What’s new

19 Jul, 2022 Welcome, Billy Errington!

It is with great pleasure that the Archives gaies du Québec welcome a young British PhD candidate from the University of Durham in Great Britain.

Thanks to a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Billy Errington will be staying with us for about two months. In addition to doing research for his thesis on the role of motherhood and queer identity in contemporary Quebec cinema, he will also participate in the exhibition on HIV/AIDS curated by the AGQ as part of the Montreal Pride celebrations in August. This talented francophile researcher will easily be able to explore the history of motherhood in the francophone LGBTQ2S+ communities of Quebec.

We wish him a fruitful stay.

19 Jul, 2022 The Archives gaies du Québec in France!

From June 6 to 20, 2022, Simone Beaudry-Pilotte, our archivist, and Jonathan Proulx-Guimond, our communications assistant, went to France – more precisely to Paris and Montpellier – to conclude the Quebec component of the France-Québec exchange. In the French capital, our representatives met with Karine Beaudoin and Sylvie Lannegrand from the association Les Amis d’Yves Navarre; Yves Sartiaux, member of the Grey Pride organization; and André Landry. The AGQ conserves archives from Yves Navarre and André Landry. These meetings allowed our organization to gather additional information and to deepen its knowledge of these two individuals.

In Montpellier, Simone and Jonathan spent several days researching the Yves Navarre fonds at the Médiathèque Émile-Zola. Accompanied by Stephen Schofield, a guest artist, they met with Karine Beaudoin, Brigitte Louichon, and Henri Dhellemmes of the association Les Amis d’Yves Navarre. This was an opportunity to make connections and establish complementary links between the Yves Navarre fonds in this French media library and the fonds held in Quebec at the BAnQ and at the AGQ. It was also an opportunity for promising discussions laying the groundwork for future collaborations between our two organizations.

In summary, it was a very pleasant and enriching trip.

19 Jul, 2022 A Generous donation from the Écomusée du fier monde

Following its yearly auction, the Écomusée du fier monde gave the Archives gaies du Québec a $1050 cheque for the sale of a work by Betty Goodwin.

We would especially like to thank Éric Giroux, Director and Research and Collections Official, René Binette, Strategic Projects Advisor, and Manon Belleville, Executive Assistant, without whom this generous donation could not have happened.

19 Jul, 2022 A guided tour of the AGQ

This June 27th, 2022, a student group from Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) of McGill University received a guided tour of the Archives gaies du Québec’s collections. This visit, organized in collaboration with QPIRG McGill, had the goal to introduce this community to the AGQ’s collections.

It is V. Samoylenko who welcomed the fifteen or so people and briefly presented the AGQ before giving them a tour of the space. A Q & A period followed. During the visit, the group was able to look at our textual archives and pins collections. Thank you QPIRG McGill for this fruitful collaboration!

19 Jul, 2022 A new face at the AGQ!

For the next six months – and hoping even longer – the Archives gaies du Québec team will be welcoming Clémence, a young and dynamic graduate with a Master’s degree in Library Science. A volunteer at the AGQ last winter, she is currently on an employment program subsidized by Emploi-Québec.

She will be processing the AGQ’s book collection as well as the posters donated by the LGBTQ+ Community Centre. In addition, she will be keeping the AGQ’s social media regularly updated.

WELCOME TO THE TEAM!

01 Jun, 2022 An upcoming exhibit

This summer, the Archives gaies du Québec will participate in the celebrations organized by Fierté Montréal. To mark the 24th International AIDS Conference to be held in Montreal in July 2022, the Archives gaies du Quebec will be using its collections to curate an exhibit, tentatively titled Visibility and Activism: A History of the Fight against HIV/AIDS in Quebec.

This project is made possible thanks to the financial support of Fierté Montréal. This year, the activities of Fierté Montreal will be spread throughout the summer, from May 21 to August 7, to help dissipate the gloom of the last two years. In addition, Fierté Montréal will finance activities in other cities across the province such as Val-d’Or, Saint-Hyacinthe, Chicoutimi, Magog and Sherbrooke, in order to reach out to 2SLGBTQIA+ people who face different realities and challenges.

We thank Simon Gamache, Executive Director of Fierté Montréal, and his team, for selecting our project.

