LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory

blog post by Oli Bedard The LGBTQ Oral History Collaboratory is currently working on archiving and digitizing a newly uncovered collection of oral history interviews that were acquired by Project Investigator Elspeth Brown and have been entrusted to work-study oral history archivist Oli Bédard for processing and digitization. This collection of interviews, conducted throughout the 1980s in Toronto, is entitled “the Foolscap Project,” also referred to in some of the interviews as “the Gay Oral […]

On April 1, scholars, students, community members, clinical practitioners, artists, and activists came together from across Canada and the US at U of T’s University College for the inaugural Trans Temporalities Conference to share work and ideas about “the unique interdependence between narratives and constructions of normative bodies and linear time.” The conference was organized by Celeste Pang, Ido Katri, and Simon Daniel and sponsored by the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. […]

L-R: Nick Matte, Al Stanton-Hagan, Oli Bedard ***************************************** It’s exciting times at the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory! We’ve recently purchased new equipment for our upcoming video oral history project and yesterday several members of our Toronto Collaboratory team met at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives to explore and experiment with the equipment in preparation for our first interviews. We’re working with the Canon VIXIA HFG20 Camcorder, portrait studio lighting, and lavalier microphones. Many thanks […]

  LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory @ Moving Trans History Forward 2016 Moving Trans History Forward 2016 at the University of Victoria was a wonderful conference, to say the least. At Thursday night’s Opening Ceremonies attendees were warmly welcomed and heard Randall Garrison, MP for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke discuss the history and hurdles involved with getting gender identity and gender expression into human rights legislation. Jamison Green gave a keynote during lunch on Friday on the triumphs and challenges of trans […]

  Moving Trans History Forward is front-page news in Victoria, BC and making waves well beyond the West Coast! It’s been a while since we last reported on LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory activities, but we have lots to share this week! Many of our team members are gathering in Victoria with folks from far and wide for the 2nd Moving Trans History Forward conference, expertly organized by Dr. Aaron Devor and the University of […]

This week I have Oli writing a guest post ! Oli is digitizing a number of projects for the co laboratory, which involves listening to sometimes uplifting, and some times traumatic anecdotes from LGBTQ history. My name is Oli Bédard and I’m a work-study oral history archivist for the LGBTQ Oral History Collaboratory. What I do, for the most part, is digitize tapes—hours and hours of tapes of oral histories. Each one goes into the […]