Bringing Home Our Local Queer and Trans History
By Walter Cassidy
My project to improve local awareness of Windsor/Essex queer and trans history started as a PowerPoint slideshow to be included in a course I was teaching for the University of Windsor. Entitled “Teaching LGBTQ students,” the course was designed for educators who teach queer and trans students from Kindergarten to Grade 12. I began to look for references to 2SLGBTQAI+ individuals and events in provincial and federal resources and found some, including a few school-friendly timelines. Next, I started looking for local published or archival material. There was only a local book published in 2010 – a compilation of personal stories. I approached the local libraries and museums to see if they had anything. Nothing. So I started to look outside of the Windsor area.
It turned out most of the archival material about our local queer history was found in Toronto, in the collections of The ArQuives. This started my rabbit-hole journey: a COVID-19 pandemic project of looking for, promoting, and finding local homes for, more documents, images, artifacts, and oral histories of our local queer and trans history. In December 2020 I created the Windsor-Essex Rainbow Alliance (WERA) to help accomplish this, partnering with the Rotary Club, the University of Windsor’s Leddy Library, and interested individuals who shared my goals.
Although interesting local histories of our region have been written, my search revealed that they tend not to have employed a “queer lens” perspective. If the authors did look for or report on historical examples of queer life, too often they included only very brief descriptions, or presented the facts they found in a negative light. As queer activist Harold Desmarais once said to me, “Our history was stolen from us.” Most of our identity was simply suppressed.
There are practical reasons for some of that historical invisibility: in eras when homosexuality was illegal and other forms of gender non-conformity or sexual difference were socially frowned upon, discretion, disguise, and misdirection were important. So, when it comes to the potential queerness of members of the community, unless there are court records it can be almost impossible to prove. Instead, we must rely on clues and/or suggestions. Some people feel we shouldn’t speculate about the activities and interior lives of people if we can’t prove anything. Personally, I feel it is important to name that history. If it wasn’t for homophobia most of these people would have been able to live a free and open life. If we don’t even ask the question, homophobia wins and our historical visibility is lost. I feel that when enough time has passed and immediate family and loved ones are gone, why not?
For instance, I wonder about Amherstburg photographer Benjamin LaPierre (1886-1911) who never married and is known to have taken photographs of naked men. I wonder about Southwestern Ontario bigwig Thomas Talbot (1771-1853), also unmarried, whose one-time servant, companion, and estate manager George MacBeth travelled and sometimes lived with him, and inherited half of Talbot’s estate. Architect Bert McPhail (1888-1966, who designed several notable local buildings) was married with children but was once a “bearded lady” circus performer. There are others. In some cases the evidence is weak; for others it supports significant speculation. But instead of always assuming people of historical significance are straight, I believe there needs to be more flexibility with the possibilities. One day maybe we will find a love letter or something that will give us clear evidence. Most likely we will never know for sure. What we can possibly all agree upon, however, is that these individuals were definitely “queer people” in the old-fashioned sense of being somehow outside the expected norms of behaviour.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that we got “real” self-declared, documented queer and trans history in Canada. This was a time when finally, many in the community were publishing their experiences. But even then, many of those stories came from a very narrow, privileged perspective. Voices and insights from lesbian, trans, QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) and/or disabled folks were rarely recorded or celebrated.
Another blind spot in these emerging histories of queer and trans life in Canada? Windsor! When it comes to the early days of Gay Liberation in Canada, Windsor was at the table from the beginning. While Windsor has no documented participation in the 1971 “We Demand” protest, we did participate in the first National Gay Pride Week in Canada in 1973, but this is not included in any timelines or narratives of national queer history. Those same timelines rarely include Windsor events, and if they do (such as the 1842 sodomy trial of Samuel Moore and Patrick Kelly), the event is stripped of its identification with our area.
