Gay bars winnipeg
Winnipeg has long been a welcoming city, with a community that has seemingly always fought for for 2SLGBTQIA+ rights. You’d have to look all the way back to the 1920s to locate our first underground lgbtq+ establishments – which you can, via the University of Manitoba’s Manitoba Gay/Lesbian Archive’s Oral History Project.
One of Winnipeg’s first notable gay bars was Club 654, a members only after-hours club where liquor was not sold. Club 654’s opening, on a Sunday afternoon in 1970, attracted more than 200 people. A year or so before this, on Halloween night in 1968, the first drag ball was held in Winnipeg at the Sildor Ballroom.
Unlike notorious “raids” at other gay clubs in cities across Canada, there were no raids at Winnipeg’s gay bars. This tolerance has been attributed to the work of people like, the Honourable Ruth Krindle, the now retired judge who was instrumental in advocating LGBTQ2 rights, including being counsel for Winnipeg’s first lgbtq+ club in 1969.
Within this environment, by the early 70s, notable establishments like Happenings Social Club (1974-2002) and the Mardis Gras offered the society a place to contact their own. The 70s also saw a fine deal
The harnesses and chains are out at Club 200. Scruff and jockstraps are on full exhibit tonight for subWOOFer, the monthly gathering at Club 200, where kink and fetish collide.
On the dancefloor, there are collars, smiles and laughs — and the tender glow of cellphones.
Ever since Grindr took off in 2009, its reception has been a mixed bag of burdensome emotions. Depending on who you inquire, hook-up apps are either the foremost thing that possess happened for queer men in the 21st century, or they’re ruining any semblance of group we’ve built throughout the years. Seven years later, we’re still talking about it.
But tonight, Club 200 is making full employ of its 200-person capacity. At a glance, you wouldn’t even know that Winnipeg’s gay bars have been through rocky years, including the loss of one of its oldest running establishments.
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Gio’s Club and Bar closed after 31 years in business. Jay Wealthy, the bar’s former president, puts most of the condemn on hook-u
Winnipeg Queer History Tour
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Sunshine House
646 Logan Avenue
| 1910 | Lewis H. Jordan & Walter Percy Over, Architects |
Sunshine House is a community drop-in and resource centre with a highlight on harm reduction. They welcome people as they are, without the expectation of sobriety. Sunshine House offers a drop-in open to anyone five days a week, and a drop-in specifically for members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ collective twice a week in the evening. Their other programs include Gizhiwenimin, which supports 2SLGBTQIA+ refugees and immigrants; Sunday brunch; Street Feet, a foot look after service; and Science and Supper, which tackles health protect topics while providing a meal. Sunshine House sees up to 200 people come for drop-in or brunch in a day.
Sunshine Dwelling started out as the Kali-Shiva Community in 1983. Kali-Shiva was a team of volunteers devoted to providing nurture for people with HIV/AIDS. The organisation was renamed Sunshine House after Dione Sunshine, a two-spirit trans person who died of AIDS in January 2000.
Architectural Description
646 Logan Avenue was originally a Union Bank of Canada, planned by Winnipeg architects Lewis H. Jordan and Walter Percy Over.
Around the same time, the first identifiable lesbian meeting territory was The Mount Royal Hotel at 186 Higgins Avenue. The Mount Royal remained a mixed bar with lesbians, drag queens, and leather scene clientele into the 1970s. Another popular site for gay socializing occurred at the nude beach in Beaconia, Winnipeg Beach and Grand Beach on Lake Winnipeg. A passenger train operated between Winnipeg and Grand Beach, making the resort town an easily accessible location for weekend leisure where intimate cottages could be rented (Barbour, Dale Winnipeg Beach: Leisure and Courtship in a Resort Town, 1900-1967, University of Manitoba Squeeze, 2011, p.80). In 1957, Child’s Restaurant opened after renovations and became the first non-beer parlour bar in Winnipeg, providing a popular spot for gay theatre enthusiasts. Shortly after, Club Morocco at 673 Portage Avenue and the Mardi Gras Café followed suit and became regular heated spots for gay men and lesbians in the early 1960s. On October 31, 1968 Winnipeg held its first drag ball at the Sildor Ballroom on Sherbrook Street. In late 1970, the first gay club was established at 654 Erin Avenue called Club 654. The club was run by vol