And I do think Canada is in this period of reconciliation with a lot of its past, for First Nations, for queer people.
What did you think of that?Ī: The police were brave to apologize because they do have an ugly history with our community. Q: Recently, the police apologized for their treatment of the LGBTQ2 community. Szabo was a founding member of one of Western Canada's first gay bars, Club Carousel, in Calgary. Lois Szabo was the grand marshal for the 2017 Calgary Pride Parade. I remember as a young person in the '90s seeing the hunters. It was often young men, in pickup trucks, with baseball bats, or some other kinds of weapons, who would go around, hunting. So there was a bit of a dark period in Calgary's history for the gay community - and that was replicated all over Canada in all Canadian cities. Many people who were attacked wouldn't report it, because they were still in the closet.
There was a general fear, of AIDS and gay people, so quite often we were hunted and attacked on the streets of Calgary. Some people believe it's connected to the AIDS crisis that was happening. But throughout the '80s and '90s, there was a lot of gay bashing in this city. He was beaten so badly, his co-workers didn't recognize him. There was an off-duty fireman in there who called an ambulance and, ironically, they took him to the hospital where he worked.
He managed to stagger to the bar after some Good Samaritans chased off his attackers. He had 27 fractures in his skull and face alone. He saw something out of the corner of his eye, and then he was hit in the head with a baseball bat, and three assailants bashed him to within an inch of his life. It's faded and cracked, and I'd really like that preserved, somehow.Ī: In the late '80s, there was a 37-year-old nurse called Jay Harris who was walking to a bar called the Parkside Continental. So it was red walls and yellow circus tent walls - and one of those walls still exists. But they decorated it like a circus, because they wanted to make it brighter. It was amazing they got so many hundreds of people down there. It just became storage space.Īnd it was very dark, low ceiling, kind of a firetrap space. Q: Why is it important to get this site designated as a heritage site?Ī: In the basement where the club was, it never was a bar after they left. She's a really important person in the community's history. She's 82, and last year, in 2017, she led the Pride Parade as its grand marshal. The dawn of the organized gay community in Calgary was this club, and there's only one founder still left alive. But they got a local lawyer involved who managed to get them to create a charity. They formed as a private member's club in 1970 and the judge threw out the police's court case against them. It became very popular: 600 members. This was at a time when homosexuals were criminals and challenged by police - and the police tried to shut this bar down. Q: What's special about 1207 First Street S.W.?Ī: was the site of the very first gay bar in Calgary, called Club Carousel. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Allen spoke with Radio-Canada's Charlotte Dumoulin on Monday when he took her on a walk through Calgary's gay history. Six years ago, Kevin Allen started the Gay Calgary History Project, in order to tell the stories of Calgary's gay history through the eyes and ears of the people who lived it.