Curious Canadian History

In 1979 a conference was held in Toronto which became a pivotal event for both Toronto and Canada’s lesbian community. While so much attention at the time was focused around the emerging visibility of Canada’s gay community, it was heavily gendered, focsuing almost exclusively on gay men, much less visilbity existed for Candaa’s lesbian community. The 1979 conference was thus a key moment in helping bring visibility to Canada’s lesbian community while also acting as a rally point for the community itself. To cover this fascinating topic we are talking with Rebecka Taves Sheffield, an archivist, author, and educator based in Hamilton, Ontario.

Rebecka was the first Executive Director and Archives Manager of the ArQuives (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives), an organization that is the inspiration for much of her scholarly work. She trained as an archivist at the University of Toronto (UofT) iSchool and earned a PhD at UofT’s Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Rebecka has served as a senior policy advisor for the Archives of Ontario and is now advising on digital and data policy with Ontario Digital Service.

She is the author of Documenting Rebellions: A Study of Four Lesbian and Gay Archives in Queer Times (Litwin, 2020), and was part of the award-winning editorial team that produced Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer (Coach House, 2017). Her work has been published in Archivaria, American Archivist, Radical History Review, Library Trends, Papers/Cahiers, and the International Journal of Information, Diversity & Inclusion.

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The Globe and Mail is an absolute fixture of the Canadian media landscape. One would be hard pressed to find a single Canadian who would not know what the Globe and Mail is, or could not name it if asked to name three Canadian newspapers. Yet so few Canadians know the man who founded it. This man was a figure of Gatsby-esque proportions. A media mogul, a sports enthusiast, a wealthy and connected Toronto elite who had immense influence over both the Canadian cultural and political landscape. He was also a man who harboured a dark secret, a secret that eventually killed him.

The guest for today is Mark Bourrie, author of Big Men Fear Me: The Fast Life and Quick Death of Canada’s Most Powerful Media Mogul.

Mark wrote as a freelance correspondent for the Globe and Mail from 1978 to 1989 and for the Toronto Star from 1989 to 2004 and was a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery from 1994 to 2018. Mark taught media history and journalism at Concordia University, history at Carleton, and Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of 13 books and his 2019 book Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre Radisson, was a Canadian best-seller and winner of the RBC Charles Taylor Prize for literary excellence. Mark has also been the recipient of several major media awards, including a National Magazine Award and has written extensively on topics for both history and law.

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