I’d like to acknowledge that this blog is both written on, and is benefitting from activities taking place on, the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish nations. These nations include: the Musqueam nation, the Squamish nation, the Tsleil-Waututh nation, the Tsawwassen nation, the Kwantlen nation, the Qayqayt nation, the Kwikwetlem nation, the Kwantlen nation, and the Katzie nation.
This “blog”, so to speak, is a bit of a folly. A product of an unplanned website, created on the spur of the moment, and an early morning brain fueled by an over-abundance of coffee-supplied caffeine; this blog will be mostly here to serve the purpose of organising the write-ups for the archival materials that I have collected photographs of. I aim to create an annotation, hopefully, describing each of the archival holdings that I have photographed.
A Note on Initialisms
While all initialisms used to refer to the community, whether they be LGBT, GLBT, LGBTQ+, etc . . . have their own strengths and weaknesses, I would like to specify that on this blog I will exclusively use LGBT2SQ+. The order is mostly meaningless, save for my preference of starting with L (a nod towards the historical sidelining and erasure of AFAB histories & experiences). The inclusion of 2S, however, is of utmost importance. In Canada, and BC especially, we are a colonial society, benefitting from the continued racism and colonial-settler real-politik, and have contributed to the erasure of first-nations’ culture, especially that of gender-identities, gender-expressions, and sexual identities that were non-conforming with the orthodoxies of the judeo-christian worldview. With the use of LGBT2SQ+, I hope to at least somewhat reinforce the existence of such marginalised identities & experiences.
An Overview
The main sources of archival materials for this project are:
- Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) – UBC [LINK]
- Vancouver City Archives [LINK]
- Special Collections & Rare Books (SCRB) – SFU [LINK]
- AMS Archives (UBC Alma Mater Society) – [LINK]
RBSC-UBC holds a great deal of material relevant to the history of the Vancouver LGBT2SQ+ community, mostly in the Archive Collective Collection fond, the GATE fond, and the Baxter fond.
Vancouver City Archives’ Malcolm F. Crane fond holds a great bounty of material chronicling the rise of a great many of the organisations responsible for the LBGT2SQ+ community’s current relative well-being.
SCRB-SFU holds materials relating to LGBT2SQ+ groups at SFU.
AMS-UBC holds materials relating to LGBT2SQ+ groups at UBC.