01 Jun, 2022 Have a good trip!

As part of a France-Quebec exchange, the Archives gaies du Québec will send three people to France for a fifteen-day stay next June.

Artist Stephen Schofield, archivist Simone Beaudry-Pilotte and researcher Jonathan Proulx-Guimond will first travel to Paris to make contact with LGBTQ+ organizations, then to the Médiathèque de Montpellier to meet the members of les Amis d’Yves Navarre and consult their archives. From these documents, they will develop a body of research which will then be used to curate an exhibit upon their return.

Yves Navarre, a writer and gay rights activist who lived in Montreal for over a year since the beginning of the 1990s, was the recipient of the Prix Goncourt (1980) and the Prix Amic of the Académie Française (1992). He died in 1994. It is thanks to the volunteer work of guest curator Claude Gosselin that this project could be carried out. We thank the Ministère des relations internationales et de la francophonie du Québec for its financial support and LOJIQ (Les offices jeunesses internationaux du Québec) for Simone’s and Jonathan’s plane tickets.

We wish them a successful trip and good weather!

01 Jun, 2022 A virtual rainbow just above us!

The Archives gaies du Quebec are pleased to be partnering with Polar Rainbow, an augmented reality sculpture from Latvian-British artist Kristaps Ancāns, in honor of Pride Month in the United States, from June 1- June 30, 2022. The project is curated by Corina L. Apostol (Tallinn Art Hall).

Ancāns’ project creates a virtual double rainbow stretching between the North and South poles along the 74W meridian line — the most populous meridian in the Americas, which happens to cut right through Times Square along 7th Avenue. Ancāns created Polar Rainbow in support of communities under duress, calling for visions of empathy, awareness and solidarity.

The sculpture will be accessible via the Polar Rainbow app developed by Ancāns in close collaboration with Platvorm a data visualization studio based in Tallinn, Estonia.

Visitors can download the app through the Time Square Arts website App users will be able to capture photos with the rainbow and send personalized “digital postcards” that will be featured online by using the hashtag #polarrainbow.

Polar Rainbow has invited partners from various international organizations and communities to reach out to people geographically located in NYC and all along the 74W meridian line where the rainbow will be visible. The Archives gaies du Québec counts among these partners.

We look forward to seeing your Polar Rainbow postcards on social media!

13 May, 2022 A day like no other

This upcoming May 17 will be the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

Organized by Fondation Émergence, the campaign this year will revolve around the repercussions of violence on the life expectancy of LGBTQ2S+ people.

Recognized in numerous countries, this day is an opportunity to educate the public about the difficulties LGBTQ2S+ people face in their everyday life and to urge governments to consolidate LGBTQ2S+ rights, as well as to put pressure on the 111 countries that are hostile to LGBTQ2S+ people. No one should live in fear due to their sexual orientation or gender. In some countries, murders of LGBTQ2S+ people are far too common, only to be ignored by police and politicians.

A thought for all these victims of hate and intolerance.

13 May, 2022 A man of great merit

In the latest issue of the literary magazine Nuit Blanche, you can find a very interesting article about one of our long-term donors, Bernard Mulaire. This art historian hailing from Manitoba is also an LGBTQ+ rights activist. He has recently donated a photograph to the Archives gaies du Québec, entitled Je m’ouvre au matin comme l’éveil / Et pourtant j’ai le regard figé sur la fin. In the article from Nuit Blanche magazine, we can retrace his life, his work, and his determination to take the road less travelled. To know him better, it is also possible to read his most recent book, Flâneries et souvenances, published in 2018.

06 May, 2022 An auction for a good cause!

As the Écomusée du fier monde displayed the works they put up for their annual auction on April 27th, Pierre Pilotte, representing the Archives gaies du Québec, made a short presentation of our organisation’s mission in front of approximately 125 people. He also graciously thanked the Écomusée for having offered the Archives gaies du Québec 50% of the sale price of an auctioned work by Québecoise artist Betty Goodwin.

Please note that the event in question is a virtual charity auction that will be online until May 8th. Bids will be accepted until 8PM, May 8, 2022.

This auction allows the Écomusée to finance its activities in order to fulfill its double mandate of a history and a community museum. To support the museum’s mission, we invite you to place a bid on one of the works offered here.

