GAY CANADA

INTRODUCTION TO THE UPDATED AND REVISED ELECTRONIC EDITION (2009)

Comments | Arrangement | Methodology

In event of discrepancy between searchable version of this document and PDF version (the latter accessible at "Printable copy" link, above), please prefer PDF version.

IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING BIBLIOGRAPHIC COVERAGE:
The title of the updated bibliography carries the date range of 1984 to 2008. This range should be interpreted carefully, with consideration of the following comments:  There are, for the entire period of coverage, major difficulties in reaching for comprehensiveness because of weaknesses in indexing and library cataloguing policies, including (but not only) the problem of lack of subject access to fictional works. Quite beyond that matter, however, there is the issue, for the most recent years, of time lag between publication of a work and its inclusion (when there is inclusion at all) in library catalogues and by indexing services. The user should note well, then, that the intensive systematic search of databases for this current update was conducted from mid-August to early October 2008. Discoveries from various sources were added to the list both before that period and after, and some items were added as late as early 2009.  However, there will be lacunae particularly for late 2008.  There will certainly also be items missed from early 2008 and for the years immediately preceding, because of the time lag difficulty just noted.  The serious researcher will, then, after some time has passed wish to examine again indexing sources to gather additional items for the years towards the end of the coverage date range. Users should also familiarize themselves more generally with the scope of coverage of the bibliography by reading the rest of the Introduction.

GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE UPDATED EDITION:
With respect to the introductory section of this current bibliography update, the user will note that much has been carried over from the first electronic edition, with changes made when it seemed necessary to do so.

Electronic mounting of the Gay Canada bibliography has been made possible with the generous cooperation of staff of the University of Saskatchewan Library and is done with the permission of the copyright holders, Alex Spence and Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.  A link is provided from this electronic edition to the Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. Web site.

The electronic edition was first mounted by the University of Saskatchewan Library in 2005, at which time it provided quite thorough coverage from 1984 to approximately 2002. Some references were included for imprints of the years 2003 to 2005.  This present electronic document updates the 2005 document by adding, as noted above, references gathered primarily through systematic index searches conducted from mid-August to early October 2008. It also includes post-2002 references discovered in other ways, often by chance, and items from the 1984-2002 period which came to light after publication of previous versions of the bibliography. These additional items have been interfiled into the original 2005 Web-mounted document.

There has been much publication activity from 2002 to the present, reflecting literary, legal, social, and popular cultural developments and interests. The result is that a printed list of the current updates runs to approximately 300 pages. Those items added through this updating are primarily print-format works, although there are as well quite a few links to electronically available documents. (In this regard, the comment of a letter writer, Mel Keegan, to the Toronto glbt periodical, Xtra! (January 1, 2009, p. 17) is of interest. His claim, in reference specifically to gay literature, is that “[m]uch of the best gay writing, publishing and (often) reading happens online these days.”  The compiler has no good sense of the level of electronic compared with traditional print publication in this regard, but if that writer’s claim is valid, then the user might wish to supplement a search of this current bibliography with additional investigation for possibly uncatalogued and unindexed online sources). 

As with earlier editions of the list, the compiler hopes that facilitation of access through  this updated document encourages further research, leads to reading enjoyment, and expands general awareness of significant issues for what is now a time span of roughly a quarter century, during which there has been particularly much legal, judicial, literary, and other activity in Canada. (As a reminder, the list also extends time period coverage of the earlier print-format Homosexuality in Canada bibliographies (1st ed., 1979; 2nd ed., 1984), which may be consulted for older work).

The Gay Canada bibliography seeks to provide a broad overview of Canadian events by providing references drawn from many disciplines.  To understand the limitations of the list, the user is strongly advised to read thoroughly the introductory material and to pay attention particularly to the contents of the Methodology section. Although the sections following appear  much as they did in the first edition (2001) of Gay Canada , with only minor subsequent changes (including minor changes for this 2008 Web mounting), the information is still relevant with respect to sources of information, search strategy suggestions, and comparison and contrast with extent of database coverage for the 2008 updating.

