Len & Cub

Reviews

THESE BOOKS WERE REVIEWED FROM ADVANCED GALLEYS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHERS.

Rebecca Rose reviews a photographic history showing 2SLGBTQIA+ people have always been right here

The photograph on the cover of Len & Cub: A Queer History, is striking. Two young men stare directly into the camera; one has his arm draped over the other’s shoulders, the other gently holds his hand. The photo is black and white, from the 1910s or 20s. They almost seem to be saying, we were here.

This is Len and Cub. The intimacy in this photo, and the dozens of other photos in this book, is unmistakable and remarkable. Written by Meredith J Batt and Dusty Green, this love story between two boys-cum-men in rural New Brunswick between 1914 and the mid 1920s is, too, remarkable. This is due, of course, to where and when it took place, but especially due to the sheer amount of photographic evidence that still exists, and is tenderly presented in this book.

Green became aware of Len and Cub through a collection of photographs, the John Corey Collection, held at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, where Green was working. Archivist Julia Thompson relayed to Green that the donor had described the two men that proliferated the photos as “boyfriends.”

They were Leonard “Len” Olive Keith and Joseph Austin Coates, nicknamed Cub for his wolfish appearance. The boys, eight years apart in age, found each other in the village of Havelock, New Brunswick, around 40 minutes from Moncton. When the boys were, well, boys, Havelock was home to about 150 souls.

The vignettes featured throughout the book are of day trips in Len’s car, trips to the cabin, picnics, skating, drinking, reclining together in a hammock and more. The hints of their relationship, however they would have defined it, are not-so-hidden in plain sight; Cub nestling on Len’s shoulder, the two holding hands, lying in what the authors call an “intimate embrace” in the woods, and even Len jumping into bed at the cabin with Cub (both clothed). Even in group photos, the two are side by each and caressing, and in one photo taken in the spring of 1924 in Portland, Maine, nearly spooning in a line of friends with Cub’s hand on Len’s thigh.

As Green notes, the photos of Len and Cub are some of the oldest images of a gay or queer couple in the Maritimes.

Having found no letters between the two, the photos are the only known records of this romance. Starting from the point that the two were “boyfriends” and the fact that Len was driven out of town for being a “homosexual” in the 1930s, Batt and Green have done an extraordinary job of filling in the rest.

The authors track Len’s early life as the son of a fairly well off family (their prominence in the community making it easier to do so) and Cub’s later years, after Len had been driven into relative obscurity, as a husband, and as the owner of racehorses. Len’s families status, note the authors, likely contributed to the couple’s ability to avoid significant scrutiny or repercussions for their relationship.

Having the money to buy the first car owned by anyone in the village also allowed them privacy not afforded to other men who were romantically linked with men at that time, who were forced to liaise in public spaces such as alleyways, docks and parks. Lastly, the Keith family’s wealth bought Len the camera he used to document their time together. The book includes brief histories of both of these new-at-the time inventions. It also follows the two men to war.

As Dusty Green writes in the preface, “over time I became aware of the often-touted phrase in queer circles ‘We have always been here.’ I knew that we, queer people, had always existed, but the here never clicked for me.” They add later, “queer history in New Brunswick? Impossible, I thought.”

It may be easier, even for members of the community, to conjure images of past 2SLGBTQIA+ people living and loving in big cities. This book pushes back against that narrative, proving that we have, indeed, always been right here. And that here, as Green writes, includes the “furthest of back roads in the most rural and forgotten-about places.” ■ REBECCA ROSE is a Cape Breton-born queer femme, feminist and freelance writer who has spent her adult life going between Halifax and Toronto. She is the author of Before the Parade: A History of Halifax’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Communities, 1972-1984, which was a finalist for the Evelyn Richardson NonFiction Award.