Alan B. Stone Collection
At the time of his death in 1992, Alan Stone had acquired a solid reputation as a physique photographer. From his beginnings in the 1950s, his fame quickly became international and his work was published in Lachine, in collaboration with a New York publishing house.
At this point in the cataloguing process, the fonds contains at least 30,000 negatives, 3,000 slides, 1,500 colour photographs and approximately 100 assorted documents. As well at the male physique photographs, there are also many photos of street scenes in Montréal at various points over the years, of many professional and amateur sporting events and finally many personal photos. This collection has been presented to the public in several expositions which trace the work of this noteworthy Montréal photographer.
L’Androgyne Collection
From 1975 to 1982, l’Androgyne, or Androgyny, the first gay and lesbian bookstore in Montréal, was managed by a collective before becoming a private business. The archives of the Androgyne collective have been given to the Québec Gay Archives and contain papers and correspondence relating to the bookstore, press clippings, bibliographies, daily journals (which are one of the best sources of information on the rapid development of the gay and lesbian community of that era), minutes of meetings and various printed materials.
Bernard Courte Collection
Everyone who worked in the gay and lesbian community in the 1980s remembers Bernard Courte, journalist for Le Berdache, the magazine of the Association pour les droits des gais et lesbiennes du Québec (ADGLQ). He was also one of the founding members and then Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Sortie. Bernard Courte collaborated with many community organization, gave many conferences, and contributed to many newspapers and magazines. He was one of the first in Montréal to truly understand the importance of AIDS and its impact upon gay people. A friend of the Québec Gay Archives since their creation, Bernard Courte understood the importance of preserving our collective past and, before leaving Montréal in 1986, left us all his documents concerning his involvement in the gay community. He remained active in the defence of gay and lesbian rights until his untimely death from AIDS in 1991. The Bernard Courte Collection provide a most valuable testimony to the development of the gay community and gay media of the 1980s
Douglas Buckley-Couvrette Collection
Douglas Buckley-Couvrette was one of the prime figures of Montreal’s gay and lesbian rights movement of the 1990s. His papers attest to his work for gay and lesbian rights and HIV/AIDS research and awareness. He played a key role as a liaison between the gay and lesbian community and the Montreal police, improving relations which had deteriorated following the Sex Garage incident. In addition to being active with community organisations, notably ACT-UP Montréal, Dire enfin la violence, la Table de concertation des lesbiennes et des gais du Grand Montréal and le Comité des personnes atteintes du VIH du Québec, Buckley-Couvrette also helped establish le Parc de l’espoir, a memorial to AIDS victims located in downtown Montreal. The fonds also testify to the activism of other principal members of the movement, such as Roger LeClerc, Pauline Metcalfe and Michael Hendricks. An impressive collection of flyers, pamphlets, publications and newspaper and magazine articles paints a detailed picture of the movement in Montreal during a dynamic era. Buckley-Couvrette died in 2002.
Ken Morrison Collection
Ken Morrison has worked since 1985 in many of the organizations created in response to the AIDS crisis. He worked at CSAM (Comité Sida-Aide Montréal) and at Séro-Zéro among others, and he participated in many conferences and research projects on AIDS at the provincial, federal and international levels. In addition, he was coordinator of the cultural programme of the Fifth International Conference on AIDS, held in Montréal in the summer of 1989
As well as much of the internal documentation of CSAM, he gave to the Québec Gay Archives a great many reports from international conferences and colloquia on AIDS. In addition, he donated a large collection of posters on AIDS prevention which represent some sixty countries, several works of arts and a book which he wrote in collaboration with Alan Klusacek: A Leap in the Dark, Montréal: Véhicule Presse (1989). A preliminary and partial inventory of the collection is available here.
Namaste “Zine” Collection
This collection of “zines” (hand made and illustrated magazines) was donated by Professor Viviane Namaste of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute of Concordia University. These zines date primarily from the 1980s and early 1990s and come from Canada, the United States, France and the United Kingdom. A complete listing of the collection is available here.
The FLH (Front de libération homosexuel) Collection
The Québec Gay Archives are very proud to hold the log book of the Front de libération homosexuel (the first openly gay and lesbian organization in Montréal), as well as a copy of a video tape produced in 1972 by the Audio-visual Centre of the University of Montréal, where several members of the FLH discuss their lives and their movement. The collection also includes photocopies of minutes of meetings, correspondence and other official documents of this, the first gay and lesbian organization in Québec. The Québec Gay Archives held a special event in March of 1996 to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the creation of the FLH.
ADGQ Collection
The Association pour les droits des gais au Québec (ADGQ, then ADGLQ – Association pour les droits des gais et des lesbiennes du Québec) was in the forefront of the Montréal gay and lesbian movement in the decade from 1977 to 1987, a period when the homosexual minority was evolving from a status of enforced obscurity and marginality to that of a community recognized by the media, the public and by governments. As a true “umbrella” organization, the ADGQ worked in almost all domains of gay and lesbian political, social and cultural activity. At the time of its dissolution in 1988, the group asked that its rich collection of periodicals, its administrative archives and its voluminous documentation be conserved by the Québec Gay Archives.
The collection includes the correspondence and official minutes of the organization and its various committees as well as many publications, photos, sound recordings and posters. The files include printed materials from many of the other community groups (sporting groups, the association of gay deaf people, religious groups, parents of gays, etc.) which existed at the same period. Further printed materials include information concerning social services for gays and lesbians, the commission on sexual education, gay community programming on radio and cable stations, and the police raids on saunas.
CCGLM Collection
The Centre communautaire des gais et lesbiennes de Montréal (CCGLM) was founded in 1988 with the mandate to provide technical and administrative support to community organisations for gays and lesbians. The CCGLM was part of the Coalition des organismes des minorités sexuelles de Montréal (‘La Coalition’), which worked to reform the Québec civil code to legalise same-sex marriage. La Coalition, whose offices were at the CCGLM, was composed of about 15 organisations. This fonds contains mainly documents relating to the administrative activities of the CCGLM and La Coalition. Recurring themes include gay and lesbian rights, street youth and the position of the Catholic Church on homosexuality. This fonds permits a view of the internal functions of a community group that worked for the gay and lesbian rights during the 1980s.
Other collections
- RAGLAM and La Coalition: Réunion des associations gaies et lesbiennes à Montréal, which later simply became La Coalition. The organizational ancestors of the current Table de concertation des gais et lesbiennes du Grand Montréal.
- Naches: The first gay Jewish group in Montréal: newsletters, minutes, newsletters of several other gay Jewish groups throughout the world.
- GHAP: The Groupe homosexuel d’action politique, active from 1975 to 1976
- Integrity: The Anglican gay group, active from 1975 to 1980.
- La ville en rose: The colloquium on gay and lesbian studies held at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 1992.
- Outgames collection, given by the organizing committee of the event of 2006.