Categories: Lifestyle

Calgary’s first gay bar honoured in Canada Post’s Pride stamp collection

Photo via The City of Calgary

Canada Post has released a lineup of stamps called Places of Pride. These stamps honour and recognize spaces across the country that Canada’s queer community fought for, and one of them has a Calgary connection.

Calgary’s first gay bar, Club Carousel, opened its doors on March 20, 1970. During a time where it was deeply unsafe to be queer, the club provided a vital source of community for Calgary’s 2SLGBTQ+ population.

Underground beginnings

The 1st street building that would eventually be home to Club Carousel was constructed in 1905. In 1963, its basement became the Depression Coffee House, a local hub for chess, poetry, folk music, and performances.

In 1969, the building supported Calgary’s first chartered private gay members club, which was a pretty big deal. However, it did not go smoothly. Obtaining a business licence was difficult, and when the original owner began allowing non-members to attend, the actual members started a boycott.

Finally, a charitable society was formed, taking over the space in 1970 and reopening it as Club Carousel.

Meet Lois

Lois Szabo was one of the founding members. Now in her 80s, Szabo came out in 1964 and struggled to find places where people like her could safely connect, celebrate, and simply exist. To put things into perspective, homosexuality had only been decriminalized one year before Club Carousel opened its doors. A same-sex couple simply dancing with each other could have been charged with public indecency.

To ensure the safety of patrons (queer populations at that time were subjected to frequent physical assaults and worse), Club Carousel would be a members-only venue (although this didn’t stop police from trying to shut it down). This method would be adopted at other queer spaces across the prairies.

“[The club] quickly established itself as a lively beacon where members could bring their own drinks and dance the night away to the sounds coming from the club’s jukebox,” reads the Canada Post website. “But it was far more than a place to let loose. It became a central hub for queer folk in Calgary.”

Club Carousel’s membership grew from 20 to nearly 700 during its eight-year tenure, and has influenced many queer organizations that exist in the community today. Even after the club shut its doors, Szabo continued to act as a beacon for connection and social change for 2SLGBTQ+ people in Calgary, and she would eventually have a park named after her in 2021. Today, the building is home to the sports bar Home and Away.

Here and queer

Canada Post’s other three stamps in the Places of Pride collection honour Toronto’s 1971 Gay Day Picnic which was considered the first major gathering of queer people in Canada, a 1977 police raid of gay bar Truxx in Montréal that would lead the first law in Canada prohibiting discrimintation based on sexual orientation, and the third North American Native Gay & Lesbian Gathering near Beausejour, Manitoba, in 1990, where the term “two-spirit” was first introduced.

The stamps are available at canadapost.ca and select postal outlets across Canada.