Tess McNaughton facilitated conversations within LGBTQ+ community

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When the Calgary Public Library named Tess McNaughton as its seventh Historian in Residence back in April, the online response was not promising.

The comments weren’t all negative, but McNaughton’s plans to document Calgary’s untold queer stories with a focus on queer women, non-binary, and gender diverse seemed to fire up a contingent of trolls, many of whom took to social media to vent. It got so bad that the library eventually took down the post on Facebook, although it seems to have since returned without the toxic commentary.

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“I got a lot of hate when this was first published on the Calgary Library Facebook page; thousands of comments hating before I had even begun doing what I was doing,” says McNaughton. “It was a hard start. It took about a day and then the library just took the post down. It made me more wary. I think what drove me forward was people afterwards coming up to me and library staff members encouraging me and sharing their own stories and people shared how important it was to do the work I was doing and that, for all queer people, sometimes just existing feels like a resistance.”

If nothing else, the experience showed that while support and acceptance for marginalized communities have improved, there is still a need to broaden understanding by documenting traditionally overlooked histories.

McNaughton soldiered on and the library was unwavering in its support. In April, she began organizing and then documenting the conversations she facilitated between members of the queer community. Her modus operandi was to pair community members of different ages for consultations. Usually, it was a young person, aged 18 to 29, with a senior from the queer community.

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“It’s not just knowledge sharing with a senior telling the youth ‘back in my day’ kind of thing, but both learning from one another,” says McNaughton about the six-month residency.

She has conducted eight of these conversations/interviews with 16 people. McNaughton consulted university groups and Calgary organizations such as the Rainbow Elders to find participants. While everyone from the community was welcome, she wanted to focus on queer women, trans and non-binary people.

“I think their history is so under-represented, not just in queer history but history overall,” she says. “That’s who I really wanted to give a voice to. But I also included a few men in my study as well as some transmasc, a large array. But I think women have to be asked specifically in a way to apply to be interested.”

Despite the online hate, one of the takeaways from these multi-generational meetings was that things have improved considerably and that Calgary is a safer space for the community compared to even a decade ago.

One interview involved a queer senior and a transmasc from the community. The senior (McNaughton didn’t give a specific age) talked about going to clubs in Calgary in decades past.

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“Once you were in the club, you felt safe,” McNaughton says. “But in the walk to the clubs you were really unsafe. People were throwing beer bottles or harassing you. You could never hold hands with your partner until you were inside.”

McNaughton, 24, grew up in Calgary and went to high school in Okotoks. She came out as a lesbian in 2016 while a teenager. While working towards her undergraduate degree at the University of Lethbridge, she took a women and gender studies course.

“It was the first time I could see myself in history, just being a woman,” McNaughton says. “That made me really interested in knowing what more there was. When I was exploring my queer identity, I started a queer walking tour in Lethbridge. I found information that was done in 2019 for an exhibit at the Galt Museum and the curator of the time, Aimee Benoit, focused on interviewing individuals in the city and this was where (the idea) of primary source information came from. People were scared to record it or didn’t write it down as much. When I was going into this Calgary position, I was interested in knowing more about that. You can get a certain amount from the archives and old magazines, but I don’t think you can get this first-hand information.”

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The library’s historian-in-residence program, which is organized in partnership with Heritage Calgary, started in 2018. Kevin Allen, founder of the Calgary Gay History Project and who has been chronicling queer history in Calgary for 30 years, was the first historian in residence. Also, Shaun Hunter, author of Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers, studied Calgary’s literary landscape and built an annotated digital map that showcased key geographical spots from our literary history.

McNaughton’s work will make up an exhibit that will be displayed at the Central Library beginning in late September. It will run into October, which is queer history month. She will be transcribing all her interviews and hopes they will find a permanent home at the Glenbow Museum and The ArQuives, Canada’s LGTBQ+ archives that are headquartered in Toronto.

Leanne Hooper, librarian for the Calgary’s Story program, says the negative commentary on social media made for an “unfortunate start” to McNaughton’s residency.

“But it’s been very important to us, because we are proud of the work Tess does, to support it and continue to ensure that the remainder of the residency goes as smoothly as possible,” she says. “That’s something we take very seriously.”

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She says McNaughton’s work continues the “legacy of the historian in residence program.”

“Tess is exploring underrepresented histories and I think part of that is also the way in which we look at history,” Hooper says. “Often times we so often approach history looking through family lineage. So the opportunity to connect it beyond family but within community was something that really stood out and brings a new lens of how we explore our own history. ”

McNaughton says her consultations with people of different ages from the queer community showed there was a strong desire for connection between generations.

“This inter-generational knowledge is typically lost within the queer community,” says McNaughton. “You typically don’t have a parent or grandparent that you can talk to and ask ‘How did you grow up gay?’ I really wanted to focus on that generational knowledge sharing.”

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