12 Apr, 2022 A fruitful collaboration

To kick off the month of April, the Quebec Gay Archives (AGQ) participated in Concordia University’s History in the Making conference, a yearly event organized by Concordia graduate students. The conference is an opportunity for young university students around the continent and the globe to present their work and receive feedback from experts to perfect their work.

On April 1st, the AGQ opened the conference, before ceding the floor to keynote speaker Ann Cvetkovich, author of An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Duke University Press). V. Samoylenko, assistant archivist at the Quebec Gay Archives, presented our organization in French first, then followed with English.

After Ann Cvetkovich’s presentation, a first panel of four university students presented their research, among them Simone Beaudry-Pilotte, our esteemed archivist, as well as Kiersten van Vliet and Mark Hamilton, two researchers who frequently visit our collections. Simone spoke about the AGQ’s VHS collection, encouraging us not only to think about the value of the contents of the cassettes, but also about the value of the physical object itself, and the beauty of its impermanence.

The conference was a success. This first panel received 35 in-person attendees as well as around 20 more through zoom. During the two days, we distributed postcards, copies of Archigai and information sheets.

we wish to thank the organizers of the History in the Making conference for this opportunity, which offered us support and visibility. It was a lovely occasion to share knowledge and to continue shedding a light on LGBTQ2S+ communities in Quebec.

12 Apr, 2022 Even on vacation!

During a short but restful trip to Florida last week, Pierre Pilotte never completely stopped thinking about the AGQ. As an expert in his field, he took the opportunity to network on behalf of the AGQ by, among other things, visiting Fort Lauderdale’s World AIDs Museum. There, he received a warm welcome as well as a guided tour. One day, perhaps, the AGQ will have their own museum!

31 Mar, 2022 International Transgender day of visibility

This March 31st, the Quebec Gay Archives wish to celebrate the International Transgender Day of Visibility by shedding light on some of our trans archives, which are available on our website as of now.

The archives in questions are issues of the TAMs & Tissues newsletter, which was aimed towards the anglophone transvestite and transexual (TV-TS) communities. This newletter, of which the AGQ has issues dating between 1979 and 1983, was published by TAMs (Transvestites à Montreal), a group comprised of MTF (male-to-female) TVs and TSs. This group offered social opportunities, discussion groups and workshops. Later, the group split into TAMs and WOMEN à Montréal en Neuf, as the latter responded to the specific needs of transsexual women.

The periodical was distributed elsewhere in English-speaking North America, and, though the main language of the publication was English, there were still contributions by Francophones. Although the periodical was primarily geared towards what today we would call the transfeminine community, it contained a few contributions about transsexual men.

Trans history has been for a long time rendered invisible. Today, we wish to show our support for our trans peers by making these archives accessible. The AGQ are committed to promoting diversity and inclusion of all LGBTQ2S+ communities.

You can consult the digitized TAMs & Tissues periodical here

22 Mar, 2022 An interesting conference

History in the Making is a student run conference coordinated annually by Concordia University graduate students for graduate students throughout the world. The conference provides emerging scholars with a platform to present their research, receive valuable input from panelists and conference attendees and ultimately refine their findings and strengthen their arguments. The conference also provides graduate students with an opportunity to network and forge friendships with other emerging scholars from across the continent and beyond. Founded in 1995 by Concordia PhD student Keith Lowther (lost due to AIDS complications in 1997), HITM 2022 Pandemic at the Disco: Bodies, Disruptions, Transformations marks the conference’s 27th year, taking place at Concordia University’s Webster Library on April 1-2, 2022.

The Archives gaies du Québec is proud to co-present the opening keynote by Ann Cvetkovich, author of An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Duke University Press) whose work “argues for the importance of recognizing—and archiving—accounts of trauma that belong as much to the ordinary and everyday as to the domain of catastrophe.” (And incidentally, the Archives’ own Simone Beaudry-Pilotte will also be presenting their latest research on the AGQ’s VHS collection as part of the conference).

Attendance is free, but registration is required via eventbrite, and the conference also invites attendees to make a donation to the Archives gaies du Québec via our Donate page or in person.

For more information visit the official website of the event.