Browse Exhibits (26 total)
Queering Family Photography
This exhibit explores the critical work that queer, trans, and two-spirited family photos do in documenting and creating queer modes of belonging, and how our emotional attachments to queer family photographs have also sustained LGBTQ2+ lives.
Photo credit:
Teo kissing her son, Matthew
Unknown photographer
Circa 2008
Toronto, Ontario
Gift of Teo Owang
Courtesy of the Family Camera Network and The ArQuives
Gender Review
Access to Gender Review, the newsletter of FACT (Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Transsexuals, later the Federation for American and Canadian Transsexuals) with contextual information about Gender Review, FACT and trans-related medical and legal issues in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s.
Trans Health Care Activism in Ontario, 1998-2008
This exhibit presents the work of an oral history project, conducted in 2016, focussing on the 1998 delisting and 2008 re-listing of coverage for gender confirmation. Inside you can find the reflections of 7 activists, community members, and politicians about their work advocating for the trans community during this time.
Gay Pride through Sports: the Cabbagetown Group Softball League
The Cabbagetown Group Softball League (CGSL) was founded in 1977 by a group of baseball enthusiasts who had gathered informally to play at public diamonds around Toronto since 1975. Many of the CGSL's founding members were activists in Toronto's gay liberation movement. The league's mandate was to provide an opportunity for members of the LGBTQ community and their supporters to play organized sports in a positive atmosphere. The league motto was "Gay Pride Through Sports". While the primary goal of the CGSL was to promote gay fellowship, it was also hoped that the league would serve as a means of bridge-building across ideological divides.
Mapping Foolscap: Gay Oral Histories, 1981-1987
Not A Place On The Map: Desh Pardesh, 1988-2001
Toronto’s Desh Pardesh festival (1988–2001) was a multidisciplinary arts festival that showcased underrepresented and marginalized voices within the South Asian diaspora. The South Asian Visual Arts Centre created these oral history interviews with artists and organizers involved in the festival in 2016.
Credits: Created by students Amal Khurram and Alisha Krishna for the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory. The Collaboratory is directed by Dr. Elspeth Brown and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Gendertrash: Transsexual Zine, 1993-1995
gendertrash is a zine/periodical “devoted to the issues & concerns of transsexuals.” Its four issues were published by Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra Phillippa MacKay in Toronto from 1993-1995.
Created in collaboration with the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory. The Collaboratory is directed by Dr. Elspeth Brown and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Nancy Nicol Collection
Nancy Nicol is a documentary filmmaker who has dedicated her career to tracing the history of the LGBTQ movements in Canada and around the world. She has worked as a professor in visual studies since 1989 at York University. Her career as a filmmaker started in the 1970s with experimental films, but by the 1980s, Nicol’s work focused on documentary films addressing political issues, including pro-choice struggles for access to abortion, unions, and the working struggles of women and migrants. By the 2000s, her films changed focus to lesbian and gay rights from the 1970s to the 2010s.
The exhibit showcases shorts and excerpts from the award-winning documentary series From Criminality to Equality which includes Stand Together (2002), The Queer Nineties(2009), Politics of the Heart(2005) and, The End of Second Class (2006).
Rupert Raj and Trans Activism, 1971-1988
Rupert Raj is a Eurasian (East Indian and Polish) pansexual trans man who came out in 1971 in the queer community of Ottawa.
He founded several trans organizations, including the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Transsexuals (FACT), Metamorphosis Medical Research Foundation and Gender Worker (later Gender Consultants).
The collection of Rupert Raj, an important trans activist, includes material related to the three trans-related publications Raj founded and edited in the 1980s; correspondence with other trans people, medical professionals, and activists, research on phalloplasty and other trans issues, personal scrapbooks and photographs, books, and AV materials.
LGBTQ2+ Oral Histories
Oral histories have been a popular way to preserve the lives and testimonies of marginalized subjects who have often been denied access to the historical record. This exhibit showcases a small selection of oral histories and audiovisual materials relating to LGBTQ2+ lives in Canada from The ArQuives' collection.
Some of the cassette tapes have been digitized by the LGBTQ+ Oral History Digital Collaboratory in order to preserve them and make them available online. Several of the other oral history interviews have been conducted by The ArQuives as outreach projects and in order to continue collecting important histories from our community.