Category: Uncategorized

Anyone who tells you that AIDS activism was only a bunch of white gay men who got mad because suddenly their community experienced oppression isn’t telling the whole story. It’s understandable that people get history wrong when, as Suraj Madoori recently wrote: “Even after 35 years of HIV/AIDS, the stories of critical Black activism are notably absent in the dominant media and movement narratives.” Consider for example the narrative of the film How to Survive a Plague, which presents the history of AIDS activism in the US as mainly about the interventions made by white gay men involved in treatment activism. There are so many stories that haven’t been told, have been forgotten, or that have been only partially captured. Anti-Back racism impacts on the dominant AIDS narrative, whether it be the racist construction of “African AIDS” or the systematic forgetting and eclipsing of Black AIDS activism and organizing.

While the AIDS crisis is a condensation of many social relations including sexuality, gender, race, class and much more, often when only the ‘sexuality’ part is focused on and separated from the web of relations it is part of a white gay men’s narrative emerges. While in no way denying the devastation that the AIDS crisis inflicted on white gay men and the importance of their activism, this is only a part of the story.

Early on, societal responses to AIDS often cited the so-called “4-H” conception of who was affected (Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin users). From the beginning in Haitian communities, especially in Canadian cities like Montreal and Toronto, activists had to fight against anti-Black racism not only from the Red Cross, the government, and the medical profession, but also from many of the AIDS Service organizations. Since the emergence of the pandemic, many responses from governments on down to the individual level were racist, ableist, anti-drug-user, as well as being gay-hating. Talking with AIDS activists about the history of their work reminds us over and over again about the ways history—and how we tell it—matters. For World AIDS Day 2017, we’re taking a cue from the New York City-based organization Visual AIDS to reflect on the place of Black activists and cultural workers in the histories of AIDS activism in the Canadian context. This year’s Day With(out) Art commissioned video programming centres Black narratives within the ongoing AIDS epidemic; there are vital threads of connection between this contemporary work and the histories we are documenting in the AIDS Activist History Project.

Many of our interviewees reflected on the role race and racism played in the Canadian government’s responses to AIDS, and on the important activist work of antiracism and community organizing within racialized communities. In this short post we want to highlight just a few of the key interviews we’ve conducted thus far that speak to the vibrant work people did. This isn’t a comprehensive narrative of this critical, often ignored work, but a snapshot direct from activists who were there. So continue on for a hint of the amazing work they did organizing with the Black Outreach Project, Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP), and Community Organizations Mutually Battling AIDS Together (COMBAT). It is also important to note that this work organizing in Black community spaces was often in direct solidarity with other groups organized around racialized subjectivities, including Zami, Khush, Alliance of South Asian AIDS Prevention [ASAAP], Gay Asians Toronto [GAT] (later Asian Community AIDS Services), the AIDS Cultural Network. As Anthony Mohamed told us, many of these groups “are still alive today and still doing wonderful work within the various communities that they’re a part of.”

On the East Coast in Halifax, Kim Bernard was the founding organizer for the Black Outreach Project, which originated from the Halifax-based PWA Coalition. Kim told us “I believe that the Coalition saw that there was nothing being done in the Black community around HIV and AIDS education, awareness, information and that there was no support for people that have identified as being HIV-positive. I do commend them for recognizing that as a problem in our community and a gap.” Kim’s work was funded by a grant, and at the start she was the only person working on the project. She remarked, “Then they got a grant to hire somebody. It’s a typical thing, you only have one person, so when you only have one person trying to cover all of the Atlantic provinces… That can be challenging.” She went on to set up a vibrant board to support the project, to hire students to work with her (one of whom took over the project when Kim moved on), and to make meaningful connections in Black communities across the east coast. Part of that work was a multi-level “needs assessment” to figure out what the situation actually was for Black people in the Atlantic provinces in terms of HIV and AIDS; Kim and her team wrote up a comprehensive report about their findings from that work. In our discussions with her, Kim also highlighted the ways that, although the PWA Coalition recognized the need to do work in Black communities, they didn’t confront the systemic racism that structured all of the responses to HIV and AIDS. As she said, “There are probably individuals in the system that get the point but when the whole system is racist, it becomes an institutional/systemic issue. It is difficult to see change.” Kim had brought some of the material from the Black Outreach Project to our interview with her, which we were able to scan and include in the archival materials files; there is a wealth of amazing material there.

