AGQ-F0107

Fonds Michael Hendricks/René LeBoeuf. – 1970-2024. – 213 cm of textual records and other records.

 

 

Biographical sketch:

 

Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf are activists for LGBTQ2S+ rights and the fight against AIDS in Quebec. René LeBoeuf was born in 1955 in Quebec City. Michael Hendricks was born in 1941 in Trenton, New Jersey. On 6 September 1968, he moved to Montreal to avoid American military service. In Canada, Michael Hendricks participated in numerous demonstrations against the Vietnam War with the American Refugee Service (ARS) in Montreal and Ottawa.

 

Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf met at a New Year’s Eve party in Montreal in 1973. In 1974, with their colleague Gilles Rochon, the couple opened one of Montreal’s first vegetarian restaurants, Au Jardin, located on Duluth Street. The restaurant hired only homosexual staff. In 1976, René moved to Montreal and the couple officially settled down.

 

In January 1990, after learning that many of their friends were infected with HIV, they joined ACT UP Montreal. Between 1990 and 1993, the organization coordinated some 40 demonstrations and events to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. René LeBoeuf, then a photography technician, became the official photographer for ACT UP Montreal. Within ACT UP Montréal, Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf contributed to the creation of Parc de l’Espoir, a memorial park dedicated to the memory of those who died of AIDS in Québec. The couple continued their involvement in promoting the park as members of the Parc de l’Espoir Committee, now known as La Mémoire vivante du parc de l’Espoir.

 

Michael Hendricks was also involved in organizing protests following police arrests at the Sex Garage in July 1990, as part of the group Lesbians and Gays Against Violence (LGV), which he co-founded in the wake of this event. Over the next decade, he contributed to the prevention of violence and discrimination against LGBTQ2S+ people through several organizations.

 

In 1992, Michael Hendricks co-founded the Table de concertation des lesbiennes et des gais du Grand Montréal and its Comité sur la violence. The creation of the Comité sur la violence was prompted in particular by an investigation launched by members of ACT UP Montreal (David Shannon, Douglas Buckley-Couvrette, Michael Hendricks) with Roger LeClerc in 1991 and completed in 1996 into a series of homicides of gay men in the Montreal area. As a member of the Comité sur la violence, he helped organize the public hearings of the Commission des droits de la personne du Québec on violence and discrimination against gays and lesbians in 1993. From 1994 to 1998, Michael Hendricks was a member of the Multiparty Committee on Violence Against Lesbians and Gays (a committee composed of representatives from the Montreal Police Service, the Sûreté du Québec, the City of Montreal and the LGBTQ2S+ communities). During those same years, he co-founded and administered, with Roger LeClerc, Claudine Metcalfe, and Douglas Buckley-Couvrette, the group Dire enfin la violence (Speak Out Against Violence). Between 1995 and 1997, Michael Hendricks served as general coordinator of the Table de concertation des lesbiennes et des gais du Grand Montréal (Greater Montreal Lesbian and Gay Roundtable) and, in March 1996, organized the États généraux de la communauté gaie et lesbienne montréalaise (Montreal Gay and Lesbian Community Assembly).

 

On 14 September 1998, after 25 years of living together, Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf submitted their first application for a civil marriage between same-sex partners at the Montreal Courthouse. Over the next six years, the couple made numerous media appearances to support and fund their cause, and co-founded, with Ann Robinson of the Faculty of Law at Laval University, the Quebec Coalition québécoise pour le droit au mariage pour les gais et les lesbiennes. In September 2002, the Superior Court of Quebec ruled in favour of Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf, decreeing that limiting marriage to same-sex couples was contrary to the applicants’ equality rights as set out in the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. This ruling was upheld on 19 March 2004 by the Quebec Court of Appeal. They were married at the Montreal Courthouse on 1 April 2004.

 

The couple also campaigned for other human rights causes. In 1988 and 1989, they participated in anti-racism protests in the Anthony Griffin case, as part of the Coalition Against Systemic Racism (CASO). Between 1996 and 2003, Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf were involved in the Sex Workers Rights Coalition and Stella, a Montreal-based organization supporting sex workers. In 2010, they made a presentation to the Quebec National Assembly’s Special Committee on the issue of dying with dignity.

