Author: Alisha Stranges

Realizing the Value of Stories: Transcribing the Pussy Palace Oral Histories

February 23, 2022
by Alisha Stranges
Pussy Palace Project / Transcribing / UVic Undergraduate Internship

Beginning in January 2022, the Collaboratory invited UVic undergraduates Faith Lapointe and Ellis Martiskainen to participate in a 4-week volunteer internship with the Pussy Palace Oral History Project, supporting the team in transcribing the oral history interviews in preparation for donation to The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives. We are pleased to share that Faith and Ellis are continuing their work with us on the project. Here are their reflections on the experience so far… If […]

Tangible Traces: Searching for the Pussy Palace Polaroids

April 16, 2021
by Alisha Stranges
Photography / Pussy Palace Project

Did you know that the 2000 Pussy Palace had an instant photo room? On the fourth floor of the Palace, a sign reading “porn/photo room” directed patrons in two equally playful directions: towards a room for screening pornography and/or towards a room for having Polaroids taken to document one’s night at the bathhouse (Blair 163; Vogels paras. 10-13). In our most recent oral history interview, Carlyle Jansen, one of the founding members of the Toronto Women’s Bathhouse Committee, shared that the use of […]