Projects | LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory

Co-creating a “usable past” for LGBTQ+ people in the present.

Current Projects

231 Mutual St., former site of the Pussy Palace; Photograph by Alisha Stranges; Project logo designed by Ayo Tsalithaba.

On September 15, 2000, five Toronto police raided the Pussy Palace,* an exclusive sex party and bathhouse event for 350 queer women and trans people. The police charged two organizers with violating liquor laws, resulting in a public trial.

There has never been an oral history project about this event, the last major police raid of a queer bathhouse in Canadian history. The LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory, in collaboration with The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives, has collected 36 interviews with bathhouse patrons, event organizers, and community activists.

The research enables us to historicize this event within the longer history of Toronto police hostility towards non-normative sexuality, exemplified by the gay male-focused bathhouse raids of 1975-1984.

To learn more about the research process, visit our PPOHP project page on this website.

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To screen the oral history interview collection and explore a comprehensive showcase of our creative and scholarly research outcomes, visit our project website.

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This work builds upon a panel discussion with event organizers and patrons, hosted by The ArQuives in September 2020 to honour the raid’s 20th anniversary.

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PROJECT TEAM

FOR THE COLLABORATORY

Elspeth Brown, Principal Investigator; Alisha Stranges, Project Manager & Co-Oral Historian; Elio Colavito, Co-Oral Historian; Emily Mastragostino, Interview Coder; Ayo Tsalithaba, Creative Producer; Chase Thomson, Ashley Gold, Katherine Zheng, Aisling Murphy, Andy Huynh, Social Media Managers

FOR THE ARQUIVES

Raegan Swanson, Executive Director; Lucie Handley-Girard, Archivist; Jordan Saroya, Administrative Assistant

QUEER & DISABLED ACTIVISMS IN TKARONTO
Documentary Project

In January 2024, we welcomed Megan Ingram as the Collaboratory’s inaugural “Creative Scholar in Virtual Residence.” This is a new term we’ve proposed to conceptualize Megan’s role with the Collaboratory, which is part scholarship and part cultural production. Supported by the Collaboratory and supervised by filmmaker, educator, and Collaboratory Co-Applicant, Dr. Chase Joynt, Megan is developing a new documentary project titled “Queer & Disabled Activisms in Tkaronto.”

In response to an absolute lack of primary source narratives that centre queerness and disability, the project seeks to produce 3-5 documentary shorts (10-15 min. each), using oral history interviews conducted with community activists working at the intersections of disability, queerness, healthcare access, housing, and poverty.

To learn more about the project read our interview with Creative Scholar Megan Ingram.

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PROJECT TEAM

Megan Ingram, Project Lead; Chase Joynt, Supervisor; Elspeth Brown, Oral History Consultant; Alisha Stranges, Administrative Assistant

TRANS ACTIVISM
Oral History Project

Original illustration and graphic design by Ayo Tsalithaba.

In a joint partnership with the University of Victoria’s Transgender Archives, we are collecting oral history interviews with trans elders about their history of activism on behalf of trans people and communities in order to establish trans-specific and trans-positive primary source historical narratives that can be preserved for future generations.

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PROJECT TEAM

FOR THE COLLABORATORY

Elspeth Brown, Principal Investigator; Evan Taylor, Interviewer; Chase Joynt, Filmmaker; Eli Holliday, Project Assistant and Video Editor

FOR THE TRANSGENDER ARCHIVES

Aaron Devor, Founder; Lara Wilson, Archivist; Amelia Smith, Digital Exhibition Designer