In Toronto, Douglas Stewart told us about the rich web of organizations and community formations through which his and other people’s political work around HIV and AIDS arose. He said, “part of the larger context here is trying to identify a space for Black queer people to be able to name and identify our own experience, and to figure out what life can look like beyond that. Let me just say, personally, that’s why I got involved. And then other people came with some of that, but other interests as well in terms of being in those spaces for those conversations. And so I think that part of that was also really figuring out where and when and what that looks like in relation to different kinds of movements that are part of my identities, so being queer, being Black.” Doug was centrally involved with the formation of Black CAP (Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention), a community organization that was celebrating its 25^th anniversary the summer we did this interview with Doug. He narrated their beginning, saying, “it was important for, again, some of the reasons I just talked about in terms of the barriers to people even being engaged in HIV and AIDS, where the conversation was situated, where it was seen as coming from, and who was part of that conversation? So, part of it was to partner with a respected Black community organization. At that time it was Hara

mbee, and it was a social service community organization. And so we were based in their offices… So, it’s now a Black community conversation.” Doug also importantly drew lines of connection between early work in these historical contexts and contemporary struggles that groups like Black Lives Matter continue to wage. He reflected on how oppression shapes the conditions of our work, saying, “part of it’s about how we have to always own and acknowledge how white supremacy and racism and heterosexism is still integral in how these systems are set up… And so even when we have these initiatives that are somehow supposed to be pushing against that, we’re always negotiating and making deals with all of that, at all kinds of levels. And so it just feels like we’re in this messy game continually.”

Dionne Falconer was involved with Black CAP in those early years. She had been part of the Toronto-based Black Women’s Collective (BWC), which did vital political work including challenging white hegemony in the BWC feminist movement and published their own newspaper. Through her involvement with BWC, Dionne joined the work that Black CAP was doing. She reflected on her experience as a young organizer doing outreach work, saying: “So, you have all of the issues interspersed, intermingled and addressing them, because that’s one of the things that HIV does is that it does bring all the issues together and you can’t always tease them out or pull them apart. You’ve got to address them all at once.” And as Dionne articulated, it was vital to have groups like Black CAP because, as she told us, “I mean there was AIDSphobia and the stigma around living with HIV, but also people didn’t want to go in a place where they didn’t see themselves reflected. And that’s also the reason for a place like Black CAP. Just like the reason for why ASAAP started—or any of the other groups was that, again, people want to see themselves reflected and feel like, ‘Oh, this is a much more welcoming environment.’ … Or, the way that they were treated when they went in, like, i.e. you’re coming in for services and no one’s paying attention to you. It’s like you’re invisible. And so, I think that those kinds of situations happened for people and thus also meant that, ‘You know what? I don’t want to go back.’ Suddenly, you’re also trying to deal with HIV, you’re hearing a lot of things … Because, remember, these are early days, so treatment is not what we see today. People are dealing with all kinds of illnesses and sometimes not fully understanding what exactly is going on in their bodies, struggling with it, not wanting to go to the doctor’s, not connected to an HIV doctor, so for all of those kinds of reasons.”

Although we haven’t talked with her directly yet (if anyone knows where she is, contact us!) Jackie Wilson was another vital force in early AIDS activism in Toronto’s Black community. She organized a group called COMBAT (Community Organizations Mutually Battling AIDS Together). Sri, a white activist who supported Jackie’s work, told us, “COMBAT was mainly focused on women and thereby had to focus on straight families. Jackie said, ‘The best access to straight families in the Caribbean communities in Toronto was through the storefront churches, so that’s where we are going to go. Every week, we are going to talk at the storefront churches. You are going to make sure the PA is working for me. You are going to make sure all the logistics are happening. You are going to hand out flyers and things.’ He continued, ‘And basically, she said if you come in, if you approach a Jamaican church as a queer organization, they’re just not going to let you though the door. The message is just never going to reach its target. And that was her position, so she said, ‘I’m going to be the straight lady working with straight people about how they get AIDS and how they are at very, very high risk, and any denialism is going to stand as a barrier to that.’ And she basically said, ‘Look. I can go places Black CAP will never get into.’”