 

 

Scope and content:

 

The fonds documents the activist activities of Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf. In particular, it provides a rich graphic and photographic portrait of the fight against HIV/AIDS in Montreal between 1990 and 1993, as well as related cultural activities. The fonds also documents Montreal activities and organizations working to combat violence and discrimination against LGBTQ2S+ people in the 1990s, including an investigation into a series of murders of gay men, relations between police services and LGBTQ2S+ communities, and the public consultation conducted by the Quebec Human Rights Commission in 1993.

 

The fonds also documents the legal battles at the provincial and federal levels that led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada in the late 1990s and early 2000s. More specifically, the fonds documents the couple’s personal and community efforts to secure the right to marry, particularly within the Quebec Coalition for the Right to Marriage for Gays and Lesbians. Finally, the fonds documents activist and personal activities parallel to the struggles for LGBTQ2S+ rights and the fight against HIV/AIDS, such as anti-war and anti-racist activism, and the vegetarian restaurant Au Jardin.

 

The fonds contains minutes, agendas, correspondence, reports, questionnaires, financial reports, press reviews, lists of members and volunteers, press releases, distribution lists, leaflets, brochures and flyers. There are also handwritten notes, poster mock-ups, and laminated documents. In addition, the fonds includes various objects: banners, trophies, necklaces, pins, buttons, clothing, signs, and cardboard tombstones. The collection also includes numerous press clippings on HIV/AIDS, a series of homicides committed against gay men in Montreal, the relationship between LGBTQ2S+ communities and police services, as well as numerous reports and legal documents related to same-sex marriage. The collection contains audiovisual materials (recordings of television programs and documentary videos on VHS cassettes and DVDs, audio recordings on cassette) and photographs (35 mm negatives and colour and black and white prints in various formats).

 

    The fonds contains the following series:

     

  • AGQ-F0107/S01. American Refugee Service
  • AGQ-F0107/S02. Restaurant Au Jardin
  • AGQ-F0107/S03. Coalition Against Systemic Oppression (CASO)
  • AGQ-F0107/S04. Lesbiennes et gais contre la violence/Lesbians and Gays Against Violence (LGV)
  • AGQ-F0107/S05. ACT UP Montréal
  • AGQ-F0107/S06. Parc de l’Espoir
  • AGQ-F0107/S07. Table de concertation des lesbiennes et des gais du Grand Montréal
  • AGQ-F0107/S08. Comité sur la violence
  • AGQ-F0107/S09. Dire enfin la violence
  • AGQ-F0107/S10. Comité multipartite
  • AGQ-F0107/S11. Centre communautaire des gais et lesbiennes de Montréal (CCGLM)
  • AGQ-F0107/S12. Mariage entre personnes de même sexe
  • AGQ-F0107/S13. Lipo-action
  • AGQ-F0107/S14. Divers

 

Notes:

 

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

 

Physical description: The fonds also contains approximately 2,300 photographic prints, approximately 120 contact sheets, approximately 3,750 negatives, 2 slides, 2 CDs and a USB stick containing approximately 50 digital photographs, approximately 110 leaflets and stickers, approximately 25 flyers, approximately 40 posters, 6 poster mock-ups, one audio cassette, 25 VHS cassettes, one DVD, two trophies (World Ball for Unity and City of Montreal Police Service Award), one necklace, one prisoner’s costume, two stamps, 19 buttons, 7 masks bearing the likenesses of Robert Bourassa, Marc-Yvan Côté and Denise Laberge-Ferron, including 2 on sticks, 5 tombstone-shaped signs, 10 prison bar-shaped signs, 11 screen-printed signs and 5 ‘silence = death’ signs, 4 signs for fundraising for same-sex marriage, 2 laminated boards commemorating the first same-sex marriage, and 1 laminated cardboard map of the parc de l’Espoir.