The current updated and revised electronic edition consolidates references which appear in two  print publications, and incorporates the more recent search results as well a few error corrections and other minor changes found to be necessary after issuance of earlier print publications. The two print publications are the following, compiled by Alex Spence:

            Gay Canada: A bibliography and videography, 1984-2000, including many added
                        citations from 2001 and early 2002.  Rev. and expanded ed.; Toronto: Canadian
                        Scholars’ Press, 2002. (xiii, 603 p.; ISBN 1551302217) and

            First supplement to the revised and expanded edition (2002) of Gay Canada: A
                        bibliography and videography, 1984-2000: Providing reference to additional
                        imprints of 2001, 2002 and 2003 and to some further items uncovered from the
                        1984-2000 period and earlier.  Toronto: iirg, 2004. (ii, 121 p.; ISBN 0968458815)
                                   
[The first of the two works listed above, Gay Canada, was itself issued in one part, as cited above, but also in two parts (in both cases under the Canadian Scholars’ Press imprint). The two-part version comprised the following: the first edition of Gay Canada: A bibliography and videography, 1984-2000, published in 2001 (ISBN 1551302063), and Gay Canada: A bibliography and videography. Supplement, issued in 2002 (ISBN 1551302233), with the 2002 Supplement issued for the financial convenience of those institutions which had purchased the first edition and which might not have wished to purchase the full new 2002 edition.]

Search and compilation methodology for the 2008 updating generally follows that used for earlier editions and supplements. See the Methodology section, and also read the added parenthetical guidance note at the opening of that section.

Scholarly subject databases, general indexes, and miscellaneous other sources examined to provide the references displayed in the electronic document (2005) are listed in the Methodology section. The user should note that the major scholarly subject databases were re-examined for this 2008 electronic update, using search strategies quite similar to those employed earlier.  However, not all of the library catalogues and general indexes that were checked for the earlier edition were given quite the same examination for the update. These limitations were imposed partially by reconsideration of probable degree of overlap among some of those sources and partially by time constraints.  One result of this, as an example, is that, with respect to library catalogues, only the  AMICUS catalogue (which presents many English and French references from a host of Canadian libraries of various kinds) was examined, but the catalogues of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and of Canada’s largest public library, the Toronto Public Library, were not.  A second result is that, because the general periodical index, CPI.Q, was given more thorough examination for this update, and was done early on, the later checking of CBCA, also a general index, was consequently limited to items that were displayed in that source as being scholarly in nature, while leaving aside the general magazine and newspaper items. (As a collateral matter, the CPI.Q index also provides reference to items from the Globe & Mail newspaper, which newspaper, listed separately as a source in the Methodology section, was therefore not examined on its own, as it was for some earlier searches).  Considering these matters, then, and depending on the depth of research interest, some users may wish to carry examination of some sources to a greater level of detail, particularly regarding general (non-scholarly) references. It will be noted, though, that from the very first edition of this bibliography, general-interest reports (magazine and newspaper articles, editorials and opinion pieces), because of their overwhelming number and frequently quite ephemeral nature, have been included selectively, on the basis of the compiler’s judgment of relative significance, to avoid excessive cluttering of the list.

For the guidance of those users researching narrowly and deeply, then, the following is a list of the databases which were searched in preparation of the 2008 update. This list could be compared with the sources examined in the earlier compilations (see Methodology section) and may suggest additional avenues for data mining.

The following databases were searched for the period from the beginning of 2002 onwards. Thus, retrieval was for items indexed or catalogued as of late Summer 2008, approximately.

1. AMICUS catalogue
2. Proquest Dissertations & Theses
3. MLA International Bibliography
4. America: History and Life
5. ERIC (education database)
6. Psychological Abstracts
7. CSA Sociological Abstracts
8. CPI.Q
9. CBCA Full
10. Canadian Research Index
11. LegalTrac
12. Index to Canadian Legal Literature
13. Expanded Academic ASAP

Examined also were the recent Canadian gay poets anthology, Seminal, edited by John Barton and Billeh Nickerson. Several university faculty publication lists were also looked at and some references were discovered through Web exploration.

Given the details and caveats discussed in the previous paragraphs, it is the compiler’s opinion that the updated and revised electronic edition provides a quite good and broad overview of significant Canadian activities and events in diverse subject areas from 1984 into 2008, keeping always in mind inevitable indexing and cataloguing delays and omissions of various sorts.

The list continues, nevertheless, to be incomplete, and is always to be viewed as a work in progress. That this is the case is apparent from the number of imprints of the period 1984-2000 which, although now appearing on the current electronic list, had not been discovered for the first edition (2001) of the Gay Canada bibliography. The best that can be hoped is that a high percentage of significant works has been uncovered and that a guiding overview of the Canadian situation is offered to the user who wishes to delve further and in greater detail. 