Jackie has also shown up in our interviews as raising key questions about Black community concerns at a pivotal retreat that AIDS ACTION NOW! held at the Hart House Farm in 1989, which sparked a series of conversations about interlocking oppressions as they manifest in people’s experience of HIV and AIDS. Gary Kinsman remembered Jackie’s intervention at the Hart House retreat in his interview for the project: “And Jackie was raising important questions about racism and racialization, but also about how to do AIDS work in communities of people that were not gay-identified at least—how to do that. It was also raising questions then not only about treatment access but about all of the sorts of issues related to AIDS and HIV… So, some sort of notion of broadening this out to include especially issues and areas of concern related to people of colour and to women. I mean that was raised, I think, in some important ways at this retreat and there was some major resistance to that.” At many points in our interviews we heard people reflect on how AIDS organizing pulled them to reflect on the complexity of people’s entangled political identities – that while many of them may have started from one subject position, much of the work really required having a complex, intersectional approach. Activist Renee du Plessis told us, speaking about her inspiration to take leadership from the people most affected by systemic oppression in responding to HIV and AIDS, “I think I would say the challenges were that the group that was the most affected was not exclusively well educated, with a multitude of resources. Gay men also included poor men and First Nations men and immigrant men, you know. And then it started also getting to be where I became more and more aware of criticism that lesbians were holding, and that women in general were holding, both to the organization and what they were doing and their presumptions on who was actually the most affected.”

As we move toward the end of funding for this oral history project, we are continuing to document and remember AIDS activism with a commitment to challenging anti-Black racism and to centering those most affected by the ongoing crisis. As Doug said towards the end of our conversation with him, “You know, as James Baldwin would say, you can’t change anything unless you face it.” On this World AIDS Day, we reflect on what it means to face the ways that racism has shaped and continues to shape people’s experience of HIV and AIDS.

Here at the AIDS activist history project we were glad to have some in-person time this week with project lead Gary Kinsman, who was here in Ottawa as part of the We Demand An Apology Network to receive the Prime Minister’s statement acknowledging some Canada’s egregious treatment of LGBT people who worked in the public service and for the military. We were also happy to be able to interview another member of the network, who was involved in AIDS activism as part of ACT UP Halifax (that interview will be posted as soon as it’s transcribed and checked).

Talking through the apology made us think about the ways that anti-AIDS practices have been entwined with the purges people experienced (and about the ways that criminalized, undocumented, and non-citizen queer, gay, lesbian, Two-spirit, and trans people are still targeted by harmful government practices in ways not acknowledged by this week’s apology). One of our interviewees was also in town as part of the Network to witness the apology, and we wanted to highlight some of his story and invite you to read more about his remarkable work. Simon Thwaites was a master seaman in the Navy, holding a security clearance for his work. He was diagnosed as HIV positive after he participated in one of regular blood drives on board ship.

And then the weirdness started happening, because the base hospital, for whatever reason, passed the information on to the military police. So, then I was investigated by the military police. First, when they dragged me down to their building that they had downtown, the first words that they asked were, “Are you gay?” And I kind of looked at them and I thought, “Who cares?” Like, I got HIV. I’m going to die in, well, two-and-a-half years now. So, I just said, “Yeah,” I was like, “So?” And they said, “Well, you know, you could be coerced, manipulated or, you know, to reveal secrets and that,” because my trade was secret. And I’m like, “Well, how are they going to do that? You already know. [laughter] I mean, I’m telling you.” It didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t really care because, as far as I was concerned, I was being written off anyway. And so, I was still figuring out if I was going to be alive tomorrow, let alone them worrying about if I was gay or not. That was the last thing on my list of things. So, they said, “Fine.” Anyway, I went back to work. Next thing I know, then I get dragged out of where I was working and started to sweep floors. So, I ended up sweeping floors in the Drill Shed in CFB (Canadian Forces Base) Stadacona, which actually is a punishment. People who do things wrong and get a lot of demerits kind of thing, they end up sweeping floors or they end up cleaning dishes or doing what we call kitchen duties. And that was the other job I did, kitchen duties. So, then my friends are like, “Well, why are you doing that?” because I was senior to a lot of my friends rank-wise.

Simon was demoted and spent the next years doing menial labor. As he told us:

The laugh about it is that on my files with the military, I actually have accelerated recommendations for promotions. I have letters of reference. Whatever job I had done, I had done well. That’s just my work ethic. Just like, get on with it. I don’t BS. I don’t mess around. Do you want me to sweep the floor? Well, fine. I’ll sweep the floor and I’ll do it well. If you want me to clean the pots and pans, I’ll clean them up; I’ll reorganize the whole kitchen. I just go crazy. Especially if I’m trying to work because, obviously, I’m trying to deal with the other issue, so I countered it with work hard and that way your brain doesn’t think so much. The irony was while I was in these odd jobs, I had ships actually applying to have me posted to them to be on them because I was required or needed by them to fill a position because of my rank and the fact that I normally was a supervisor. So, it kind of undermined their argument when the actual lawsuit happened that my services were no longer required. Okay, I have three ships asking for my services.

