa McDonough and a “host of other women” to renovate and open the house.
   * Known as "Forrest House: A Women's Place" it housed various women's groups & women only workshops on feminism, assertiveness, sexuality, self-defence, rape counselling, women in politics, math, cars & more.
   * An undated leaflet for Forrest House read “A Woman’s Place identifies with women’s needs in order that they might fully participate in their new role in society…The new role or fourth dimension, portrays woman as a person herself using her abilities in changing the world in contrast to the three dimensional role of woman as wife, mother & housewife, an essentially passive & dependent role in a timeless world."
   * Many lesbians and bisexual women were involved, though they didn't always feel welcome.
   * Bixexual and feminist activist Lynn Murphy sat on Forrest House committees and remembers being told there was “too much obvious lesiban activity” at Forrest House. “They didn’t mean that people were having sex int the bathroom,” she says. But there was too much “lesbian talk” and women dancing together at the women-only dances. The LB women withdrew their labour, and were eventually asked to come back; they likely made up 80% of the volunteers says Brenda. 
   * Several lesbian women worked for Forrest House and/or the women’s organizations contained within: Sandra Nimmo, who had at 31 just come out as a lesbian and separated from her husband and father of her children. Diann Graham worked for the Women’s Employment Outreach.
   * One woman, simply ID’s at KD in the Lesbian Memory Keepers 2014 report recalled finding the book Our Right To Love: A Lesbian Resource Book in the Forrest House Library. “One day, I came in and I had rehearsed this in my house. I told the women I was a lesbian and they pointed to the top of the stairs and said “see Diann Graham.” 
   * [3:13]
2. Bottom of Spring Garden, 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."
   * Randy Kennedy - AKA drag queen Lilly Champagne - described the cruising scene in the late 1970s as “festive”. Randy was 14 when a man he met in the Woodlawn Mall bathrooms introduced him to the idea of cruising. Soon he was hitchhiking to Halifax to cruise. 
   * Of course, at the time this was illegal: Many people believe that Pierre Elliott Trudeau decriminalized homosexual sex in 1969: Actually, it - that is ​​buggery, and gross indecency - was only “decriminalized” 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. 
   * Some of you will be familiar with the gay purge in which the federal government and military spied on, harassed, interrogated and fired 2SLGBTQIA+ members. This took place between the 1950s and 1990s. See Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile’s The Canadian War on Queers or the Documentary The Fruit Machine for more information.   
   * 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.
   * 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 (who were big supporters of gays in the 1970s) in 1976 that cruising “also leaves gays open to arrest” and 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.”
   * [4 minutes]
3. Green Lantern, Turret, Rumours
   * 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 Chair David Gray last summer he told me that he said that Tonyk Saulnier opened first gay club in 200-300 year old building 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 license, had to get a series of special event liquor licenses. 
   * 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, that included Ann McMullin and Diane Warren, who were partners and GAE founding members. 
   * 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. The phone line provided counseling and referrals, was many people’s entry point into the gay scene in Halifax and how they sometimes found out about Thee Klub. 
   * 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. Deb Trask was one of the people who signed the lease because she had a good government job and couldn’t be fired.
   * 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. 
   * As Lynn Murphy said “The Turret club and later Rumours was a safe space for LGBT people to meet. We built and enhanced our social networks. In our own space we discussed internal issues - politics of drag, LGBT parenting, violence within LGBT relationships. We created our own artistic expressions. We began to see ourselves as people with common goals, not just as ‘queer’ individuals. 
   * [5 mins]
4. 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. 
   * 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. Lynn Murphy’s first gay picket. She was going on a date with a male SMU professor when he asked where she’d like to go. She said: “Well - ahem - they’re picketing the Jury Room tonight and I’d like to go down and picket with the gay people.” Lynn still considered herself an ally. God love him, Lynn said, he said yes. She felt like they were at the “forefront and helping to make new and different society.” 
   * 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].