Canada's March to Equality. (Books).(Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada)(Book Review)

Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada

by Tom Warner

University of Toronto Press 430 pages, $95. ($29.95 paper)

THE FIRST gay organizations in Canada were founded in the early 1960's, well over a decade after the Mattachine Society appeared in the U.S. Vancouver's Association for Social Knowledge and Ottawa's Committee of Social Hygiene were earnest, closeted, rather cautious, and of limited effectiveness. In those days, occasional letters to the newspapers by the redoubtable James Egan provided virtually the only pro-gay material seen by the general public. Egan had urged gays to organize and, as a student at the University of Toronto, I tried to heed the call. It was easier said than done.

One of my early organizing attempts had been based at The Inn of the Unmuzzled Ox, a campus coffeehouse run by the politically liberal Student Christian Movement (SCM). The small discussion group I started never really got off the ground. In Toronto in this era, gays and lesbians remained closeted and fearful. Then, in the late 1960's, gay student clubs began springing up on U.S. campuses, including one at Cornell in nearby upstate New York. The Stonewall riots in New York City, coupled with the Canadian government's decriminalization of homosexual acts around the same time--both occurring in the summer of 1969--provided further catalysts for organization. In the fall of that year, a meeting in a basement apartment drew four men and one woman, who became the nucleus of the Canadian gay liberation movement.

In spite of its pre-Stonewall-style name, the University of Toronto Homophile Association was the first group in Canada to espouse gay liberationist ideas. We provided public information tables, made contact with campus authorities, counseled gays and lesbians as they came out, broadcast radio and TV shows, and hosted on-campus meetings and social events. As our posters were inevitably torn down as soon as we tacked them up, we took to barnstorming the campus cafeterias to hand-deliver the leaflets. Many were screwed up and thrown in our faces; the medical students were the most hostile. But overall the system was effective.

Our most popular presentation was a talk by Dr. Frank Kameny of the Washington, D.C., Mattachine Society, whose forthright, no-nonsense, "Gay is Good" attitude raised morale and set a standard for an approach that was polite but firm--and relentless. A city-wide group soon spun off and we began sending gay missionaries to fledgling organizations in other Ontario towns. A favorite tactic was to integrate dance floors, shocking and delighting the locals.