Having denied Simon his skilled work, the Navy then denied him a medical pension, terminating him in 1989. He remembered, “If they had left me for three more months in the military, I would’ve had a medical pension, but by kicking me out three months previously, I lost that because you had to have ten years. And that would’ve been my ten-year, my magical mini-medical pension they call it, so the ten-year mark. Unfortunately, they let me go.”

Simon was an active and important part of AIDS organizing in the Nova Scotia context, directly supporting many other people living with HIV and AIDS and participating in organizing spaces. The decision about his legal case for wrongful termination is a vital piece of the history of workplace disability law. We are proud to have Simon’s interview included in our oral history work and encourage you to check it out.

ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS
December 1, 2017, 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:30)
McNabb Recreation Centre, 180 Percy Street, Community Room
(Toronto [Ryerson], Montreal [McGill], and Calgary [ACAD] event info coming soon!)

Please join the AIDS Activist History Project for a video screening of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS, the 28th annual iteration of Visual AIDS’ longstanding Day With(out) Art project. Curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett for Visual AIDS, the video program prioritizes Black narratives within the ongoing AIDS epidemic, commissioning seven new and innovative short videos from artists Mykki Blanco, Cheryl Dunye & Ellen Spiro, Reina Gossett, Thomas Allen Harris, Kia Labeija, Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Brontez Purnell.

In spite of the impact of HIV/AIDS within African, Craibbean, and Black communities, these stories and experiences are constantly excluded from larger artistic and historical narratives. In 2016 African Americans represented 44% of all new HIV diagnoses in the United States. As of 2014, African, Caribbean, and Black communities represented an estimated 16% of people living with HIV in Canada, while representing only 2.5% of the population. Given this context, it is increasingly urgent to feature a myriad of stories that consider and represent the lives of those housed within these statistic. ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS seeks to highlight the voices of those that are marginalized within broader African, Caribbean, and Black communities, including queer and trans people.

Accessibility Info:
*Parking*
6 designated accessible parking spaces
Accessible path of travel from the parking lot to entrance
20 metres from parking space to the door

*Accessibility*
Ramp
Wide door for wheelchair passage
Automatic door opener
Direct access to the main floor, lobby, elevator

*Interior*
Automatic door access to interior areas
All public spaces on accessible path of travel
Ramps or elevators to all levels
Accessible seating available

-Bus tickets will be available for transportation.
-ASL translation and French whisper translation is available. Please email us (aidsactivisthistory<at>gmail.com) if you would like translation by November 17th.
-We request all participants refrain from wearing scents to better allow people with chemical sensitivities to attend.
-If you have any other accessibility questions not answered here, please get in touch.

Kids are welcome to attend; there will not be separate childminding, however.

A short interview with Alexis and Gary along with video footage from the hour-long AAHP presentation at Concordia University’s Community Lecture Series on HIV/AIDS a year ago is now available online.  Definitely worth checking out if you are interested in learning more about the Montreal collection of oral history interviews we’ve been conducting and the forgotten history of HIV/AIDS activism in Montreal.

During the summer of 2017 AAHP also hosted a workshop during the annual Pervers/Cité festival in collaboration with the Archives Gaies du Quebec to teach people about our work and the history of HIV/AIDS activism in Montreal in particular. We focused on showing participants how we use Omeka to organize our digital ephemera as well as the ongoing indexing process we are doing with our oral history transcripts in order to make them more accessible for future research(ers). Hopefully we will be hosting more workshops like this in the near future in other locations as well!

The AIDS Activist History Project (AAHP) is teaming up with the Archives Gaies du Quebec (AGQ) to offer a two-hour workshop during the 2017 edition of Pervers/cité. This hands-on workshop will teach participants how to efficiently use the digital archives that AAHP has been assembling from across Canada, and Montreal in particular. Participants will also have the opportunity to help us create indexes for Montreal oral history transcripts as well as help us digitize and upload Montreal-based AIDS activist ephemera housed at AGQ to our online archive. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop, but having one is not necessary to one’s participation. Workshop space is limited to 12 participants so please RSVP in advance by emailing the organizers directly at aidsactivisthistory@gmail.com. This workshop will primarily be in English.  You can check out the facebook event page for more details here!

The full Pervers/Cité 2017 schedule can be seen online.