As a reminder: for older published Canadian material on gay issues, please consult Alex Spence’s Homosexuality in Canada bibliography (Toronto: Pink Triangle Press, 1979) and William Crawford’s second edition of that work, under the same title (Toronto: Canadian Gay Archives, 1984). These bibliographies, available only in print format, are both numbers in a series of publications of the Canadian Gay Archives (now the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives), Toronto.

The compiler always welcomes hearing of any errors, omissions or other oversights.

Toronto,
January 27, 2009

GENERAL COMMENTS

            (This section is taken from an earlier edition of Gay Canada, with only very minor
alterations and corrections for the current Web mounting).

Canadian queer works of the imagination and Canadian scholarly and general works on queer issues can be situated within the broader sphere of Canadian works on sex and sexuality and also within the framework of international queer and more general sexuality study. An examination of the library catalogue and journal indexes of any academic institution of repute will produce books, journal articles, and bibliographies on sexuality issues and also information on queer issues with international and various narrower foci.  Within Canada, to give a single scholarly Web site example, the Canadian Historical Association has, since 1996, had an official subcommittee, titled the Canadian Committee on the History of Sexuality, which exists to provide an organizational focus for the historical study of sexuality (see their Web site at www.cha-shc.ca/cchs/.  As of  November 2008, this site displays a bibliography, titled “Bibliography on the History of Sexuality in Canada,” referencing works which deal with broad issues of sexuality and including items of relevance to queer studies.

With respect to the bibliographic documentation of Canadian queer issues, the first major checklist of Canadian gay and lesbian print and non-print titles was published in 1979 (Alex Spence, Homosexuality in Canada: A Bibliography, Toronto: Pink Triangle Press). That list was followed five years later by an updated and expanded edition (William Crawford, Homosexuality in Canada: A Bibliography, Toronto: Canadian Gay Archives, 1984).  The publication in 2001 of Gay Canada: A Bibliography and Videography, 1984-2000 was a first attempt to bring some bibliographic control to more recently produced Canadian queer works. The 2001 publication was followed by updates, the last one published in print format in 2008 (see citations in previous section).

Documenting and providing access to queer history and current events, and the Canadian part of those developments, is recognized by some as an important undertaking. This recognition is attested nationally in the prominence and growth of, among other institutions, the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (Toronto) and the Archives gaies du Québec (Montréal), institutions whose superb collections and staff help to compensate for the shortness of human memory and the narrowness of individual experience.  In 1979, the Canadian Gay Archives (as it was then called) comprised a couple of book bays and several filing cabinets.  Today, the collection would fill rooms and provides much unpublished material for research. (Note that unpublished items, with the major exception of academic theses, are not listed in this bibliography.  To pursue this Canadian material, various archival collections, including the substantial resources of the Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatoon, should be consulted).  Recognition of the importance of queer issues is reflected also in the significant, although very uneven, improvement in the collections of public libraries in this country.¹
 
But why try, in particular, to gather the Canadian queer bibliographic story of the past two decades?  Is it worth the effort?  Aren’t most references or full texts of articles now much more easily accessible through library catalogues or electronic indexes over the Internet?  Isn’t there already enough accessibility?  Why another list?  It depends on exactly what one is trying to find out.  It is now certainly easier to look at what has happened in a particular narrower subject area (say, law or education) with regard to sexual orientation.  The computer sorts quickly.  But it is quite a different issue to try to gain an overview of events -- in literature, in history, in psychology, in religion, medicine, and politics, simultaneously.  To get this latter kind of view requires extraction of material from many different sources, some of which are still not presented in ways to particularly encourage the finding process.  Such a queer overview I consider to be important enough to justify this compilation, incomplete though it is.  The analogy of the three blind men and the elephant comes to mind. It can be both personally satisfying to know where a labeled group presently stands within a society and valuable in terms of presenting one’s case for fair and equitable treatment.

 But then there is the issue, itself, of labeling, with objections coming from a quite different direction.  Foucaultian social philosophers, queer theorists, and the Bert Archer² sort of writer comment variously on the historical and individual fluidity of sexual identity and the passing of need for terms such as lesbian, gay or homo/hetero/bisexual.  Arguments are advanced with cleverness, and they have been advanced at length.  It is heartening that there are some in Canada and other Western countries who are now so comfortable inside and out that, for them, labeling has become unnecessary.  It is encouraging too that this has occurred just one short generation after the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York and the 1981 police raids of Toronto bathhouses.  But then another gay youth is beaten to death. Then a host of much lesser indignities arises to remind some that they are not yet able, openly at last, to be who they are or do what they wish to do.  This is a more significant impetus for the list, even though the results of compilation can most reasonably be expected to be limited.

