In 2023, the LGBT Purge Fund developed the interpretative content for the 2SLGBTQI+ National Monument. This content includes the words, quotes, images and captions that will tell the story of 2SLGBTQI+ discrimination in Canada, including the colonial roots of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia and the cruelty of the Canadian government during the LGBT Purge. It also tells stories of community resistance and resilience and urges vigilance in the face of ongoing hate.
Key messages will be communicated within the monument’s site on an entry panel and on a long interpretive wall. Two on-site freestanding panels will also describe the design of the Monument and how it connects to the overall project.
The Monument site will include entry panels (at bottom left), freestanding panels describing the Monument’s design (in the middle right) and a long interpretive wall (on the right).
WRITING OUR OWN STORY
Although the Thunderhead Monument is a collaboration with Canadian Heritage and the National Capital Commission, it is funded completely by the LGBT Purge Fund through the class action settlement. The Monument is about community experience and, as such, it was essential that the Fund hold the pen through the development of the interpretive content.
In 2023, our legal agreement with the government was revised to affirm that the Fund will write, and have final approval over, the Monument’s interpretive content. Our collaborators at the government agreed: this is our story to tell.
A PROCESS ROOTED IN COMMUNITY COLLABORATION
The interpretive content is rooted in the Monument’s vision, which was created with the input of hundreds of community members in 2019 and 2020. This vision has guided all aspects of this project, including proposals from design teams.
The vision was first drafted in collaboration with members of the Monument Advisory Committee and the Monument’s Indigenous Circle. Subsequently, hundreds had a say on the vision through online discussion groups and a national e-survey. This included scores of LGBT Purge survivors.
In 2019, our Monument Advisory Committee and Indigenous Circle met to draft the first Vision for the Monument.
The vision found here, outlines the Monument’s objectives to educate, memorialize, celebrate and inspire and presents its principles of inclusion, Indigeneity, visibility and timelessness.
AN APPROACH GUIDED BY EXPERTS
The Fund set out to create the Monument’s interpretive content armed with the vision and also with the expert guidance of members of the Monument’s Education and Interpretation Committee (EIC). These members first met in 2022 to craft a set of guidelines for the interpretive content.
Following their expert advice, the Fund committed to an approach to interpretation that would:
- avoid chronologies and/or a story of heroes (the more we focus on particular events or people we more we leave out);
- write from a community not an institutional perspective;
- use personal narratives to convey experience and emotion;
- allow for community contributions;
- show intersectional experiences of exclusion;
- highlight the depth of Two-Spirit experience and the impact of colonization;
- challenge visitors to think about history in new ways;
- highlight sex as important to community history and experience;
- not shy away from being political; and
- use engaging, emotional, yet accessible language.
Members of the EIC brought expertise in Two-Spirit history, community activism, curation, community history, story-telling, archive management, public education, and more.
With the guidance of the EIC, we also committed to using what we call a “promiscuous approach to language.” This means, for example, that we don’t use only one acronym to describe our diverse communities, but use “queer,” SOGIE language, and different acronyms. In this way, we reflect and respect the diverse ways that folks describe themselves. Through this approach, we also hope to avoid the interpretive content feeling stuck in time.
Finally, with expert guidance, we also worked towards the notion of universality. Instead of particular people or events, for example, we focused on shared themes of experience. This approach also meant that we didn’t pin down images with dates or places in their captions and used first names only in quote attributions. We want everyone to see themselves in this content.
DISTILLATION, ENGAGEMENT AND REFINEMENT
Guided by this approach, the Fund drew from countless sources, including Survivor Stories, documentaries, oral and written histories, academic sources and more. We worked with many archives to identify the images and other visual material, and we collected quotes from generous community members to help tell stories in people’s own words.
Drafting the content was a process of distillation, engagement and refinement. It was not done in isolation.
The interpretive content drew from many experts and on the support of many archives, including the Two-Spirit Archives, the Quebec Gay Archives, and The ArQuives, pictured here.
Ultimately 34 expert stakeholders reviewed every word, quote and image of the content. These individuals included experts in public education, curation, Two-Spirit history and advocacy, archival management, community activism and community history, to name a few. Of course, they also included Purge survivors, as well as members of the Board, the Indigenous Circle, the Monument Advisory Committee and the Education and Interpretation Committee.
The response was overwhelmingly positive and constructive. Over many months, revisions were made throughout the engagement process. Each comment was carefully considered. And slowly a complete text began to emerge.
KEY MESSAGES
Ultimately, a number of themes drove the content, and we worked to ensure the content of each section answered a key question. You’ll have to wait to see the Monument for the final text, but we’re pleased to share the titles of the eight sections on the main wall and the question answered in each section:
- The LGBT Purge
Answers: What was the LGBT Purge and how did it end? - Power and Oppression
Answers: How has the State been involved in oppression? - 2SLGBTQI+ Discrimination in Canada
Answers: Beside the LGBT Purge, in what other ways have 2SLGBTQI+ people suffered discrimination in Canada? - The Human Toll
Answers: What are the impacts of discrimination on 2SLGBTQI+ people? - Queer Activism in Canada
Answers: What are the origins of the Queer Movement? - Community Resistance and Change
Answers: How has community resistance changed the course of history? - Indigiqueer Experience and Colonialism
Answers: How are homophobia and colonialism connected? How has colonialism impacted Indigiqueer people? - Diverse Communities, Diverse Experience
Answers: What is the interaction between 2SLGBTQI+ discrimination and other oppressions? Why be vigilant?
The interpretive content includes images and captions that describe a diverse range of community history and experience.
As well as interpretive text, each of the key questions above will be answered using images with captions. Quotes will also be used along with a prompt for community participation that links back to the Monument website with an opportunity for visitors to share their own stories online.
A STORY WE KEEP WRITING TOGETHER
Writing the interpretive content wasn’t easy. In fact, before we even began, some urged us to abandon the project. We were told that summing up community experience was so Herculean that it was virtually impossible. But we persisted.
The challenges, we found, were many. As well as reflecting a broad range of diverse community experience and being inclusive, we needed to be concise. We also needed to write for a very wide audience: survivors, educators, kids trying to find themselves, random dog-walkers…
The Fund remains open about the challenges of writing this story. We know it will never be perfect, but feel it’s still worth doing. We engaged as much expert help as possible through the process and, while acknowledging that this content will never be complete, will invite our diverse communities to help tell this story even after these panels are installed.
We each have a journey to share, and we each bring a unique perspective and experience. And, of course, the story of 2SLGBTQI+ justice is one that is still unfolding.