Le AIDS Activist History Project (AAHP) en collaboration avec les Archives Gaies du Québec (AGQ) offriront un atelier de deux heure pendant l’édition de Pervers/cité de 2017. Cet atelier pratique montrera aux participants comment utiliser efficacement les archives numériques que l’AAHP a rassemblées de partout au Canada et de Montréal en particulier. Les participants auront également l’occasion de nous aider à créer des index pour les transcriptions de l’histoire orale de Montréal et nous aider à numériser et télécharger des éphémères militantes du sida de Montréal à l’AGQ dans nos archives en ligne. Les participants sont encouragés à apporter un laptop, mais ce n’est pas nécessaire pour participer. L’espace de l’atelier est limité à 12 personnes, s’il vous plaît inscrivez vous en avance avec les organisateurs directement par courriel à aidsactivisthistory@gmail.com. Cet atelier sera en anglais principalement.

The AIDS Activist History Project is happy to share Gary Kinsman‘s introduction to this amazing poster by Kara Sievewright!

Poster by Kara Sievewright
Introduction by Gary Kinsman

I am delighted to introduce Kara Sievewright’s wonderful poster, “Pride Has Always Been Political,” that vividly captures our movements in history. For those unfamiliar with Pride, it started off as the celebration of the rebellious origins of the queer and trans liberation movements in resistance to police repression in the later 1960s—ranging from the Compton’s cafeteria riot in San Francisco in 1966 to the more celebrated Stonewall riots in June 1969. The police have been a major vehicle for enforcing heterosexual hegemony and the two-gender binary system.

Since then, the origin of Pride marches have been largely forgotten with the transformation of Pride in larger urban centres into spectator-centred Parades, with commercialization, corporate and government sponsorships, and what I call the emergence of the white middle-class neoliberal queer who is accommodated with capitalist and racist social relations. This has distanced Pride celebrations from their radical (getting to the roots) political beginnings. Others have described this process as “homonormativity” (Lisa Duggan) or as “homonationalism” (Jasbir Puar). Sievewright’s poster works actively against this class-based and racialized process of the social organization of forgetting through activating the resistance of remembering the political roots of Pride.

Starting at the bottom of the poster, Sievewright depicts the Black Lives Matter contingent in Toronto Pride 2016 that brought the Parade to a halt with its sit-in and demands for funding and space for Black queers and trans people, for other queers of colour, and for Indigenous Two-Spirit people, along with the urgent need for the police to not have an institutional presence within Pride as long as they are attacking Blacks and other people of colour and Indigenous people. This inspiring action reminded all of us of the activist roots of Pride.

Returning to the top, we see the depiction of the Montréal resistance to the Olympic police repression in 1976 and to the raid on the Truxx bar in 1977. It was these revolts in the streets that led to Québec enacting sexual orientation protection in late 1977. This resistance continued in Toronto with the mass response to the 1981 bath raids which at that point were the largest mass arrests since the War Measures Act in 1970. It was this resistance that provided the context for the celebration of Lesbian and Gay Pride Day to mark the Stonewall riot in June 1981 in Toronto which has continued to today. The events that day were both a celebration and very political as we stopped in front of the Headquarters of the 52 Division of the Police (which had carried out the bath raids) chanting “Fuck You 52!”

The banner “We’re Asians Gay and Proud” signals the growing self-organization of queer and trans people of colour in the later 1970s and 1980s who were finding that their needs were not being addressed in the white-dominated gay communities where they faced racism, nor in their own communities of colour where they faced heterosexism and anti-trans discrimination. Black Lives Matter Toronto with its many queer and trans members continues and extends this tradition of organizing.

The bottom half of the poster depicts the major wave of AIDS activism organized by AIDS ACTION NOW! and various ACT UP groups in the later 1980s and early 1990s as people fought for their lives. Silence did literally mean death and direct action meant life. The image of the police arrest is from a demonstration against the police arrests at Sex Garage (a queer warehouse party) in 1990 that catalyzed queer organizing in Montréal.

Then Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) in Toronto Pride is depicted. QuAIA built on the spirit of anti-apartheid organizing against the separation and subordination policies of the former South African racist government but this time in opposition to the polices of the Israeli state against Palestinians. In response to this challenge to official Canadian support for and the “pinkwashing” of Israeli policies, QuAIA faced banning and major opposition from homonationalist forces within the Pride Committee and from City politicians.

It is very fitting, as mentioned above, that the powerful 2016 Black Lives Matter protest ends the poster (if you read it from top to bottom that is). This poster provokes actively remembering our histories while providing hope for a future where we can make socially transformative and liberationist queer and trans movements.

