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Gay Pride Flag Saskatchewan Resources for Sexual Diversity
Saskatchewan Resources for Sexual Diversity

Celebrating a History of Diversity:

Lesbian and Gay Life in Saskatchewan, 1971 - 2006
A Selected Annotated Chronology


Notes on Sources

The Chinese proverb, “The palest ink is better than the best memory,” guided this project. The chronology’s impetus was a perception that much of the province’s history of sexual and gender diversity has been forgotten. Human memory and oral accounts have not transmitted a reliable or useful record of the struggles, achievements and contributions of the province’s LGBTT communities. Most of the events noted in this timeline are accompanied by references to printed sources. Hopefully these references will indicate the compiler’s desire for factual accuracy and provide a starting point from which interested readers might pursue more detailed accounts and opinions.

Excellent resources for the study of the province’s LGBTT heritage exist in Saskatoon at the University of Saskatchewan campus. Since the early 1970s the compiler has been a dedicated volunteer archivist of lesbian, gay, or more recently queer activities in Saskatchewan. Most of the masses of papers I accumulated have been donated to the Saskatoon Office of the Saskatchewan Archives Board (SAB). The SAB staff has done an excellent job in organizing and preserving this material and making it available to those with either a personal or academic interest. The Neil Richards Collection (SAB-NR) contains a dozen meters of newspaper clippings from Saskatchewan sources, thousands of Canadian LG periodicals, the records of several Saskatoon LG organizations, and hundreds of subject files compiled over the course of thirty years. Almost all the sources cited in Celebrating a History of Diversity can be accessed at this office.

I found it useful and convenient to examine the complete holdings of Regina’s lesbian newsletter Sensible Shoes News (1995 to date) and Saskatoon’s venerable Perceptions (1983 to date) preserved at the Special Collections Department of the University of Saskatchewan Library. Perceptions issues may also be found at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, and at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA) also in Toronto. The CLGA also holds copies of most of the cited newspaper articles and issues of Saskatchewan LG newsletters.

Those interested in articles in either the Regina Leader-Post or the Saskatoon StarPhoenix should note that many cited articles appeared in both dailies on the same date albeit under different headlines. Through the Canadian Press Service and the Saskatchewan News Network these dailies have long shared coverage of Saskatchewan news events. Microfilm copies of these two newspapers are held by several academic and public libraries.

Several of the Regina entries refer to A History of the Gay Community of Regina, an unpublished account of the development of Regina’s LG community prepared by Darrel David Hockley. Hockley was a longtime participant in that community. Although his 1994 account does not provide personal names or references to sources, it does include what seem to be reliable descriptions of many events that I have not found in other documents. Copies of the Hockley history may be found in the Regina subject files at the Neil Richards Collection at the SAB and at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.