Elsa Gidlow did not like Canada when she moved with her family here from Hull, England, at the age of six. It was too cold, and even at an early age, she saw it was too Victorian.
We’re lucky she came here, though. Gidlow gives us our first look at Canada’s queer [...]
Archive for the ‘Dominion of Canada’ Category
Elsa Gidlow
Posted in Blogroll, Dominion of Canada, gay/bi men's history, lesbian/bi women's history on November 30, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The First Poets, Part 1: “Gaydar Moments”
Posted in Blogroll, Dominion of Canada, gay/bi men's history, history on October 13, 2009 | 2 Comments »
In John Barton’s introduction to Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets, he describes what he calls “a gaydar moment.” For Canada’s earliest poets, we can only speculate on their sexuality – educated guesses based on their work, their lives, and the context of their times.
The few openly gay literary critics [...]
The Disappearance of the Two-Spirit Traditions in Canada
Posted in Dominion of Canada, gay/bi men's history, history, lesbian/bi women's history, trans history on August 11, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I’ve already written about the European reaction upon learning that the First Peoples of North America did not share their neurotic prejudice against homosexuality and gender variance.
The Jesuits and the French explorers brought back stories of Two-Spirit men “given to sodomy” and “Hunting Women” with wives. Later, British explorers brought back [...]
Racism and Homophobia: The Chinese in Victorian Canada
Posted in Dominion of Canada, gay/bi men's history, history on March 31, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Late nineteenth-century Canada was not exactly a place that welcomed difference or embraced diversity. In fact, thanks to “degeneration” theory and its believers among social scientists and medical experts, both racism and homophobia were growing in the new Confederation.
The theory of “degeneration” suggested that societies could be put into three categories – the “primitive [...]
The Media and Social Purity in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Canada
Posted in Dominion of Canada, gay/bi men's history, history on November 15, 2008 | 2 Comments »
“Media” to us means mostly electronic means of communication. In the 19th century, though, news, high art, and low entertainment were carried mostly in print. Novels filled the place of movies, serial short stories and articles in newspapers filled the place of sitcoms and TV news programs, and pamphlets filled the space of [...]