(MORE) PROPOSITIONS FOR THE AIDS MUSEUM
Directed by Philippe Dumaine
Théâtre LaChapelle, Montréal
April 24, 25, 27, 28, 2017

In the opening scene of this Montréal-based production, all the show’s actors stand shoulder to shoulder before the audience. In silence, the first person in the lineup lets a large drop of saliva slide out of their mouth only to be caught in the mouth of the person beside them. The act of sharing and mixing body fluids continues down the line until the final actor catches the last drop of spit and swallows. The gesture, in the context of a theatrical production about HIV/AIDS, needs no explanation. These actors are in it together for the following two hours of fluxus-style HIV/AIDS happenings.

The actors then re-present HIV/AIDS cultural production, activism, and history in a kaleidoscopic collage of scenes. A young woman, excited by the history of AIDS activism and ACT UP exasperatedly struggles to explain how the costume she has designed symbolically references many notable moments of activist resistance. A young man interprets Mathew McConaughey’s Dallas Buyers Club Oscar acceptance speech from English to French, putting into relief the absurdity of Hollywood’s callous relationship to the history of HIV/AIDS. Two actors stand before us side by side telling the most callous and horrendous AIDS jokes from the ‘80s and ‘90s, again changing their meaning by changing the context of their presentation. Another actor invites the audience to cheer and wave pompom’s while delivering a diatribe against HIV criminalization and the lack of safe injection sites, all while the scene is being live streamed on Facebook.

The performance vignettes continue, re-presenting HIV/AIDS cultural production, activism, and history. At times the references may be hard to decipher for those not immersed in HIV/AIDS activism or history. Not everyone will know that that naked actor washing himself in grapefruit juice is making explicit reference to the harmful interaction grapefruit juice has on some HIV medications. Not everyone will get the John Giorno references in lyrics of the Montreal electro-hipster duet that precedes the play’s closing scene. Not everyone will get that the flyer advertising the show is a direct reference to a photo of artist/activist David Wojnarowicz wearing a jacket with text on the back. But knowing all the references isn’t necessary. If anything it entices viewers to ask, “What was that about?” or at least prompt a google query. For me personally, it simply made me want to re-watch the entire production from beginning to end to catch more of the layers I might have missed the first time around.

Two moments in the show stand out in their ability to put the past in dialogue with the present. The first is simply a scene where all the actors slowly carry placards from upstage to downstage, looking directly into the faces of the audience. Some signs carry now well-worn HIV/AIDS slogans like “SILENCE = DEATH” or “ACTION = LIFE”, while others carry new slogans and phrases like “FREE STEVE,” referencing a Quebec City man imprisoned for HIV non-disclosure, and “SILENCE = SEX” referencing the stigma still faced by HIV-positive people who disclose their status in the bedroom. The other interesting present-historical moment comes when well-known Montréal drag queen Peaches LePage, also known locally as activist and performance artist Jordan Arsenault, invites a special guest from the audience to the stage for a Barbara Walters meets Joan Rivers sit-down interview. Special guests included Doctor Jean-Pierre Routy, publicist and playwright Puelo Deir, filmmaker Anne Golden, and performance artist Atif “Trannietronic” Siddiqi. The only addition I longed for in this moment of Montreal historiography was the acknowledgement and presence of the larger Montreal Haitian community that bore the brunt of the epidemic in its early days in that city. This was a missed opportunity and is a trajectory worth pursuing for another (EVEN MORE) PROPOSITIONS FOR THE AIDS MUSEUM in the future.

Following the on-stage interviews, the show crescendos into a Robert Wilson-esque final scene where each actor’s vignettes overlap on stage. A ballet dancer slowly sheds his coat of carnations in an endurance performance on his tippy toes, a young woman now nude and covered in self-applied Kaposi Sarcoma legions stares into the crowd, a young man covered in honey lying in a pile of popcorn slowly emerges to walk across the stage at a glacial pace. And much more.  The final scene is messy and complex and difficult to take in. A fitting end to a show that aims to present historical impressions of a messy and urgent period of crisis that continues in different forms today. While the show’s structure, historical references, and at times uncomfortable re-presentations of history might be difficult for some viewers, I think that might precisely be the point.

To learn more about the show check out project hybris.

