McMaster professor and students build Hamilton 2SLGBTQ+ Community Archive

It's hard to imagine now, in a world of ubiquitous cellphone footage, social media and calls to defund police forces, but four decades ago under-represented communities in Hamilton had few means to hold police officers to account.

But that did not stop members of Hamilton's gay and lesbian community of the 1970s and '80s from trying. Living at a time when acronyms like LGBTQ had yet to emerge and police rousted homosexuals for simply being gay, community activists pushed to break boundaries that seem commonplace today.

They organized, particularly with a group called HUGS (Hamilton United Gay Societies), to build support and push back against unfair treatment and advocate for change. They even had their own tip line, a phone number dubbed the gayline."

What other reasons are there for special police attention to Dundurn Park or Jackson Street, aside from the fact that gay people sometimes get beat up there?" reads a pointed open letter from HUGS to Hamilton police in 1981. Does the department invite representatives of a minority community to address officer cadets? ... If not, why not?"

That history of activism, when the LGBTQ community had few allies in institutions of authority, might well have faded from memory but for the meticulous efforts of a Hamilton nurse and founding member of HUGS, Michael Johnstone.

Johnstone collected and organized everything he could from those days: Flyers, letters, photos and videos. He became, of his own volition, the unofficial chronicler of Hamilton's history of gay activism.

When he died in 2018, Johnstone left his files - assembled in more than 50 boxes of materials - to the Hamilton Public Library. Today, sifting through that material to create an accessible archive for Hamilton residents has fallen on the shoulders of a McMaster University professor and her students to build a Hamilton 2SLGBTQ+ Community Archive.

I think Michael knew that this was only going to be a start of that because he had kept such meticulous records of all these early groups," said Amber Dean, an English and cultural studies professor at McMaster. He has all of the records, like the meeting minutes and agendas of that group. It's correspondence, the kinds of events that it was putting on, like posters and things for events and dances. And it's remarkable."

Dean said her students, many of which are part of the local LGBTQ community, have been surprised by the activism of the past.

I think that students are often surprised to learn that the challenging of the way the police were engaging with our community has been happening almost from the inception of gay liberation as a movement," Dean said.

She pointed to an ongoing situation in the 1970s when HUGS was challenging the behaviour of police who were picking up youths and charging them with truancy. Those youths were targeted because the neighbourhoods they were in were regarded as a gay stroll" - a neighbourhood where many gay or lesbian people were. The arrests were not just discriminatory, but Johnstone's collection show the social and family impacts they had.

In one situation it had resulted in the parents kicking this young guy who was 15 or 16 years old out of his house. So (HUGS) got involved in advocating that the police should stop doing this," Dean said. So they were really involved in trying to both protect gay youth and challenge the way that the police were interacting with the community. And I think sometimes for students, it's revelatory to see that what can seem like a new struggle, when we look back in the records we see, Oh, this has been going on for a very, very, very long time.'"

Dean said the archive, which will be unveiled to the public in October, won't be limited to just the Johnstone collection.

While the history he recorded is vitally important, it was also largely limited to white, gay men. She said other parts of the community, including the trans community and people of colour, have histories that are just as critical to record.

Grant LaFleche is an investigative reporter with The Spectator. Reach him via email: glafleche@torstar.ca