Interview with RSJ alum Rebecca Rose, author of "Before the Parade."

In Before the Parade (external link)  RSJ alumna Rebecca Rose chronicles the early history of Halifax’s gay, lesbian and bisexual communities, whose activism included the founding of the Gay Alliance for Equality just three years after the Stonewall Riots, the first nationally coordinated gay and lesbian day of action in 1977, and the campaign to include sexual orientation in the Human Rights Act.

Rose, who graduated in 2008, brings her queer femme, feminist perspective to the first full-length book written about this history. 

Can you tell me a little about Anne Fulton and how you were inspired to write this book?

Anne Fulton was a founding member of the first gay and lesbian advocacy group in Nova Scotia, the Gay Alliance for Equality, and a lesbian activist who founded the (short-lived) group Atlantic Provinces Political Lesbians for Equality. Anne passed away in 2015 and her death prompted me to write a profile about her and her contributions to the LGB community in Halifax’s weekly alternative paper The Coast. That profile inspired me to write a long-form article about LGB activism in Halifax in the mid 1970s, which caught the attention of my publisher, Nimbus Publishing, who then asked if I would write Before the Parade.

How did the lack of a 2SLGBTQIA+ archive in Nova Scotia influence your research methods for this book? 

As Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer elder Andrea Currie said during our interview, this book really followed the path of relationships. My entry point was gay, activist elder, historian, and archivist Robin Metcalfe. He and Anne had been close during the heyday of LGB activism in Halifax in the mid 1970s and I first heard many of the names of the people who appear in this book at his kitchen table. I would interview someone and then ask them who else I should talk to, and they would put me in touch with their friends, former colleagues, and ex-lovers and so on.

Those people also graciously allowed me to root through their personal LGB archives, and I went through each box of LGB archival materials between 1972 and 1984 in the Nova Scotia Archives.

What response did you get from the 2SLGBTQIA+ community in Nova Scotia when you first started researching Before the Parade? 

I think folks were hungry for a book that illustrated at least parts of our collective history. The book first started as an article for The Coast and I conducted the first interviews that would end up in the book back in 2016. I am always so grateful that the people that I’ve interviewed have been so open and trusting with both some of the best and most challenging parts of their lives. I feel privileged to be the person who is hearing these stories first hand.

What has the response been like since it was published?

I have had elders tell me that they never thought they would see their stories in a book. Community members of all ages have told me that it has brought them to tears. I was even contacted by the niece of a man who was a founding member for the Gay Alliance for Equality and an early drag queen named Sugar, who I had been told had already passed away! I then got to interview him, which was really special. The book launch itself was the most overwhelming night of my life, with around 300 people in attendance. It was also a reunion of sorts, bringing together friends and community members who hadn’t seen each other in years.

How did your connection to the community help with your writing/research? Were any aspects of the writing/research more difficult because of your connection to the community?

The fact that I am a very out queer femme activist was absolutely crucial to the researching and writing of this book. Knowing that I was a member of the community allowed people to open up in ways that they wouldn’t have otherwise. My activism and experience within 2SLGBTQIA+ communities also helped me put what they were telling me into context.

As a member of, and someone who cares very deeply about, 2SLGBTQIA+ communities and who understands the great importance of chronicling and sharing our histories, I also put a lot of pressure on myself to get things “right.” I had to come to terms with the fact that this cannot be the book on our history, but is a (I think) significant contribution to that history.

What was the most challenging part of writing this book? 

As anyone who is familiar with “the community” knows, really ours is a collection of communities, brought together by the fact that we don’t adhere to societal norms, as elder Deborah Trask says in the book. And so even though I was focusing on the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community and activism during a very specific time frame, there were still so many different vantage points and experiences to cover. The sheer amount of source material was daunting, and bringing it together in a way that was enjoyable to read was the hardest part.

I was also working as a freelance writer while I was researching and writing this book, and did not receive funding from any granting agencies, which meant I was doing a large amount of unpaid labour, which was also challenging. 

Why do you think it is important for people to know this history? 

GAE founding member, Tom Burns, told me that growing up in the 1960s he thought that he was the only one “like this,” i.e., gay. He obviously wasn’t, and when he found others like him they joined together to create this province’s first gay and lesbian advocacy group. The only way to make change is by joining together and we can’t do that if we do not think that there is anyone else out there like us. Knowing that 2SLGBTQIA+ people have always existed, and resisted, is incredibly empowering.

Why were you interested in writing about this history? 

I came out as bisexual to myself and my close friends when I was 17. Months later, I moved to Toronto to attend Ryerson. It was right on Ryerson campus that I first sought out “my people,” who I found via RyePride. Searching for and building queer and trans community has been a through line of my adult life. I also come from a family who deeply values family history and lore, and my sense of self has always been firmly rooted in my roots. It was a natural progression for me to develop an interest in, and passion for, our collective 2SLGBTQIA+ history.

What advice would you give to future historical, non-fiction authors?  

An author friend of mine once told me that having a published book was the fun part, it’s the researching and writing it that is so very hard. People often refer to my writing as “thorough” or “detailed,” which I am never sure is a compliment or not! It is true, I am obsessive about detail, and care so much about this history, and the people who lived it; so one of the hardest parts for me is knowing when to stop. When to stop researching, when to stop interviewing. I have a list of approximately 80 people who I wanted to interview or include in the book in some way. In the end I was “only” able to interview 30. I constantly have to remind myself that publishing this book doesn’t mean that I have to stop researching and writing about 2SLGBTQIA+ history, and am hopeful that this book will act as a spring board for other amateur historians, writers, documentarians, etc., to fill in the gaps and add to this history.

What was the most interesting story you discovered while writing this book?

This is an impossible question to answer. This book consists of stories from over 30 individuals (obtained via interviews and archives), and each of them had such moving and important stories. People told me about their experiences ducking into gay bars after hours trying not to be spotted, being gay bashed, fighting for custody of their children as a lesbian mother, about creating the first community-run gay and lesbian bar in the province, and African Nova Scotian drag queens creating a safe space to be both black and gay. Women told me about organizing the first Take Back the Night marches, starting an all lesbian women’s housing co-op, about car-pooling to national lesbian conferences, and women’s only weekends in rural Nova Scotia. And then, I heard and read about the first signs of HIV/AIDS in Halifax, about the death of a community member that led to the creation of the province’s first HIV/AIDS activist group.

What do you want readers to take away from reading Before the Parade? 

This book was my attempt to get as much of this history out of my head, off of my computer, and into the hands of as many people as possible. There are so many examples of our history being denied, erased, or destroyed. For a community that has focused so much on being visible (though that is not everyone’s goal), being made invisible, whether as a result of colonization and genocide, a political campaign, an epidemic, or ignorance, is a blow.