 

Immediate source of acquisition: The fonds was transferred to the AGQ on 1 April 2012, 16 March 2013, 20 January 2016 and 26 June 2024 by Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf (acquisitions 2012-006, 2013-006, 2016-002 and 2024-024).

 

Arrangement: The original arrangement was generally retained, but changes were made in order to bring together the documents of the various organizations represented in the archive collection.

 

Language: The files are in French and English.

 

Restrictions on access: No restrictions on consultation were specified when the fonds was acquired.

 

Rights: Copyright license on documents produced by donors held by the Archives gaies du Québec.

 

Finding aids: Digital inventory of the fonds in Excel format. Classification plan is available in PDF format. (full version available upon request).

 

Associated material: The ArQuives (Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives) holds documents relating to Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf’s fight for same-sex marriage (Nancy Nicol fonds and Egale Canada fonds). The documents date from 1998 to 2004. The McCord Museum holds Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf’s wedding suits.

 

Related groups of records in different fonds external to the unit being described:

  • The AGQ-F0077 Douglas Buckley-Couvrette fonds contains documents on ACT UP Montreal (S1, SS1), Lesbiennes et gais contre la violence/Lesbians and Gays Against Violence (LGV) (S1, SS2, D3), the Table de concertation des lesbiennes et des gais du Grand Montréal (S1, SS3), Dire enfin la violence (S1, SS4), and the Comité multipartite sur la violence exercée envers les gais et lesbiennes (S1, SS5). The documents date from 1990 to 1997.
  • The AGQ-F0146 Claudine Metcalfe fonds contains documents on the Comité sur la violence and on Dire enfin la violence. The documents date from 1993 to 2003.
  • The AGQ-F0217 Luc Desaulniers fonds contains documents on ACT UP Montreal’s World Ball for Unity events. The documents date from 1990 to 1993.
  • The AGQ-F0162 Irène Demczuk fonds contains documents on the Comité sur la violence, le Comité multipartite, le Caucus lesbien de la Table de concertation des lesbiennes et des gais du Grand Montréal during the public inquiry by the Commission des droits de la personne du Québec, and on the legal recognition of same-sex partners. The documents date from 1993 to 2005.
  • The AGQ-F0225 Earl Pinchuk fonds contains a documentary, excerpts from news reports, and video footage relating to ACT UP Montreal and Sex Garage. The documents date from 1990 to 1993.
  • The AGQ-F0188 Quebec Deaf AIDS Coalition fonds contains documents on Parc de l’Espoir. The documents date from 1992 and 2022.
  • The Archives gaies du Québec also preserve posters and T-shirts produced by other members of ACT UP Montréal in their collections.

 

Bibliography:

 

Boulanger, L. (2023, 16 July). En terrasse avec Michael Hendricks et René LeBoeuf. La Presse, https://www.lapresse.ca/contexte/2023-07-16/en-terrasse-avec-michael-hendricks-et-rene-leboeuf/le-coming-out-est-un-cadeau.php

 

Burnett, R. (2014, 15 March). The Forgotten Murder. The Gazette, https://www.pressreader.com/canada/montreal-gazette/20140315/281788512001662

 

Lamoureux, Michelle. (2003, 14 February). Dire enfin la violence – Communiqué. Association des lesbiennes et des gais sur Internet. https://www.algi.qc.ca/forum/service/msg2003/2329.htm

 

Nicol, N. (2004, 30 July). Interview with Michael Hendricks & René Leboeuf, discussing AIDS and La Committee sur la Violance [sic]. The ArQuives Digital Exhibitions. https://digitalexhibitions.arquives.ca/items/show/676

 

Noakes, T. C. (2020, 26 November). Sex Garage Raid. Dans The Canadian Encyclopedia, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sex-garage-raid

 

Shotwell, A. et Kinsman, G. (2016, 5 February). AIDS Activist History Project [interview transcript]. https://www.aidsactivisthistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/aahp-michael-hendricks-and-renecc81-leboeuf-eng.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

            Dernière modification : 2025-09-23