The goal of the Grand River Rainbow Historical Project is to document the history of the various rainbow communities in the Grand River region of Southwestern Ontario.
The scope of the Project is intended to be inclusive of members of all types of rainbow communities, including, but not restricted to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, two-spirit, intersex, queer, questioning, fluid, and asexual.
Geographically, the designation Grand River has been used to make it clear that the communities of Waterloo Region and Wellington County are both included, whilst leaving open some leeway to include communities in other areas of Ontario that are adjacent to the Grand River or some of its tributaries.
Chronological Listing of Events.
The website includes a chronological listing of events in the
Grand River rainbow communities from 1970 to the present.
Currently the chronology is weak in years when there was no publication produced by members of our local
community; for those years, we are searching in campus and commercial newspapers, and other sources.
Critical Milestones.
The Project website also contains several pages summarizing critical milestones in our
communities under headers like Broad Groups, Publications, Support Groups, Radio Shows,
Activity Groups and Pride.
Digitization of Local Newsletters and Magazines.
Several months into the Project, we began contacting the copyright holders of some of the newsletters and
magazines produced by our community over the years.
We then began digitizing those publications for which we had secured copyright permissions.
This has been a very slow and arduous process.
We have now digitized and mounted on our website the complete
28-issue run of Outlook Magazine (1995-1998),
and the complete 7-issue run of
OUT! (1978-1979).
In addition, we have received copyright permission to digitize and mount on our website various publications
of the tri-Pride Assocation and also of GLOW (the University of Waterloo group);
these digitizations will be handled as time permits.
For more information, see our
Digital Library.
Videos of Oral History Interviews.
We have begun a joint initiative with
Femme Fatale Creations called
Rainbow Reflections,
in which we aim to create a new documentary and set of video interviews of people sharing their memories of
local rainbow history.
Thematic Histories.
In future, we plan on including sections containing thematic histories.
All staff of Grand River Rainbow Historical Project are volunteers. They include:
We have also benefited considerably from the assistance of the following student placements from the Library and Information Technician Program at Mohawk College
The Grand River Rainbow Historical Society, a volunteer-based group, is the sponsor of
the Grand River Rainbow Historical Project.
The Grand River Rainbow Historical Society is an action group of
SPECTRUM - Waterloo Region's Rainbow Community Space.