Co-creating a “usable past” for LGBTQ+ people in the present.
Completed Projects
Since 2014, the Collaboratory has collected, digitized, and created over 250 individual oral histories about LGBTQ2+ life in Canada and the United States. Some of these oral history projects include two 1980s community-based projects (Lesbians Making History and Foolscap Gay Oral History Project, c.130 interviews). In addition to these discrete projects, the Collaboratory has also digitized many interviews held in The ArQuives’ collections, including interviews conducted by David Churchill, among others.
Follow the links in each description to engage more closely with each project’s public outcomes.
GUIDES & ORAL HISTORIES
Prepared by the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory with The ArQuives. The 70-page Trans Collections Guide is designed to assist researchers and community members interested in exploring trans histories at The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives.
It provides a general overview of relevant materials in The ArQuives’ holdings, including the collections of Canadian artists, activists, and intellectuals like Mirha-Soleil Ross, Rupert Raj, and Anton Wagner. It also includes detailed information about how to request and access these materials. This guide also identifies common challenges that researchers face when exploring trans histories both at The ArQuives and more generally in collections predominately focused on gay and lesbian histories.
On December 3, 2020, we celebrated the launch of the Trans Collections Guide with a roundtable discussion about the trans holdings at The ArQuives and the histories and futures of trans archival practices. Moderator: Elspeth Brown; Speakers: Morgan M. Page, Monica Forrester, Syrus Marcus Ware, and Susan Stryker.
PROJECT TEAM
FOR THE COLLABORATORY
Nick Matte, Elspeth Brown, Haley O’Shaughnessy, Al Stanton-Hagan, K.J. Rawson, and Eli Holliday
FOR THE ARQUIVES
Raegan Swanson, Rebecka Sheffield, Alan Miller, Harold Averill, and Lucie Handley-Girard
The Queer Peel Oral History Project was a student-driven initiative that emerged from a 3rd year history course at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, in early 2020. Seeking to create primary sources about queer and trans life in the suburbs, the Queer Peel Oral History Project features 25 oral history interviews with LGBTQ2+ activists, students, alums, and residents of the Peel region with relevant news articles and other contextualizing visuals.
The Lesbians Making History (LMH) collective came together in the mid-1980s and was inspired by oral history projects of gay lives coming out of Buffalo, Boston and San Francisco. The collective interviewed 9 women about their experiences as ‘out’ lesbians in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. In 2014, the original audio tapes were given to the The ArQuives via the LGBTQ Digital Oral History Collaboratory. Embedded at The ArQuives, Collaboratory members digitized LMH materials and created new verbatim transcriptions. Original LHM collective members assisted with editing transcripts, identifying key words and writing abstracts for each oral history interview.
Project Lead: Dr. Cait McKinney
Hon Lu with his cousin, Shanobi Lam, at their cousin’s wedding, photo booth, 2009
The Family Camera Network was a collaborative, community-based project at the intersection of photography and oral history, wherein our network of cultural institutions, researchers, digital librarians and archivists developed the first multi-partner scholarly study of family photography as a critical building block for understanding self, family, community, and nation in Canada.
Collecting 42 oral histories, 60 albums, 37 home videos, and over 17,000 accompanying family photographs, The Family Camera Network established a public archive of family photographs and their stories, focused on migration in the near or distant past, and to and within Canada. Housed at the Royal Ontario Museum and The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives, the Family Camera Network also spurred the Queering Family Photography exhibition.
Project Lead: Elspeth Brown
“Bridegroom,” photograph by Sarah Davidmann, 201x.
This project explores the experience of partners of trans* men, focusing on partners who were with their partner before and during at least six months of the transition, however defined (the couple does not have to be together now). 50 interviews have been completed in Canada and the U.S. so far.
Project Lead: Elspeth Brown
“Trans Rights are Human Rights,” photograph by Vanessa Nunes.
This oral history project focuses on the 1998 delisting and 2008 re-listing of gender confirming surgeries in Ontario (as medical procedures funded by the province). This project brought together the voices, memories and experiences of people who were either affected by the policy changes, or who worked to fight for access to quality health care and equality for trans people in Ontario and beyond.
Project Lead: Nick Matte
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS LAB
In collaboration with the Jackman Humanities Institute’s Scholars-in-Residence Program (SiR) and The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives, the Collaboratory ran an intensive digital collections lab with five undergraduate students to create three digital exhibitions:
PROJECT TEAM
PROJECT LEADS
Elspeth Brown, Cait McKinney, Juan Carlos Mezo Gonzalez, Sajdeep Soomal, Sid Cunningham
UNDERGRADUATES
Alisha Krishna, Amal Khurram, Caleigh Inman, Mac Stewart, Zohar Freeman
Toronto’s Desh Pardesh festival (1988–2001) was a multidisciplinary arts festival that showcased underrepresented and marginalized voices within the South Asian diaspora. In May 2017, the SiR team collaborated with SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) to produce a digital exhibition that streams these already complete born-digital interviews with artists and activist of colour, and brings additional context to the interviews through digitized visual materials that document the festival.
Project Leads: Saj Soomal, SAVAC
SiR Undergraduates: Alisha Krishna and Amal Khurram
Mirha-Soleil Ross (b. 1969, Montréal) is a transsexual media artist, activist, and sex-worker who lived in Toronto from the early 1990s until 2008, the period covered by her fonds at The ArQuives. In 2016, the Collaboratory processed these unparalleled records of trans art and activist histories in the city, and the collection is now open to researchers. In May 2017, the SiR team produced a digital collection showcasing gendertrash, a four-issue zine published by Ross and Xanthra Phillippa MacKay in Toronto from 1993-1995.
Project Leads: Cait McKinney and Sid Cunningham
SiR Undergraduates: Caleigh Inman and Mac Stewart
Collaborators: Nora Butler Burke, Aaron Cain, Trish Salah
Foolscap was a Toronto-based oral history project about pre-Stonewall gay life, conducted by John Grube and Lionel Collier in the 1980s. The project produced over 100 life histories, addressing topics like the Stonewall Riots, Operation Soap, HIV/AIDS, psychiatry, policing, sex work, intergenerational relationships, health, and aging. The collection includes over 300 audio recordings from 125 interviews with 100 narrators; 51 interviews have transcripts. The SiR team digitized the tapes, drafted written abstracts and metadata, and created a digital exhibition.
Project Lead: Zohar Freeman