All posts filed under: Queer History

Pride Toronto 2024: The Accessibility Information You REALLY Want

June 26, 2024
by Atticus Hawk
Digitization / Disability / Queer History / The Gays Did What Now?

Calling all disabled dandies, handicapped homos and crippy queers; it’s Pride in Toronto! Time to get nasty with it and whip out our big, fat, throbbing media literacy degrees to scour the Pride Toronto™ website for any shreds of accessibility information we can actually use. Read on for all the accessibility information you need to know and bask in our homemade, screen-reader-compatible Bare Minimum Accessibility Map: Pride Toronto 2024 Edition!

Crip Orgies: cum’on everybody! 

May 29, 2024
by Atticus Hawk
Activist Histories / Disability / Kink Cultures / Queer History / The Gays Did What Now?

You ever seen a wheelchair user fuck harder than the best porn stars in Vegas? How about the hardcore harness fetishists losing it over the straps of a hydraulic sling lift? Ever considered the implications of the condom catheter X leg bag situation as the ultimate power move in watersports? In 2015, disability activists Andrew Gurza and Stella Palikarova embraced it all with Deliciously Disabled, an accessible, sex-positive party held at the iconic Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, right in the heart of Toronto’s Gay Village. But why there and when can we get tickets for the next one?

Hanlan’s Point: Sand, Butts and Topographical Intrigue

April 24, 2024
by Atticus Hawk
Gay History / Queer History / The Gays Did What Now?

It’s finally sunny in Toronto and we all know what that means; the gays are about to descend on the chilly waters of Hanlan’s Point, Toronto’s historically queer nude beach on The Islands. But how did this glorious little gay cruising ground come to be such a storied space? Was it actually ground zero for the Canadian Pride movement? And are The Islands even islands?? Learn the answers to these pressing geographical questions and more about sand deposits than you ever wanted to know in this month’s installment of The Gays Did What Now?

Queer & Disabled Activisms in Tkaronto Project: An interview with Creative Scholar Megan Ingram

April 5, 2024
by Alisha Stranges
Academia / Activist Histories / Archiving Oral History / Collaboratory News / Community-based Oral History / Disability / Oral History / Public Humanities / Queer History / Trans History

Welcoming Megan Ingram, our inaugural “Creative Scholar in Virtual Residence.” Part scholarship and part cultural production, Megan is developing a new documentary project, using oral history interviews conducted with community activists working at the intersections of disability, queerness, healthcare access, housing, and poverty.

John Weiss Was Here

March 28, 2024
by Atticus Hawk
Activist Histories / Gay History / Kink Cultures / Photography / Queer History / The Gays Did What Now?

Artist, teacher, bon vivant, “The Best Gay Dad Ever”, dog's best friend; John Wiess (1946-2017) was many things to many people. John was an artist and middle-school art teacher up in North Bay, a spirited host who adamantly refused to cook a single thing and such a gregarious misanthrope that he actively sprinted away from people he didn’t want to talk to in public. Kirk Cederwahl spent years sprinting after a bolting John; and with good reason. Kirk was John’s boy and John was Kirk’s daddy.

The Library is Open! (Let’s Keep It That Way)

January 31, 2024
by Atticus Hawk
Activist Histories / Drag / Gay History / Lesbian History / Queer History / The Gays Did What Now? / Trans History

The Library is Open! (Let’s Keep It That Way) Was your non-committal New Year's Resolution to “read more”? Did you join a queer book club and silently sob at the price of the newest gay paperbacks? Are your internal organs begging you to take up a hobby with a somewhat lower stroke risk? The Toronto Public Library’s dedicated Pride Collection at the Yorkville branch is full of luxuriously queer books, DVDs, CDs, audio books, movies, ebooks, magazines, comics, maps, classes, groups, kids’ rooms, study spaces, conference rooms and anything else your little gay heart desires.