FEATURES
THE REALLY GAY HISTORY TOUR: BREATHING LIFE INTO THE LOST STORIES OF 2SLGBTQQIA+ PEOPLE Take a Walk Through Vancouver’s Hidden 2SLGBTQQIA+ History RAIN MARIE (SHE/THEY) Contributor VALERIYA KIM (SHE/HER) Design Director
2SLGBTQQIA+: Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual and/or Gender Diverse or Non-binary At the corner of Hornby and Georgia streets, before it housed the Vancouver Art Gallery, lived a courthouse surrounded by an ever-growing Queer History. Despite this courthouse being the site of many arrests that targets both 2SLGBTQQIA+ and BIPOC individuals over the crime of Buggery - meaning the act of Anal and Oral sex performed by penetration - the streets surrounding became epicentre for 2SLGBTQQIA+ people. The streets surrounding the courthouse were filled with many hotels, some of which are still standing today, such as Hotel Vancouver and Castle Pub. But it wasn’t the hotels themselves that made this area so interesting, it was what was underneath them. In the early to mid-20th-century, hotel bars had a very particular quality to them: they were separated into sections based on one's gender assigned to them at birth. The “men's” section of these bars allowed only men to enter, whereas the women were women only or women being accompanied by their husbands. This, although originally designed to promote respectable and chaste behaviour, created a space for gay men to meet each other without fear of suspicion. Each of these surrounding hotel bars had its own specific niches and parts of the community that they connected to. For example, Hotel Vancouver housed a nightlife for a lot of Gay Men whereas Castle Pub created some more space for Transgender people and Drag Queens. Unfortunately, these new safe spaces did not come
26
without discrimination of their own within them. Gay Men who frequented Hotel Vancouver were very against anything that drew attention to them, so they did not appreciate Trans people, Drag Queens, or People of Colour entering their space. There was also very little space for Queer Women in these bars as men were free to enter their space provided they were escorting their wives. For years Vancouver’s 2SLGBTQQIA+ has been pushed aside, hidden and actively erased from the public eye. Vancouver has long been a mecca for Queer activism, communities, and art, but, many people, both in the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community and outside of it, remain unaware of its deep history. Forbidden History Walking Tours, which you can find at forbiddenwalkingtours.ca, is a Vancouverbased tour company that focuses on the “forbidden” history of Vancouver and making history that was wiped away, accessible to the public. Glenn Tkatch the Head Storyteller of the Really Gay History Tour designed this tour in 2017. Tkatch started this tour as he “knew that queer history would be a perfect fit for [Forbidden Vancouver], and [he] also suspected that there was a real hunger for this subject matter”. It is an interactive history tour that travels from Vancouver City Center Station to Davies Street with the intention of getting Vancouver locals and people visiting Vancouver better acquainted with the long-buried history of 2SLGBTQQIA+ people in Vancouver. Tkatch and Forbidden History Walking Tours teach us about powerful and influential members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ that we would not get the chance
