The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives Details		Home		Digress		Contact

TitlTHE CANADIAN LESBIAN AND GAY ARCHIVES

"The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives houses the world's biggest collection of lesbian and gay periodicals -- everything from single-sheet organization newsletters to fat gay glossies; from the latest dyke "zines" to physique mags of the Fifties. Some titles go back even beyond 1937 (but we confess to a special fondness for Bachelor)."

What this site boasts on this historical preservation group's home page seems to be true. In my search for cool and creative queer publications, the archive directory on this site, Our Own Voices is extremely usesful. There's a short, but pretty informative article on the Our Own Voices page, "Publishing waves: from the '70s, the '50s -- and before," for newbies to the history or queer press. What's more, each archival entry for the many publications represented on this site includes a good amount of background info for each magazine, newsletter, zine, and piece of art (I highly suggest visiting "The National Portrait Collection: Canadian contributors to an out and proud community" page--not all the portraits are snapshots; some are self portraits). An interesting bit of trivia regarding the archive's history is the fact that Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives was started in the 1970s by those involved with The Body Politic (TBP) and Pink Triangle Press (Currently XTRA.CA). Much credit is given in this respect to Jearld Moldenhauer and Ron Dayman, "collective members" of TBP who felt a strong need to catalogue the pieces of lesbian and gay history acquired through the publication of TBP, leading to the creation of the Lesbian and Gay Archivist (newsletter of The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives), launching its first issue in 1977. The archives' collage takes on a holistic approach to their style of documenting by not only include clippings from other queer press during the time, but also mainstream media publications as a way to mark more general public responses to queer issues. Very cool.