New book traces the growth of lesbian community in Canada

This content was created by Xtra’s branded content team alongside BOLDFest, separate from Xtra’s editorial staff. BOLD’s mission is to raise the visibility of older lesbians and provide a venue to meet and share information. BOLDFest 2018 runs Aug 30–Sep 2 at Vancouver’s Coast Coal Harbour Hotel.

In 1915, Charlotte Whitton, the first woman to serve as a mayor of a major Canadian city, received this seductive missive from her lover Margaret Grier:

“I must confess I am deeply, head over heels in love with you and it expresses itself in an overpowering desire to devour you beginning at your throat of course . . . Lottie I am going to keep your letters tied up with ribbon with my lover letters.”

Seductive indeed, yet somewhat confusing. For, if Grier was in such a state as to want to feed on her lover (we’ve all been there Margaret!) then why is it that she seems to categorize the letters she received from Whitton as something other than “lover letters?” For so much of Canadian history, women-to-women love has been recorded in this perplexing fashion. In what amounts to mountains of letters, diaries and other writings, women expressed their feelings for each other in words and deeds suggestive of erotic love, while rarely confirming the existence of erotic acts. In short, suggestions, similes and flirtations abound, but the real thing is rarely ever there, on paper at least. The result has been a heyday for historians, who have literally built their careers arguing over the “true” nature of lesbian love in the past.

But all of this ambiguity would be swept aside beginning in the 1960s, according to University of Manitoba women’s studies professor Liz Millward. In her new book, Making a Scene: Lesbians and Community Across Canada, 1964-1984, Millward explores lesbian history. In the 1960s, women came out en masse and began to publicly identify as lesbians. They formed community organizations and developed support networks that exist to this day.

Daily Xtra recently caught up with Millward and asked her about how lesbians burst on to the scene in the 1960s and created community in the latter half of the 20th century.

The 1950s

The 1950s were dark days for Canadian lesbians.

The resurgence of the suburban housewife ideal in the postwar period led to very restricted options for women seeking female-only social spaces. Bars were one option, but at this time, women were not permitted to enter a bar without a man! This meant that women who wanted to get laid or meet other women were forced to find each other in the most marginal of social spaces, namely, seedy bars that flaunted the “she must enter with a man” laws.

These bars were, as Millward characterized it “the more run down bars, the bars run by criminals who were basically taking advantage of this group of women who had no place else to go.”

The 1960s

The 1960s represented a watershed moment for Canadian lesbians, where for the first time, a critical mass of women came out and began to form community associations. As Millward explained, “there’s a kind of zeitgeist in the 1960s and into the 1970s of social movements, possibility . . . you’d had the 1969 omnibus bill, where the government officially recognizes that lesbians and gay men exist, and so there’s this real sense of changes in the air . . . lesbians pick up on that energy and start to create their own community.”

BOLDFest
Sept 1–4, 2016
Coast Plaza Hotel, 1763 Comox St, Vancouver