On Monday, July 29th at 7:00 pm, step into history with Lois Szabo, a 2SLGBTQ+ community builder, as she engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Kevin Allen of the Calgary Gay History Project. Please join us at Lois Szabo Commons: 936 16 Avenue SW and enjoy complimentary pizza and soda, sponsored by Calgary Pride. Bring a folding chair if you have one. In 2021, the City of Calgary unveiled Lois Szabo Commons, a park in the Beltline, as a testament to Lois’ instrumental role in the creation and development of the groundbreaking gay bar, Club Carousel, in 1970. Lois with politicians, fr ..read more

Montreal-based journalist Shawn Dearn has released the second season of his award-winning podcast, Queer Legends: The True Story of Canada’s LGBT Purge. Impeccably researched, it tells the story of the LGBT Purge in Canada from World War I until today. “The Purge” was the Government of Canada’s effort to eliminate queers from the military and public service, which the Government apologized for in 2017. The story of the purge is significant queer history in its own right, but it also parallels the community’s ongoing struggle to achieve equality. Kevin Allen from the Calgary Gay History Project ..read more

Do you want to explore Calgary’s Queer History from an autobiographical grade school perspective? (I think you do…) Late in ‘88 is a limited-series podcast created by Bronwin Parks and Elinor Svoboda. The grade school classmates share their experiences of growing up queer and gender non-conforming in Calgary in 1988, at a time when there wasn’t language to describe identities that were fringe and undefinable. Shining a light on their middle childhood, Bronwin and Elinor explore the impact of historical context and the gift of contemporary language that allows more freedom of self-expression.&n ..read more

Happy Pride Month, Calgary! If you want to learn why we celebrate Pride twice—in June and on the Labour Day Weekend, read this! Many queer organizations are hosting events this month—check out Calgary Pride’s community calendar to find one to attend. We want to highlight some impactful events you should consider. Thursday, June 13th: Chinook Fund Cabaret from 6-9 PM The successful Chinook Fund is hosting its second fundraising cabaret. The evening will include drag, male burlesque, singing, and dance performances.  Every year, the Chinook Fund donates more than $50,000 (and growing) to l ..read more

The Calgary Gay History Project recently contributed historic gay media to our colleagues in Edmonton for digitization. Heroically, they have already digitized hundreds of magazines! You can find the collection: here. Most of this online collection focuses on Edmonton, but several publications have a provincial reach. We contributed issues of Modern Pink, Alberta Gay and Lesbian Press (AGLP), and Outlooks Magazine, which were all published in Calgary but distributed province-wide. Outlooks Magazine, September 1998 Issue with GLCSA’s OK Campaign The close connection between our two cities ..read more

Calgary’s first gay bar, Club Carousel, has inspired many contemporary events. The latest will be a dance party thrown by the pop-up collective Pansy Club on May 10th. Pansy Club Poster from Instagram The Pansy Club, a significant addition to our community, was established in 2021 as a bi-monthly 2SLGBTQ+ music night at Kaffeeklatsch, a former Beltline cafe at 1205 1 St. SW—coincidentally beside the original Club Carousel at 1207 1 St. Spearheaded by Cal Gibbens, the name Pansy Club was inspired by one of the stories he read in Our Past Matters, a testament to our rich history.  I’m ..read more

We are thrilled to be attending the first National Queer and Trans+ Community History Conference in Edmonton this weekend. The conference is set to take place at MacEwan University, where researchers from all over the country will be coming together for a unique queer history immersion experience. The conference “is designed to bring together 2SLGBTQ+ community members, non-profit organizations, heritage professionals, academics, historians, and emerging scholars who have an interest in documenting, preserving, and celebrating diverse and intersectional queer and trans+ histories in ..read more

April 27th is Canadian Independent Bookstore Day. If you buy a book at your favourite indie bookshop this Saturday, you can enter a contest to win a $1000 gift certificate. We love these stores and thank our hometown favourites: Pages, Shelf Life, and Owl’s Nest, for selling hundreds of copies of our imprint ASPublishing’s award-winning books: Our Past Matters and What Narcissus Saw. Browsing the bookshelves, talking to informed staff, and bumping into people you know are good reasons to shop in indie bookstores. {Plus: social snacking is good for ..read more

The Backlot, a historic Calgary gay bar, will be moving (again). Founded in 1976, its current and third incarnation at 10th Avenue and 1st Street was established in 1996. However, the City has approved this site for redevelopment despite organized resistance last year called “Save Our Backlot.” Interestingly, the developer is keen to acknowledge the history of the site—both its contemporary importance to the queer community as well as its location in Calgary’s second Chinatown from 1901-1910. The queer history commemoration proposal (Brief) includes a commissioned mural at the site of the Back ..read more

In April, wear blue jeans to support gay rights—so says history! One of our earliest Calgary Gay History Posts was about Blue Jeans Day at the University of Calgary in the early 1990s. However, we recently discovered details about how the event echoed a gay liberation initiative first begun at Rutgers University by the groundbreaking Rutgers Student Homophile League. The first Blue Jeans Day occurred in 1970 at Rutgers (although the first advertised event happened in 1974). Blue Jeans Day was traditionally held on a Friday in April and, by the late ’70s, had spread to dozens of campuses i ..read more