#creative protest

The following is a brief profile on Ron Dutton, founder of the B.C. Gay and Lesbian Archives. On February 14, 2017, Alexandra Bischoff and Anna Tidlund visited Dutton to ask him a few questions about his archival process, and to see the massive holdings which the archivist has been collecting since 1976. All quotations are of Dutton from this initial interview.

The B.C. Gay and Lesbian Archives (BCGLA) is unlike most archival institutions. One of its most distinguishing features is that the archives are housed within the founder’s apartment in Vancouver’s West End. Files are meticulously boxed and stored in the apartment’s guest bedroom, so there is an immediate sense of warmth, comfort and refuge offered not only to the visiting researcher but also the documents themselves.

Ron Dutton, the magnanimous figure behind the project, welcomes interested parties into his home, sits down with them at his kitchen table, and works through the vague inquiries that people often begin their research with. He tells us that while he hosts researchers of all kinds, they usually fall under four categories: fact checkers from the media, academics from across North America, cultural workers looking for inspiration, or individuals creating personal projects about family members.

For forty-two years, Dutton has worked to collect ephemera of B.C.’s queer communities. I ask him what major events can be found in the archive, to which he replies, “everything. I don’t make assumptions that something is too trivial to be collected. I collect everything.” The archive covers, he elaborates, anything B.C. and queer community related. His collection of around 750,000 items includes books by B.C.’s queer authors, magazines, newspapers, the newsletters of queer organizations, small publications (“that you would never find on the internet”), event ephemera, personal diaries, photo albums, audio cassettes, CDs, VHSs and DVDs, posters of all sizes, and government reports—to name a few.

There are many hidden gems. Tucked in one section are over 100 VHS tapes of drag shows at the no-longer operating Dufferin Hotel. Dutton sets the scene: grainy video of the 1970s and 80s capturing a smoke filled bar, drunken commentary cutting through the audio of a bad sound system, mixed with pure, drag magic. These tapes document hours upon hours of renowned performers (like Wanda Fuca and, pictured below, Adrian Alexandria de Vander Vogue) showcasing some of their best material.

Dutton grew up in a small town in rural Alberta and went to the UofA for Library and Archival studies. The air in the 1970s, he recalls, was electric. According to Dutton, a fundamental difference between the 1970s and the 2000s is todays lack of optimism—or perhaps the overabundance of it in back then.

He notes that the broad theme of the 1960s belonged to “people who had been held down [by systems of oppression] and were not willing to take the abuse anymore.” The radical, anti-colonial protests resulting from WWII, as well as the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements worked to create a rhetoric around oppression that previously did not exist. This newfound vocabulary made it possible to verbalize the cruelties perpetrated against gay and lesbian people, propelling the Gay Liberation movement into the public sphere for the first time.

Because gay and lesbian communities in North America have historically been so vulnerable to judicial and societal violence, most of Dutton’s holdings represent queer culture from the 1960s onwards. A necessary quietude—the survival tactics of living under-the-radar, and even in denial of one's sexual or gender identity—means that Dutton’s most difficult task as an archivist has been to “work backwards” to uncover materials that describe the lives of queer people living in the 1950s and earlier.

One particularly unique case comes from an unlikely source. The Spanish Mapmakers of the 1730s, who travelled to document the coast of British Columbia, made several notes in monarchy-mandated journals about “cross-dressing” Indigenous peoples. More important than the discovery of men wearing “dresses” or women wearing “men’s clothing” was the discovery that these individuals were fully integrated and respected in society; whether they had same sex partners or held working positions typically associated with different sexes, people who identified as Two-Spirited were not outcast from their communities.

Dutton understands that certain groups have traditionally been written out of history. While the Spanish Mapmaker’s diaries have been studied extensively since the 1730s, for example, any notations therein about Two-Spiritedness were largely ignored. Even within the Gay Liberation movement itself, media representation in the 1970s generally showcased white, middle class activists. This is why Dutton has gone to extra lengths to make sure that the BCGLA offers as equal a representation as possible for all queer people. 

Because Ron Dutton is ultimately committed to “bringing home” the individuals whose narratives the archive keeps alive, he regularly speaks at schools. He wants to connect with queer youth, who have grown up in a fundamentally different culture than he did. To see “gay politicians, musicians, and cultural icons” on television is something that Dutton did not experience in his childhood. He finds that young people have a great desire to know who came before them, and to hear what struggles their predecessors went through.

The elderly, on the other hand, have a more difficult time accepting Dutton’s claim that they have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation—that they are, inherently, of historical and societal value. Again, due to the survival tactic of silence, queer seniors who lived through the 1940s and 50s can sometimes still be self-censoring. Dutton is patient, realizing that the stories of these individuals will be told and honored when they themselves are ready. With much sincerity and a depth of sensitivity, he tells us that he has a habit of combing through obituaries for mentions of “fond memories from the ‘special friend’” of the deceased. He will collect these notices and add them to the archive, knowing that he is bringing them home; the archivist wants “them to be where their heart was.”

I asked Dutton if he had ever imagined that the archive would become so expansive. He laughed and said, “If I had any idea, I would have been so intimidated I probably wouldn’t have even started.” The position has grown to be so substantial, and Dutton has been gifted so many collections of files and ephemera, that the task of stewardship has become a lifelong endeavour. “I have adjusted to match the needs that the job entails,” he tells us. A task this monumental requires a person with the fortitude to equal that of the archive’s holdings; by all accounts, Dutton is up to the challenge.

To visit the B.C. Gay and Lesbian Archives, email Ron Dutton to make an appointment: [email protected]

Alexandra Bischoff and Anna Tidlund would like to express our gratitude to Ron Dutton for offering us such a candid view into his life and work.

Text

Alexandra Bischoff

Images

Courtesy of Alexandra Bischoff, a BCGLA finding aid in-situ, 2016.

Courtesy of Ron Dutton, photo of Robert Pogue aka Adrian Alexandria de Vander Vogue, 1972.

Courtesy of Ron Dutton and Imtiaz Popat, photo of activist Imtiaz Popat and Salaamat during the Vancouver Pride Parade, 2010. Salaamat has since become Salaam-Vancouver when it joined the Salaam Canada: Queer Muslim Community coalition.