{"id":783446,"date":"2026-07-06T08:07:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/783446\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T08:07:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:07:40","slug":"new-archives-bring-new-brunswicks-hidden-queer-history-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/783446\/","title":{"rendered":"New archives bring New Brunswick&#8217;s hidden queer history online"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\" alt=\"Text to Speech Icon\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Listen to this article<\/p>\n<p>Estimated 4 minutes<\/p>\n<p>The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n<p>A grassroots effort to preserve queer history in New Brunswick is now making decades of stories, photographs and lived experiences more accessible to the public.<\/p>\n<p>The Queer Heritage Initiative of New Brunswick (QHINB) has launched a new website this week, bringing together more than a decade of archival work documenting LGBTQ+ life across the province.<\/p>\n<p>About 10 years ago, a small group of researchers and community members began collecting what they say was missing from the public record \u2014 the documented history of queer life in New Brunswick.<\/p>\n<p>This week, that work has taken a new form online.<\/p>\n<p>The website brings together archival material including photographs, newsletters, posters and oral histories dating back to the 1970s.<\/p>\n<p>For Meredith J. Batt, a queer historian and archivist with the initiative, the project began with a simple observation: much of this history was never formally recorded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t that these things hadn\u2019t taken place, it was just that people hadn\u2019t had material that they were holding on to,\u201d Batt said.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Meredith J. Batt archivist-advisor and co-founder at the Queer Heritage Initiative of New Brunswick, standing newt to the tree, wearing green sweater.\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783325259_919_default.jpg\" style=\"aspect-ratio:0.75\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>Meredith J. Batt archivist-advisor and co-founder at the Queer Heritage Initiative of New Brunswick. (Submitted by Meredith J. Batt)<\/p>\n<p>The collection, now housed in more than 25 sub-collections at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, includes both physical and digital material, ranging from activist newsletters and photographs to ephemera and recorded interviews.<\/p>\n<p>A new interactive website now brings much of that material together in one place, which also includes an online database and timeline tracing LGBTQ+ life in the province from the 1800s to the present.<\/p>\n<p>Batt said the goal is not only preservation, but access.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve really focused on creating a website to kind of pull all of our resources together to a central place,\u201d Batt said, adding that the project also includes oral histories, community panels and educational materials.<\/p>\n<p>Among the stories preserved in the archive are records connected to Fredericton\u2019s LGBTQ+ nightlife in the late 1990s, including The G Club \u2014 one of the only dedicated queer spaces in the city at the time.<\/p>\n<p>Greg Ericson, a co-founder of the club, is also represented in the archive through business records and materials documenting the space\u2019s operations, licensing history and community events.<\/p>\n<p>For Ericson, the archive reflects a period when LGBTQ+ life in Fredericton was both visible and vulnerable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a difficult time for the LGBTQ+ community,\u201d he said, recalling arson attacks on queer venues and reports of violence that shaped the era.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was definitely a feeling that the community was not as safe as it has been in years before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ericson said The G Club was created in response to that reality \u2014 a space meant to be welcoming and inclusive, where people could gather, dance and socialize.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"A nostalgic indoor photograph shows a smiling man with shoulder-length brown hair and a goatee standing in a bar setting. He is wearing a dark green, loose-fitting T-shirt with a small, circular yellow and black emblem on the left chest. Behind him i\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783325260_362_default.jpg\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.0847457627118644\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>Greg Ericson, co-founder of Fredericton&#8217;s historic G Club (popularly known to patrons as &#8216;The G-Spot&#8217;), stands at the bar in 1998. (Submitted by Greg Ericson)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wanted to create a space where everyone was welcome to come dance and play and socialize,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Looking back now, he said seeing that history preserved publicly gives it new meaning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s an excellent idea to have an accessible social history for people to read through and to reflect on,\u201d Ericson said.<\/p>\n<p>He added that the past shows how progress is not always steady.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSocial progress is not necessarily linear,\u201d Ericson said. \u201cThere are down times and there are dark times that people face.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For Batt, that reflection is central to the project.<\/p>\n<p>The archive, she said, is meant to help future generations understand LGBTQ+ history in New Brunswick not only through milestones, but also through lived experience, community spaces and everyday stories that were never fully recorded at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-783446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}