The Grand River Rainbow Community Historical Project was begun on 2011, March 14 by the Grand River Rainbow Community Historical Society, with Jim Parrott as Editor of the Project. The goal was to document the history of the various rainbow communities in the Grand River region of Southwestern Ontario. After some basic timelines had been established, work began in June to arrange for copyright permissions to digitize and display materials from various local groups.

By late 2011, it had became clear that an obvious gap in the historical materials was oral-history narratives. In January of 2012 Jim was introduced to local film-maker Melissa Sky, who turned out to be Melissa Macdonald, an old friend and queer activists at the University of Waterloo from the 1990s. Together they concocted a proposal that resulted in the creation of a 90 minute film by Melissa Sky entitled Rainbow Reflections. Here is a link to the video and more information on it: