The University of Toronto’s LGBTQ+ Oral History Digital Collaboratory and The ArQuives are working together on an oral history project about the 2000 Pussy Palace raid, Canada’s last major bathhouse police raid. We know that there were more than 350 people in attendance the night the Pleasure Palace (formerly, “Pussy Palace”) was raided, and we want to gather as many accounts of the event as possible.
Interviews will be hosted on Zoom, scheduled at your convenience, and would last 1.5-2hrs long. In exchange for your time, we can offer a $35 gift card.
Once complete, we will preserve the oral histories at The ArQuives, where they will be available for community members, artists, activists, and researchers. Our hope is to document a collection of stories that will testify not only to the events of the raid but also to the nuances of an historic moment of radical sexual culture in Toronto’s LGBTQ2+ community.
Whether you attended the event on the night of the raid or were involved with the police action, the legal case, or related activism, we’d love for you to share your story.
This work builds upon the September 2020 event that took place online at The ArQuives to honour the raid’s 20th anniversary. If you missed it, you can watch the panel here: https://vimeo.com/472241972
If you are interested in having your oral history recorded and donated to The ArQuives, please contact: oralhistories@arquives.ca