Browse Exhibits (6 total)
Anthony Mohamed Collection
Anthony Mohamed is a gay, South Asian, Caribbean, Canadian activist and equity worker in Toronto. He has been a pivotal figure in various advocacy groups and organizations spanning decades. The following collection, generously donated by Anthony himself, provides a glimpse into his life, activism, and work, highlighting many important moments of AIDS organizing in Toronto, and the experience of being a queer person of colour.
Digital exhibit compiled and created by Caitlin Monteiro
The AIDS Walk Toronto Virtual Museum
In 1982, Canada had its first reported case of AIDS.
In March of the next year, following a call from the Red Cross to The Body Politic office, writer Ed Jackson called a meeting with 9 other community members, including doctors, social workers, professors and writers, a policy developer, and an archivist. That April, during a public forum on AIDS and Hepatitis B organized by Gays in Health Care and the Hassle Free Clinic at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute of Technology (attended by over 300 people), the group proposed a standing AIDS Committee. Following that event, a series of meetings were held at the 519 Church Street Community Centre, which led to the establishment of the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT) and its five working groups: Medical Liaison, AIDSupport (which provided practical support as well as crisis intervention to people with AIDS and their loved ones), Media Relations, Fundraising & Special Events, and Community Education.
In addition to providing year-round support and educational services to the public, ACT organized larger events such as Fashion Cares, Dancers for Life, and AIDS Walk Toronto—the latter of which began in 1988 to raise both awareness of and funds for AIDS research. AIDS Walk Toronto followed in the footsteps of other AIDS Walks across Canada which began as early as 1986 in Vancouver and quickly grew to become Canada’s largest single-day fundraising event for HIV and AIDS.
AIDS Walk Toronto--which began as From All Walks of Life, a name it held until 1996--ran annually in downtown Toronto. Teams made up of community organizations, small businesses, schools, chosen families, and other small groups, collected pledges together leading up to the walk. The route—generally, approximately a 6-10km loop through the downtown core, with Queen’s Park or Nathan Philips Square serving as a start/end point--changed slightly over the years, buts its goals of education, fundraising, and community building remained the same. Within its first few years, the walk was already amassing crowds of over 10,000, and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to be put towards research on HIV and AIDS. By its tenth year, there were upwards of 500 volunteers involved, and by the early 2000s, AIDS Walk Toronto had cumulatively raised over seven million dollars.
AIDS Walk Toronto had its final walk in 2020, and this Virtual Museum serves to commemorate the history of this important fundraiser and annual community event.
This exhibit is also meant to be informed by community. To submit your own photos and ephemera, find the submission form and more details here.
Johnny Abush and the Twice Blessed Collection
Johnny Abush (1952-2000) was an active member of the Queer Jewish community in Toronto. He founded the Jewish GLBT Archives, known as Twice Blessed, as well as the Queer Jewish Culture Committee.
The ArQuives houses many materials regarding his activism and involvement within his community, while his vast archive was donated to ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries in California, who have published a finding aid of the materials in the collection here.
Click on the links to the right of the page for more information on various aspects of Johnny’s life and queer Jewish communities in Toronto during his lifetime, and click on images to enlarge.
Pride and Remembrance Run: The Early Years
The Pride and Remembrance Run was founded in 1996 as an annual fundraising event dedicated to supporting the LGBTQ+ community, with a specific focus on the historical and ongoing impact of HIV/AIDS in the community. This exhibition contains archival photographs, videos, textual records, news articles, t-shirts, posters, and oral histories documenting the history of the Pride and Remembrance Run.
1971 We Demand March
The We Demand March of August 1971 was the first recorded political action taken by LGBTQ2+ activists in Canada. The march coincided with the second anniversary of the passing of Bill C-150 which decriminalized homosexual acts in Canada between men over the age of consent.
Although the reform of the 1969 Criminal Code led to the decriminalization of certain homosexual acts, it did not have much tangible impact on the policing and surveillance of queers.
The We Demand document drafted by David Newcome and Herb Spiers and was read out under the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa by Charlie Hill and consisted of calls for changes to the law and public policy regarding gay and lesbian rights.
All photos in this exhibit are taken by Jearld Moldenhauer, please contact the photographer through his website if you would like to reproduce these photos in any way.
Jim Egan: Canada's First Public LGBTQ Activist
James Egan was one of the earliest LGBTQ2+ rights activists in Canada. He is best known for his landmark Supreme Court Case, Egan v. Canada. Although he was defeated in this case, his fight for spousal benefits spurred the Supreme Court to add sexual orientation as prohibited grounds of discrimination to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.