All posts filed under: Foolscap Project

Finding the Body in Foolscap

October 30, 2018
by Elspeth Brown
Foolscap Project / Gay History / Oral History

The Foolscap Project consists of a series of oral history interviewees, mostly conducted between 1981 and 1989 by John Grube and Lionel Collier conducted a series of oral history interviews with gay men born in the first half of the 20th century. The project produced over 100 autobiographical interviews. These interviews were invariably informed by conditions contemporaneous to the project: the Stonewall riots, Operation Soap, the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic within the community and […]

Foolscap Sheds Light on a History of Anti-LGBTQ Police Violence

June 6, 2018
by Elspeth Brown
Foolscap Project / Gay History

The Foolscap Oral History project is a rich collection of over 100 interviews recorded with gay men throughout the 1980s that tells the story of LGBTQ life in Toronto in the pre-Stonewall era. The interviewees of this project cover a wide array of topics in their narratives such as activism, relationships, and social life; together, these stories serve to set the scene for gay Toronto in a time when queer identities were much more marginalized […]

Where Once Stood a Bandstand for Cruising & Shelter

October 5, 2017
by Elspeth Brown
Foolscap Project / Gay History

This past weekend, Toronto was alive throughout the night for Nuit Blanche, an annual night-time arts festival. The city was transformed by four large-scale exhibitions installed across the city that brought together contemporary art reflecting on revolution, activism, indigeneity and futurity. Carried out as a part of the “Taking to the Streets” exhibition for Nuit Blanche Toronto 2017, interdisciplinary artist (and CLGA volunteer!) Hazel Meyer dropped banners throughout the night from the stop of a […]

Foolscap Oral Histories and Gay Bar Culture in Toronto and Mexico City

May 25, 2017
by Elspeth Brown
Foolscap Project / Gay History / Oral History

For the past few weeks I have been reading transcripts of the interviews that John Grube conducted in the 1980s with Canadian gay men born in the first half of the twentieth century. One of the most interesting topics in the interviews is the experiences that these men had with the gay bar culture in Toronto during the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. Going to bars or “beverage rooms” was instrumental in their coming out experience, […]

Foolscap: The Social Responsibility of Digitizing Erasure

May 19, 2017
by Elspeth Brown
Digitization / Foolscap Project / Gay History

Listening to the Foolscap interviews, it seems impossible to have been in Toronto in the 1960s without realizing that the St Charles Tavern was a hotbed of gay activity. However, researching press coverage of the bar, it’s clear that this watering hole’s queerness was fairly hidden from most of the public in the 1960s. A brief review of Globe and Mail articles between the 1940s and 1960s rarely link homosexuality to the St. Charles Tavern. It’s […]