A Brief History of Gay: Canada's First Gay Tabloid, 1964-1966 (review)

For a few exhilarating months in the mid-1960s, a Toronto magazine bearing the unambiguous title GAY was sending 20,000 copies to the United States for national distribution. Few gay magazines were published anywhere in the world in the years of secrecy before the emergence of the open gay community of today. The startling story of this publication has long mystified researchers in lesbian and gay history who will thus welcome Don McLeod's latest contribution.

Though McLeod is the first to point out that this is only a 'brief history,' lacking in biographical details on the small group of courageous men who founded the magazine, this volume outlines their struggle to inform and entertain members of Toronto's clandestine gay world and later to expand into the American market. Only fifteen issues appeared between 1964 and 1966, but this scant output guarantees GAY a place of honour in the history of gay journalism in North America. For a short time, this pioneering little publication outsold all the other gay publications then available combined.

Supplementing the excellent archival sources with an interview with the only man he could find from the group of magazine collaborators, McLeod documents the checkered history of the publication from its start in March 1964. After a few issues, the first president absconded with most of the cash in the bank account. The other founders, together with contributors who had joined the effort during the first few months, managed to find a new investor and miraculously saved the magazine. Despite his success in breaking into the American market, the investor caused its final closure when he was arrested in early 1966.

McLeod provides an issue-by-issue summary of the contents. One day we hope to see the full print run on a website, since it documents gay life in Toronto in a period about which little is known. Though much of the content consists of bitchy gossip, graphics of poor quality and reprinted articles, GAY also provided its readers with serious commentaries on political, ethical, and even historical themes related to homosexuality. Along with the 'Diary of a Call Boy' series, there was a discussion of homosexuality in ancient Greece and criticism of the treatment of homosexuals by the police and the media. There were also listings of gay groups internationally and comments on the activities of the fledgling homophile movement in the United States. Such views had not previously been accessible.

What this book lacks is a perspective on why we should care about all this. What makes this magazine significant? McLeod's theoretical apparatus consists largely of a notion of the magazine finding its 'voice,' unable to decide whether to liberate gay sexuality through a weird combination of camp humour and political analysis, or to reject those elements, as some readers urged, that detracted from gay respectability and assimilation into mainstream culture. In my view, what made GAY significant is implicit throughout this book, though the author doesn't point it out: this magazine was a business venture aimed at a gay readership. In its pages, other gay-oriented businesses advertised or were discussed, including bars, physique studios, and dating services. At the same time it included significant discussion of the emerging rhetoric of gay identity and the defence of individuals' right to live free from arbitrary arrest and censorship. The parallel opening of these commercial and discursive spaces, each contributing to the development of the other over the course of the 1960s, paved the way for the open gay communities that sprang to life (and to public awareness) after 1969. The fact that GAY was a commercial failure and that it had already been forgotten just a few years after its closure when gay liberation came to Canada should not obscure the vital role it played in showing that gay businesses could succeed and that they could help open a forum for the development of gay political ideology...