Posting by Ryan Conrad

As I write this post, on this first day of December, I am again reminded that AIDS remains a condition that still affects so many people and for which there is still no cure. It has left a deep impact on the LGBTQ2S community. Despite all the pain, all the grieving, all the discrimination, AIDS remains to this day a catalyst for activists and champions of human rights. The history of AIDS, even more so of AIDS activism, is incomplete. What I mean is that the written records, the documents, the “evidence” is lacking from our archives. The Archives gaies du Québec – the Quebec Gay Archives or AGQ – does not have, nor does it pretend to have, all that was ever written, made, documented on this topic or any topic for that matter. This is why the word “archives” is always in the plural: not the final, definitive, complete archive – without an s – but the archives that were saved, preserved and documented along those that were lost, destroyed, or forgotten. This is why creating a research guide on the history of AIDS is important and why I accepted to work on this project.

First, I have a confession to make: I have never seen myself as an activist. I am both an archivist and a translator. My work has always happened in the background, away from prying eyes, in the shadow (and yes, often in the basement). I am not the kind of person who grabs a sign and walks in protest of something, with one exception. For years now, my husband and I have raised money and marched in the Farha Foundation AIDS Walk in Montreal, an event that sadly folded after the 2015 edition. I have too much respect for activists and the actions they take to refrain from calling myself that. Of course, one can still be political in other ways: from refusing to grammatically put women in parentheses when translating a text into French, to adapting existing archival standards that turns the focus from “the powerful” to those whose voices are seldom heard; knowing that the status quo is not the true representation of society and that archives are incomplete.

The research guide (available here) summarizes what is held at the AGQ. It presents a list of archival fonds, what us archivists call collections of records – a word that comes from the French fonds d’archives – that primarily focuses on AIDS, a list of fonds where AIDS is documented but not the primary focus, a lists of periodicals, and research techniques or tips for books, posters, audiovisual recordings and other material. While browsing these lists, one quickly notices an overrepresentation of archival material documenting the perspective of gay men or men who have sex with other men. Smaller fonds do focus on the experiences of trans people, lesbians, and bisexuals but the corpus is a lot thinner. If anything, creating this research guide has shown a gap for these other voices, silences, a lack of diversity that happened not because of intent or malice but simply because of the way the material was organically collected. From this gap we can justify rejecting the status quo and actively seeking out those other experiences that will help document the broad and diverse experiences of everyone in the LGBTQ2S community. All of us working on the AIDS Activist History Project and at the AGQ hope that this research guide will promote the discovery and use of this community documentary heritage. As the AGQ continues to acquire more records, and hopefully records that document an even greater diversity and inclusivity of voices, this guide will be augmented accordingly.

I would like to thank Alexis and Gary whose work allowed for the creation of this guide. A special thank you goes to Ross and Jacques, two guardians of memory, who continue to see to the day-to-day activities at the AGQ.

by Jonathan Dorey

Au moment d’écrire ces lignes en ce premier jour de décembre, j’ai la démonstration que le sida continue de frapper tant de gens et pour lequel il n’existe aucun traitement. Le sida a profondément marqué la communauté LGBTQ2S. Malgré la douleur, le deuil, la discrimination, le sida sert toujours de catalyseur pour les activistes et les défendeurs des droits de la personne. L’histoire du sida, et plus encore cette de l’activisme du sida, est incomplète. Je pense aux documents écrits, au matériel produit à toutes ces « preuves » qui manquent dans nos archives. Les Archives gaies du Québec (AGQ) n’a pas ni ne prétend avoir l’ensemble de tout ce qui a été écrit, publié ou produit sur le sujet ou aucun autre sujet d’ailleurs. Voilà pourquoi on utilise le mot « archives » au pluriel : non pas l’archive définitive, exhaustive et complète, sans le s, mais plutôt les archives sauvées, préservées et documentées ainsi que celles perdues, détruites ou oubliées. C’est pour ces raisons que la création d’un guide de recherche sur l’histoire du sida importe tant et que j’ai accepté de participer au projet.

Mais d’abord, une confession : je ne me suis jamais vu comme un activiste. Je suis à la base archiviste et traducteur. Mon travail s’est toujours déroulé en arrière-plan, à l’abri des regards, dans l’ombre (et oui, souvent au sous-sol). Je ne suis pas le genre de personne à prendre une pancarte et à aller manifester, avec une exception. Pendant des années, mon mari et moi avons amassé de l’argent et marché lors de la marche annuelle contre le sida de la Fondation Farha à Montréal, évènement qui a malheureusement cessé après sa dernière édition en 2015. J’ai trop de respect pour les activistes et leurs actions pour m’arroger ce titre. On peut par contre être politique autrement : du refus d’enfermer les femmes entre parenthèses dans un texte français à l’adaptation de normes archivistiques pour donner toute leur place aux sans-voix plutôt qu’uniquement aux « puissants »; reconnaître que le statu quo ne représente pas adéquatement la société et que les archives sont toujours incomplètes.