There are still other possible justifications. This is a list of Canadian issues and events, a list of such type that sometimes seems artificial, separating as it does works of the human mind on the basis of national borders. In the Canadian queer situation, however, not providing some national emphasis means that titles become, effectively, much less accessible locally and very much less accessible internationally. They are buried to all but the few who know something of narrow subject corners and to the fewer still who have kept abreast more broadly.  In comparison, American publication efforts have, as always, been particularly impressive in contributing valuable information to all who are interested in queer matters and, crucially, in ensuring that that information is organized and well disseminated.  However, United States titles, whether they be encyclopedic works³, histories, bibliographies, or Internet resources, do, with rare exceptions, take a sharply national approach. The rest of the world is an addendum, if it is treated at all.⁴  The Canadian situation, though, has something to say to the international community,  through its literature, in its leading legal advances, and through other unique experiences. Subtle systemic legal, judicial, political, and social differences may offer ideas to members of queer communities elsewhere in their pursuit of a life of enjoyment and fulfillment. 

In the end, though, a modest hope is more appropriate. Perhaps there will be one or two browsers who find a lead to some helpful information, a guide to a bit of literary enjoyment, or a clearer view of the Canadian situation.  That would be enough.

My experience in compiling the first bibliography in 1979 warns clearly that comprehensiveness is an elusive goal.  The number of relevant references overlooked depends to a large extent on the diligence of so many others upon whom the compiler must rely – librarians who index periodical publications and those who acquire and catalogue books and manuscripts. Archivists also have gathered and organized much material that never appears in standard indexing sources or in library catalogues (material which, as mentioned earlier, has also generally been excluded from this list).   Thoroughness is dependent as well on the amount of time a compiler has available to pursue possibly relevant items not readily at hand. This list, then, must be considered preliminary.  Those knowledgeable in the various subject subsections of the bibliography will very quickly detect lacunae.  I do hope, though, to have provided some solid sense of the wide range of works that have been produced during the past two decades and to have taken a step towards a more comprehensive list of the advances, disappointments, and experiences of past years.

ARRANGEMENT

Please refer to the Table of Contents for a broad outline of the bibliography.  Within each
section and subsection arrangement is alphabetical by author (and for works with no author given, then by title). The exception to this is the LAW, JUDICIARY and CIVIL RIGHTS section.  In this one case I considered a primary chronological listing to be more appropriate, considering both the size of the section and the importance of precedent in the legal system.  In this case, then, works have been grouped by year of publication, in reverse chronology.  A chronological arrangement could have been applied to some of the other larger sections, but the necessity of doing so did not seem quite so important.

When there is more than one work by an author in a section, arrangement is by title under the author.  If an author is a single author, the first author of a multi-authored work, and an editor, all in the same section, the single-author works precede the multiauthored ones and the edited works follow these two.  Entries beginning with a numeral are filed as if the numeral were written out, in English or French, as appropriate.

The “Mc”/”Mac” filing situation has been treated as it is now handled by computers.  That is to say, names are filed as spelled.  Please check both possibilities if you are uncertain.

Some attempt was made to group related topics.  Thus, YOUTH follows EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS and AIDS follows MEDICINE AND HEALTH.

METHODOLOGY

(This section is substantively as it appeared in the first edition (2001) of Gay Canada, Some updates/revisions were added for the revised edition (2002). Subsequently, only minor changes and additions were made, and changes for this current updating appear primarily in the paragraph immediately preceding the list of enumerated search sources. The Methodology section may be useful to look at in conjunction with the first section, “Introduction to the Revised and Updated Electronic Edition (2008).” Such examination will bring to the user’s attention slight differences in updating methods. The Methodology section also continues to serve as a general guide to search strategy construction, although it should be used in that regard only for its broad suggestions, because databases may have evolved somewhat).

First to the issue of what is Canadian.  Such definition has traditionally been in terms of subject matter, authorship, publication provenance, or some combination of these three.  For the purpose of this list, criteria applied vary somewhat, depending on the type of publication being examined.

