BC Gay and Lesbian Archives to Host Educational Pride Event in Partnership with City of Vancouver Archives
The BCGLA and City of Vancouver Archives are gearing up to help educate and inform the next generation on why their history is important now more than ever this June
Vancouver, B.C. – April 10, 2024
They’re here, they’re queer, and they always have been. The Vancouver-based BC Gay and Lesbian Archive (BCGLA) is preparing for this year’s Pride by reminding everyone of their long history in the city. With an extensive collection of photographs, posters, diaries, films and other media artifacts, the City of Vancouver Archives and BCGLA want to walk you through the stories of Vancouver’s bar and drag scene, the various gay rights organizations of past and present, representative of movements both social and political. These snapshots in time provide a look back at a community that has always been present, but often been forgotten in history. Through an online campaign and in-person exhibit in Vancouver’s West End, the BCGLA in partnership with the City of Vancouver Archives aims to educate, inform, and empower today’s LGBT2QIA+ community as well as their allies. This exhibit will last all month this Pride, accompanied by a social media campaign to show off the digitization efforts to further preserve this unique part of Vancouver culture. Celebrating a visible and proud history, the BCGLA is honoured to share this with Vancouver and the rest of British Columbia this June.
In a time before social media, documenting events beyond the mainstream lens took more than having a phone with a camera and a data plan. It took someone realizing they were experiencing events worth documenting, with the archival and filing skills to do so, the space to keep the physical documents, and the passion to see it through. For the Vancouver gay rights movement of the 1970s, that person was Ron Dutton. He began collecting media from Vancouver’s gay community as he lived it, posters and flyers, regardless of how important it seemed at the time. “These are our stories,” said Ron Dutton, on amassing these media artifacts and sharing them with the City of Vancouver Archives. “We have to control the narrative. We have to be the ones who decide what our lives mean.”
On this partnership with the City of Vancouver Archives and the donation of his personal collection, he believes it is to the benefit of the community to have these items officially archived and digitized. Despite historic tension between the city and its LGBT2QIA+ community, Ron Dutton was quick to remark, “They are friends of our community.”
The BC Gay and Lesbian Archives are an archival resource started and maintained by Ron Dutton prior to its donation to the City of Vancouver Archives in 2018. With more than an estimated 750,000 items ranging from pamphlets to academic papers to ‘zines, the archive is a collection of cultural, political, and historical importance. It details foundational queer rights movements and their impact, big and small, as well as the more intimate and personal details of queer people living through those historic moments. The City of Vancouver Archives is the official archives of Vancouver, British Columbia. Housed in Vancouver since the early 1930s, it has been the repository for official records of all branches of government, city-funded projects and organizations, and donated archives of significant cultural value such as that of the BC Gay and Lesbian Archives.
For more information, contact Jane Doe, Media Relations and Head of Communications for the City of Vancouver Archives, 604-736-8561 (archives@vancouver.ca)