Le guide de recherche ressemble en un document ce que détiennent les AGQ. On y retrouve une liste de fonds d’archives, soit des collections de documents, portant principalement sur le sida, une liste de fonds où le sida est abordé mais de façon secondaire, une liste de périodiques et une série de techniques de recherche et de conseils pour chercher livres, affiches, enregistrements audiovisuels et autre matériel. En parcourant ces listes, on se rend vite compte qu’il y a une surreprésentation de documents d’archives offrant la perspective d’hommes gais ou d’hommes ayant des relations sexuelles avec d’autres hommes. Les AGQ détient également d’autres fonds sur l’expérience des personnes trans, lesbiennes ou bisexuelles, mais ce corpus est beaucoup plus mince. Créer ce guide de recherche a permis de mettre en lumière ce vide, ce silence, ce manque de diversité qui ne s’explique pas par une intention ou par malice, mais plutôt par un mode d’acquisition naturel. Ceci justifie le rejet du statu quo et le désir de rechercher ces autres expériences qui permettront de mieux documenter toute la diversité des expériences de la communauté LGBTQ2S. De nous tous qui travaillons sur le projet d’histoire de l’activisme sur le sida et aux AGQ, nous espérons que ce guide de recherche favorisera la découverte et l’utilisation de ce patrimoine documentaire communautaire. Le guide sera mis à jour et fur et à mesures des nouvelles acquisitions des AGQ, acquisitions qui nous le souhaitons seront encore plus diversifiées et inclusives.

J’aimerais remercier Alexis et Gary sans qui ce guide n’aurait pu être possible. J’aimerais également saluer le travail tout particulier de Ross et Jacques, deux gardiens de la mémoire, qui voient aux activités quotidiennes des AGQ.

Members of the AIDS Activist History Project are saddened to hear of the passing of Glen Brown, a remarkable and important figure in the history of AIDS-oriented activism in Canada. We are very grateful to have had the opportunity to interview Glen in 2014 about his experiences with AIDS activism in Toronto during the 1980s and 1990s. What follows is a glimpse into the many memories that Glen shared with us during his interview.

When Glen moved to Toronto in 1988, he described feeling as though he’d arrived at the “epicenter” of the AIDS epidemic in Canada. He recalls spotting posters around the city; images of that “giant Thor-like character” emblazoned with the words “TOO DAMN SLOW” and “IT’S TIME TO ACT.” That poster – which Glen held onto for decades – helped to draw him into the activist scene in Toronto. “I’m not going to do nothing,” he thought to himself. In our interview with Glen, he described that first meeting at Jarvis Collegiate. It was there that he first met many of the activists he’d been reading about in The Body Politic, including Tim McCaskell, Gary Kinsman, George Smith and Michael Lynch. It was a “powerful meeting,” he recalled, and “a nice welcoming place for a sort of lefty queer to arrive.” When the meeting broke up into working groups, Glen found himself joining the Public Action Committee, an arm of AIDS ACTION NOW! that was centered in organizing direct actions and demonstrations.

There were so many demonstrations that stood out in Glen’s memories: carrying mock coffins past the Toronto General Hospital; burning Jake Epp in effigy outside City Hall; the AIDS ACTION NOW! float and die-in during Toronto Pride; hanging effigies “out to dry” in front of Queens Park; and liaising with ACT UP New York and Réaction SIDA for the V International AIDS conference in Montreal. He reminded us of how powerful these demonstrations were, how committed and relentless the activism was at this time, and how he and others felt as though they were actually making a difference in the world.

Another particularly significant memory Glen shared with us was the key role that AIDS activists played in establishing what is now known as the Trillium Drug Plan. Glen’s work was central to this effort. By 1990, access to drug treatment had become the “chief issue facing people with HIV,” since many were unable to afford the exorbitant costs of life saving drug treatments. The resulting drug plan, Glen reminded us, was made possible by the activists who relentlessly demanded change and consistently called upon politicians to do better by people living with HIV/AIDS.

Near the end of our interview with Glen, he described his work around AIDS activism as “the most transformative part” of his life. We look forward to learning more about this work from the many stories, images and documents that Glen shared with us. We invite others to learn from these materials, which we’ve made publicly available here on our website.

Rest in power, Glen.

Click here to read through the full transcript from our two-part interview with Glen, and to learn more about his important contributions to AIDS activism.