For literature, authorship is the primary consideration.  An author is considered to be Canadian if born in the country, holding Canadian citizenship, or otherwise having a close association with the nation.  Works published by foreign houses appear on the list, then, if authored by Canadians so defined.  There are, conversely, however, titles published by Canadian houses that are not authored by Canadians.  These latter, accounting for a very small number of items, are listed on the (secondary) basis of place of publication.⁵ 

The criteria for inclusion of literary criticism and for all non-literary categories (law, religion, sociology/anthropology, for example) are different.  In these cases, subject matter has been given primary consideration.  Thus, items are included if the subject is Canadian, regardless of authorship.  Included also, however, are critical works by Canadians or appearing in Canadian publications, if the subject matter is a general discussion of queer matters that is not country-specific and if this generality could be easily determined.  But excluded are works treating foreign subjects, even if these have been authored by Canadians or published in Canadian sources.⁶  A very few exceptions are made in this last case, and when made are so indicated in the entries.

Queer publication appears to have exploded in Canada in the 1990s, as the user will see in checking publication dates. (The compiler’s Moving the Mountain: Historical Patterns in Gay Book Publishing and Academic Thesis Production: A Canadian Model, Toronto: iirg, c2005; ISBN 0968458823, also gives a good sense of this increase).  There was much to examine in the indexes and catalogues chosen for investigation.  There was also much that I judged to be ephemeral.  Emphasis was placed on substantive works, but erring on the side of caution meant including some items of possibly lesser significance.  Minor items were more often included when a particular subject area seemed lacking in material in order that some starting point could be presented to the interested user.

A very large number of references (in the neighbourhood of ten thousand) was examined from a variety of indexes, catalogues, and bibliographies.  Major and varied sources were chosen in order to maximize retrieval of a broad subject range of important references.  Nevertheless, other indexes remain to be examined.  These would likely, in spite of some probable overlap in coverage with those already searched, yield some important items, because of differences in indexing emphasis.  It could be argued, though, that with the large number of scholarly references presented in this list, the user might use the time-honoured approach of following the reference trail in the cited papers as a means of uncovering additional relevant material.

The following is a list of sources examined and includes brief descriptions of scope and strategy suggestions for extraction of relevant items. Most of what is presented in the Methodology section is taken from the Introduction to the first (2001) and revised (2002) editions of Gay Canada. Only minor updating changes have been made subsequently. The user should be aware that index coverage and indexing terminology may evolve somewhat and will vary among databases and perhaps even in a given database over time. Emphasis on newer topics (same-sex marriage, e.g.) may give rise to newer indexing terms. Thus the importance of considering alternative terminologies, of noting specific descriptors and identifiers used by individual databases, and in general, of paying attention to the metadata structuring in individual data sources.

1) Toronto Public Library catalogue.

The Toronto Public Library system is among the half-dozen largest public libraries in
North America. It comprises approximately 100 branches and includes two major reference and research collections. The research collection at the Toronto Reference Library branch is particularly rich in depth and age, and subject access to non-literary items is quite detailed.

Canadian items were extracted from the Toronto Public Library catalogue by thoroughly examining all descriptors beginning with the words “gay”, “gays”, “lesbian” and its variants, and “homophobia”; headings beginning with the sequences “homosex”, “transsex”, and “bisex”; and the terms “sexual orientation”, “sex change”, and the broader “gender”.  The several thousand entries were sifted for Canadian items, as identified by the geographic subdivisions applied to the main descriptors, by place of publication, or by other recognizable Canadian markers in the body of the catalogue record (in the title or notes, e.g.).  Some items were readily recognized by author.  The Toronto Public Library catalogue was searched for the bibliography’s first edition in lieu of the National Library of Canada’s AMICUS union catalogue because of speed of access and in consideration of the depth and care in development of the Toronto collection over the years. That catalogue served well as a preliminary proxy in gathering a large number of references. See point 3, below, regarding subsequent searching of the AMICUS union catalogue.

2) Bibliothèque nationale du Québec catalogue.

The BNQ is the legal depository library for Québec publications.  Its catalogue can be searched in either French or English and is accessible over the Internet through the Canadian library directory on the website of the National Library of Canada  (www.nlc-bnc.ca).

This catalogue was searched using a strategy similar to that described in point 1, above,  for the Toronto Public Library.  Many of the French-language monographs in this bibliography and some of the French-language gay/lesbian periodicals were extracted from this source.

3) National Library of Canada.

The AMICUS union catalogue maintained by the National Library of Canada provides,
according to Web site information, access to over 30 million records from more than 1,300 Canadian libraries, including records of the National Library itself.

