AGQ-F0015

Fonds Harvey Blackman. – 1975-1989. – 26 cm of textual records.

Biographical sketch:

Montreal activist, librarian, author and editor Harvey Blackman was president of the Jewish gay group Naches from 1977 to 1982. He studied library science and owned a gay bookstore in Westmount. He has also been involved with other organizations such as Gay Line, La Coalition, of which he was secretary in April-May 1985, and the Réunion des Associations Gaies et Lesbiennes à Montréal (RAGLAM). He was a member of the American Library Association’s Gay Task Force, a committee responsible for reviewing descriptions of homosexuality in encyclopedic works.

Scope and content:

The fonds bears witness to the activities of a gay activist in Montreal: participation in Jewish gay conventions, critical work on the representation of homosexuality in the written press, mainly in the Montreal newspaper The Gazette.

The fonds contains meeting documents, bibliographies on homosexuality and catalogues of gay and lesbian publications, additional reference material, particularly on Jewish gay conventions and groups in Canada, the United States, Paris and Tel Aviv, and correspondence, including with lesbian activist Barbara Gittings, as part of their work for the American Library Association’s Gay Task Force Encyclopedia Committee.

The fonds contains 40 files described in a classification plan.

Notes:

Source of title proper: Title based on the contents of the fonds.

Immediate source of acquisition: The fonds was transferred to the AGQ on 30 July 1986, 17 April 1988 and 3 May 1992 by the fonds’ creator (acquisitions 1986-02, 1988-01, 1992-06).

Arrangement: The arrangement of the fonds is based on the original alphabetical classification of the files.

Language: The documents are in French and English, with a few in Hebrew.

Related groups of records in different fonds external to the unit being described: The AGQ-F0010 Naches fonds contains documents relating to Harvey Blackman.

Finding aids: Digital inventory of the fonds in Excel format. Classification plan available in PDF format.