Similarly, important individuals like John Damien, Harold Desmarais, Hedy and Colleen Halpern, and Johua Birch have important ties to our area, but these are rarely mentioned. People leave smaller places and move to larger cities for complex reasons, and cultural influences from their region of origin continue to shape them in their new locations. Failing to incorporate an individual’s roots in narratives of queer history can allow for a misinterpretation of the reasons (negative or positive) which motivated them to leave their hometown, erases a part of their history, and stifles an opportunity for smaller communities to see themselves in national narratives of important turning points (which could help overcome prejudice, stereotypes, and isolation in those smaller areas).
Queer spaces in Windsor/Essex happen to have a fascinating and complicated history. For a long time these spaces have included the neighbouring American metropolis of Detroit. The “gay commute” (a term coined by Graeme Sylvio Sylvestre) took place on both sides of the border. The Windsor-Detroit region provided a unique opportunity for queer and trans individuals to leave their lives behind for a night, cross the border, and become someone else. This commute extended as far away as Ohio and Toronto. Instead of simply stopping at the imaginary line that marks the boundary between countries, we need to recognize that border cities have a rich culture exchange and community beyond borders. Understanding Windsor/Essex queer and trans history requires us to also understand the history of Detroit’s queer spaces – which have been researched by Tim Retzloff, Michael Boettcher, and others.
In 2020, under the banner of WERA, I started to reach out to people in Windsor/Essex and elsewhere to ask for their stories about local queer and trans history. Because I had found so little in our local libraries, archives, and museums, I started to collect stuff myself, in my home: documents, images, artifacts, emails, posters, and more. Some people needed to persuaded it was important and/or safe to do so, but others were eager to donate their items. In the short term, I used these materials to expand my original PowerPoint slideshow, create new timelines, publish a booklet of local queer history, curate an exhibit at Museum Windsor, and more. But my long-term goal was to make my collection available to others, so that new histories can be written in years to come. The “WERA collection” (F 0082) of documents, images, publications, and ephemera is now preserved and available for public research through the Leddy Library Archives & Special Collections. Other artifacts have found a home with Museum Windsor. The digital portal where you are reading this essay right now is another outcome of this work.
The lack of documented history I found when I started this project is now starting to change, both through WERA’s efforts and because straight historians are now including us in their stories. One example is a history of local wrestling written by Jamie Greer, which deliberately includes LGBTQ examples such as Sandy Parker, Jaime D, and Gisele Shaw. Hopefully, more local historians will understand that we are in every marginalized and privileged group, so therefore our lives should be in ALL local historical community stories. We have always been there regardless of the lack of inclusion or evidence in the historical documents.
There are still many more stories, artifacts, and memories that need to be preserved. If you or someone you know have photographs, letters, memoirs, match covers, meeting minutes, posters, magazines, buttons, t-shirts, or anything else that tells the story of Windsor/Essex and Detroit 2SLGBTQAI+ life, DO NOT throw them out. Instead, please consider offering to donate them to the University of Windsor’s Leddy Library Archives & Special Collections (documents, images, ephemera, and publications), Museum Windsor (artifacts), or the Windsor Public Library (publications). And if your items do not happen to fit the guidelines for what they collect, please offer them also to The ArQuives in Toronto.
Our history must be preserved for future generations, so they know that they were NEVER alone.
Walter Cassidy has been the educator in residence for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights for the past two years. He has been a Windsor educator for the past 25 years as well as a historian, and activist. He currently teaches a AQ course for University of Windsor: How to Teach LGBTQ Students for the last six years. He is the Chair of WERA (Windsor/Essex Rainbow Alliance) which preserves 2SLGBTQAI history in the Windsor/Essex County area as well as partnering with the city on creating permanent spaces and monuments for future generations to enjoy. He has recently been published on various local 2SLGBTQAI historical moments. Last year, he had an exhibit at the Chimczuk Museum and one at the Amherstburg Freedom. He also contributed to the Love in a Dangerous Time Exhibit, currently at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which is the largest queer exhibit in Canadian history.