The AMICUS catalogue was searched once, in mid-January 2002.  It provided
references not found in the catalogues of the Toronto Public Library or the Bibliothèque
nationale du Québec. (As mentioned at point 1, the AMICUS catalogue was searched
only later because of the relative ease of access of the compiler to the Toronto Public
Library catalogue and the great depth of collections in the research divisions of that
public library)

A search strategy such as is outlined for the Toronto Public Library catalogue was applied.

Several major general and subject-specific indexes, both electronic and print, were also checked to cover the period from 1984 through early 2003, or as noted below.  The user will see that a few pre-1984 references missed by the earlier print indexes have been included as a result of some limited searching of pre-1984 years.

(The reader should be aware that these electronic sources are normally available only by subscription. They are widely available at academic institutions for use by students, faculty, and sometimes by other on-site users. Some are also available to registered users of large public library systems.  They are not, however, normally available to the general user directly).

The indexes are the following:

4) CBCA Fulltext Reference  (from 1986; see note below);

CBCA Fulltext Education;
CBCA Fulltext Business (from 1996; see note below)
CBCA [Canadian Business & Current Affairs] is a product of Micromedia Ltd., Toronto, a major producer of indexes and of microreproductions of primary documents. CBCA has been produced since 1982 and provides full text of selected titles since 1993.  This latter point could be kept in mind for retrieval purposes, since sometimes a relatively obscure publication not available in the local library in print format might be available online through this subscription service.  CBCA indexes approximately 700 primarily Canadian journals, newspapers, and other media, including about 50 French-language titles.

Two subsets of CBCA, Fulltext Reference and Fulltext Education, were searched in late December 2000 to extract magazine articles. Additional CBCA searching was done about one year later and again in the January/February 2003 period, as mentioned in the Introduction to this electronic mounting.

The CBCA Fulltext Business subset was examined only for the period from 1996 on, the period available to the compiler at a local university library.

A search of CBCA Fulltext Reference on the descriptor field was done using the query structure “(gay or gays or lesbian* or homosex* or homophobia or bisex* or transsex* or transgend*) in DE”.  Magazine articles were then extracted from this subset [(magazine-articles) in SB].  Each citation was examined and a judgment made regarding substantiveness.  Ephemeral or insufficiently focussed items were eliminated.  Because no retrievals earlier than 1986 were obtained from the electronic index, a search of the Micromedia print index, Canadian Magazine Index, v. 1 and 2 (1985 and 1986) was done to carry the search back for the required period. In addition, the 1984 Canadian Periodical Index was examined to help to close the gap with the 2nd edition of Homosexuality in Canada (Toronto: Canadian Gay Archives, 1984), which has a 1984 cutoff date.

The user should note that items appearing in the magazine Alberta Report (also titled Western Report) and in BC Report (also cited as British Columbia Report) were generally excluded.  These titles are similar conservative watchdog publications which tend to publish items bordering on diatribe and to attack any initiative for gay/lesbian inclusion.  A few articles from these journals do, however, appear in this bibliography for specific reasons (with explanations at the entries). The interested researcher can gain access to additional articles from these sources through the CBCA electronic index or its print versions, or through the Canadian Periodical Index, where, as a point of interest, they have been given rather extensive coverage. 

General articles appearing in Time (Canadian edition) and in Reader’s Digest were also excluded, as they were in the first edition of Homosexuality in Canada (1979), because they were taken to be primarily American publications.

CBCA Fulltext Education was searched similarly to Fulltext Reference.  Because the descriptor field designation had changed over the years (from DH to DG to DE), my attention was called to the strong growth in indexed articles during the 1990s.

5) Repère  

This French-language electronic bibliographic database is produced in collaboration with the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and contains over 200,000 references to articles from French-language periodicals published from 1980.  More than 500 journals are indexed from throughout the francophone world.

Searches in early 2001 and subsequently used the following search statement:
“(gai or gaie or gaies or lesb* or homosex* or homophob* or bisex* or transsex* or transgenr*) in DE”,  where DE denotes the descriptor field.

