Making a Scene

A celebratory history of how lesbians “made a scene” by creating places and opportunities to form relationships, debate politics, and build their own culture across Canada.

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Starting in the mid-1960s, Canadian lesbians started leaving their closets en masse to find each other and build community. After decades of being pathologized or erased from public view, lesbians were ready to make a scene – both by bringing attention to themselves and by creating physical spaces and opportunities where they could meet to form relationships, debate politics, and forge their own culture.

Making a Scene documents the lesbian movement that emerged in Canada between 1964 and 1984. Not just a story of big-city life, it chronicles the range of spaces lesbians created across rural and urban Canada, from physical locations, such as lesbian and gay centres, bookstores, and private members’ clubs, to ephemeral sites of encounter, such as conferences, festivals, and Dykes in the Streets marches.

Enriched by interviews and excerpts from letters, club meeting minutes, diaries, and more, Making a Scene brings to life the exuberance and determination of these young women.