6)  Globe and Mail (Metro and Toronto editions)
In order not to totally ignore the newspaper format in this bibliography, but also acknowledging that the thousands of articles, many or most of passing interest, in the seven major newspapers covered as of late 2000 by CBCA did not make thorough examination practical, I chose to provide newspaper representation by searching the Globe and Mail, as the  proxy newspaper, on CBCA Fulltext Reference.  Only “news stories” were sought out. The result is, of course, a Toronto bias. But the approach did also provide a considerable amount of national coverage. What I hoped to achieve here was to provide some dated guideposts to major events so that the user could more easily recover additional items, either directly from other Canadian newspapers or from indexes.  Since this search was the final major index search for the bibliography, I tended towards more inclusion for categories and subjects which I felt were underrepresented (the Vancouver Gay Games of August 1990 and issues of gays in the military and on police forces, for example) and tried not to clutter the index with, for instance, yet more references to the issue of gay ordination within Christian denominations.
 
A search was done on the Metro edition (the edition statement used by Micromedia beginning in 1993), using the search statement “(gay or gays or lesbian* or homosex* or homophobia or bisex* or transsex* or transgender*) in DE” on January 11, 2001.
Some analogous searching was done for subsequent updatings, to early 2003, using CBCA as a source.

 There did, so far as I was able to determine, seem to be a gap in coverage of the Globe and Mail electronic version by CBCA Fulltext Reference for roughly the decade 1984 to 1993, when this index was accessed at a local university library. To ensure then that a selection of Globe and Mail articles for the entire period since the Homosexuality in Canada, 2nd ed. of 1984 was at least considered for inclusion, print copies of Micromedia’s Canadian News Index for 1984 through 1992 and their Canadian Index for 1993 were searched.  A selection of stories was chosen. When particularly interesting items were occasionally noted from other newspapers that are indexed in these print sources, the references were included, but this inclusion was a rarity.

Additional searches were done on the following specialized databases:

7)  Canadian Research Index
This is an index to monographs and annuals from Canadian governments and institutions.
Approximately 8,000 items from government bodies at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels, and from other sources, are indexed and abstracted each year.

The search on Dec. 27, 2000 for (gay or gays or lesbian* or homosex* or homophobia or bisex* or transsex* or transgender*) retrieved 279 citations, all of which were examined for relevance. Subsequent searches were done for updating.

8)  Index to Canadian Legal Literature
The index title is self-explanatory.  It is interesting that The Body Politic was included as an indexed title, at least for the search period of 1985 to the time of the demise of that gay/lesbian journal in 1987.

A search statement similar to that in point 6, above, was used to search the electronic index from 1987.  The print index for 1985/86 was also searched.

9) LegalTrac
This Gale Group online American index includes, as described in its site introduction,  “articles in all major law reviews, law journals, specialty law and bar association journals, and legal newspapers…”.   The index provides a considerable amount of Canadian coverage and was used to supplement the search of Index to Canadian Legal Literature.

A search similar in strategy to those used for the databases enumerated above was carried out, with limitations placed to retrieve only items relating to major Canadian federal and provincial jurisdictions.

10)  ProQuest Digital Dissertations
This index (also commonly known as Dissertation Abstracts) provides access to citations, and in more recent years, to abstracts of doctoral dissertations and masters theses done at a very large number of North American universities. Over 1000 institutions and 1.6 million documents were represented in late 2000.

The search of this source was carried back to 1980 to retrieve at least some of the items missed by the 2nd edition of Homosexuality in Canada.  A first search was done to retrieve items from reporting Canadian institutions by using a keyword search on a string similar to that in point 7, above, and limiting retrieval to Canadian institutions [SC (canada)].  A second search, to retrieve theses about Canada but written at non-Canadian institutions, was done using a truncation of Canada (canad?) as a keyword.

Although major Canadian universities do seem to be well represented in this index, the user who wishes a truly comprehensive list of this sort of material would want to determine which institutions, both Canadian and international, do not report their holdings and also, among participating ones, in how timely a fashion the reporting is done.

Similar search approaches were applied to

11)  MLA International Bibliography
This Modern Language Association work indexes publications in the fields of literature,
languages, linguistics, and folklore.

A search, structured much as those mentioned above was done.  A second search, to retrieve general queer articles (those without country-specific emphasis) published in Canada was also performed.  Many in the second retrieval were duplicates of items from the first search or else dealt with non-Canadian literatures.

12) Expanded Academic ASAP
This product is an index of broad subject and geographical range, providing access to many scholarly and some popular journals.  A search strategy similar to that used on other indexes was employed.  Because country of publication was not available as a search point, extraction was limited for this database to Canadian subjects.  General articles in Canadian sources were not retrieved.

13) America: History and Life
This is a major electronic database for history and provides good coverage of Canadian issues.  As of late 2000, compilers were examining over 2000 journals worldwide and adding approximately 6000 book and media reviews annually.

A search structured like the ones mentioned above was used.

14) Gay & Lesbian Abstracts
This index is a subscription database of NISC, National Information Services Corporation, of Baltimore, Maryland.  It was relatively new in late 2000, and provided more thorough coverage for only the previous few years.  Included, though, were some much older items.

Here, a simple search for “Canada” as an index term retrieved 167 items, quite a number
of which were references to Xtra! West, the Vancouver gay newspaper.  This index provided some useful items not found elsewhere.

This index was not available to the compiler for subsequent searches.

15) Sociological Abstracts
This major index to the literature of sociology was examined using a search strategy similar to those already outlined.

16) ERIC database for education literature
This is the premier index to education literature, providing coverage of journals and reports from 1966 to the present.  The index was searched using the descriptors already discussed, with necessary restrictions added for retrieval of Canadian items. 

Among other sources examined were:

            “Bibliographie de l’homosexualité au Québec avant 1990: version préliminaire,”
                        an electronic document accessed January 31, 2002 through the Archives gaies
                        du Québec Web site at www.agq.qc.ca

            CPI.Q (the electronic Canadian Periodical Index)

Only selected subject headings were checked. Although there is much overlap in journal coverage between CPI.Q and the CBCA index subsets searched, there would likely be some additional items found in a more comprehensive search of CPI.Q.  With a probability of somewhat limited returns, however, this investigation could not be accommodated. The user might wish to look at the source more closely. I did not carry updating searches to this index.

            Gay & Lesbian Issues: Abstracts of the Psychological and Behavioral Literature,

Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, c1997.
Here there are a half-dozen entries in the subject index under the term “Canada” and additional papers by authors whose names were recognized from searches of other indexes. 

            Gillon, Margaret, comp.
                 Lesbians in Print:  A Bibliography of 1,500 Books with Synopses.  Irvine, CA:
                 Bluestocking Books, 1995.
                 The titles of Canadian publishers listed here produced some works not found elsewhere.

            Malinowski, Sharon, ed.
              Gay & Lesbian Literature.  Detroit: St. James Press, c1994-1998.  (2 v.).

            National Film Board of Canada Web site.

            PsycINFO, the electronic database of the literature of psychology.  In this case,
                        because the publication Gay & Lesbian Issues, covering the period 1985 to
                        1996, had already been examined, searching of PsycINFO was restricted to
                        the years 1995 to early 2003.  Several dozen useful papers were added
                        in this way. The user with a special interest in this area might, however, wish to carry a PsycINFO search back to earlier years to                         extract items that might have been missed through the Gay & Lesbian Issues publication.

       Three major monographs in the field: Gary Kinsman’s Regulation of Desire, 2nd ed.;
            Kathleen Lahey’s Are We ‘Persons’Yet?; and Tom Warner’s  Never Going Back,
            examined for footnotes containing relevant references.

            The PopcornQ Movies site at www.planetout.com , which
                        was of help in augmenting the VIDEOS/FILMS section of the list.

            Web sites of various publishers known to include queer works in their output
                        (Arsenal Pulp Press and Insomniac Press sites are two examples as of May 2005;
                        the user can find more by extracting names of publishers of recent items listed in
                        the LITERATURE sections of the bibliography and using this information and a
                        search engine to explore for Web sites).

Smaller numbers of items were retrieved as references contained within other publications listed in this bibliography, through browsing the University of Toronto Robarts and Laidlaw Library shelves, and in conversation with people at Glad Day Bookshop, Toronto Women’s Bookstore, the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, and the University of Toronto.

In considering the number of times that a new path has unexpectedly opened up while I was working on this list, I am sure that many items remain still to be uncovered.  My hope is that a fairly high percentage of the substantive published works and of the important issues of the past two decades are represented here and that indexes, archival collections, and references in the listed works will lead the user to additional valuable information.

The user might choose to expand library investigation for additional relevant items by considering other secondary sources.  Citations from CPI.Q (Canadian Periodical Index) might be examined more closely to retrieve any items not included in the CBCA indexes that were checked for this list. MEDLINE, the premier index to literature of the medical sciences, might also be considered, and a closer look might be taken at pre-1996 business issues.

As earlier mentioned, some users will notice omissions or disagree with inclusions.  Since the purpose of this list is to contribute to an accurate and thorough documentation of Canadian queer issues, I would, of course, be happy to hear of errors or important lacunae.

Toronto,
May 7, 2005,
with additional minor updates November 7, 2008.