The Story of a Brown Callaloo Dyke
Coming Out in 1970s Toronto
LeZlie Lee Kam
LeZlie Lee Kam is an elder who did foundational work and was instrumental in forming and building queer women of colour groups and producing events for this community in Toronto throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. LeZlie Lee Kam remains active in Toronto, facilitating workshops and making presentations on the rights of LGBTQ seniors with agencies across the GTA and beyond. The following fictionalized story tells of her “coming out” and early organizing in Toronto and was originally presented as part of the Queer Songbook Orchestra performance night at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto in June 2016. The Queer Songbook Orchestra is a music- and arts-based performative archive that chronicles queer histories in Toronto.
This is the story of Maria—a brown, carib, trini, callaloo dyke—and her journey of “coming out” and becoming loud and proud. Maria graduated from York University in 1976. While in school, Maria had been in a very clandestine, loving, and lustful relationship with Sonia for two years. Neither of them had ever used the word lesbian to refer to themselves and they had both been dreadfully afraid of the word dyke. Maria and Sonia knew these were bad words and thus they did not feel like useful words to describe themselves or what they felt for each other. They eventually broke up, never settling on a word to describe their love. After much soul-searching, Maria came to the realization that she truly liked girls. In fact, she liked one specific girl. But, how could her love interest be a woman? Maria did a great deal of reading to try to find some answers to this question. She started with The Well of Loneliness1 and other classic books with queer themes. After reading these books, Maria decided that she must indeed be a lesbian. Maria was resourceful and she wanted to find other lesbians. She was ready to celebrate her newfound identity. She set out on a mission to find her people by contacting the Homophile Association of York University. Maria met with a counsellor there. At this appointment, Maria was warned about the potential dangers of coming out. These risks included the possibility of losing her job—her first job, at the Manulife Insurance Company—, losing her housing, or worse.
“What about my family? Can I tell my three brothers, my mother?” asked Maria. She was now very much afraid.
“Do not tell them!” replied the counsellor, emphatically. “Unless you think that they might understand and support you.” The counsellor followed this up with the caution: “But you should know that that is very unlikely to happen.”
Maria felt confused by this advice. She still had so many questions. She was so conflicted. On the one hand, she finally felt ready to tell the world that she was a lesbian, but on the other, the counsellor had made her scared about how others would react to her news. She had finally discovered herself, and she was ready to explore her desire and love for women. Yet, she was worried about the many potential repercussions. There were so many possible risks and losses: losing her connection to her brothers, losing her job, and even losing her most beloved new apartment. She questioned the benefit of “coming out.” “Why bother?” Maria wondered. Deep down, however, Maria knew that in order to explore the possibilities of being a lesbian, she needed to be open about who she was and who she loved.
The visit with the counsellor wasn’t a total loss. Maria was introduced to the Homophile Association’s peer support network and given a phone number and contact name of a real-live lesbian. Fiona, the counsellor explained, had agreed to introduce Maria to the lesbian community in Toronto. Maria was excited yet hesitant when she bravely called Fiona. Was her life about to change? Luckily, Fiona was friendly. She told Maria that there were lesbian drop-in programs that night at LOOT (the Lesbian Organization of Toronto) and CHAT (the Community Homophile Association of Toronto). They agreed to meet at LOOT.
“What should I wear?” asked Maria. This was her first meeting with other lesbians, and she had to make sure that she was going to fit in with the others.
“Just wear jeans and a top,” said Fiona.
So, in her best jeans and top, off went Maria on the subway to 342 Jarvis Street, just north of Carlton, where the LOOT meeting was about to take place. Maria was nervous about going to the Church-Wellesley village because the newspapers regularly described this neighbourhood as “seedy” and frequented by “ladies of the evening.” Maria arrived at the front door, plucked up her courage, and knocked on the door. Fiona greeted her at the door. Finally, Maria had met her first lesbian friend!
As they entered the building, Fiona turned and asked: “Are you from Jamaica?”
“I’m from Trinidad,” Maria replied.
“Where is that?” asked Fiona.
“Seven miles off the coast of Venezuela,” said Maria. Fiona was still confused. “Does she not know her geography?” Maria thought to herself. Maria began to realize that she had to become an ambassador of Trinidad and educate the new lesbians she was intent on meeting, about her culture and community.
Maria asked about LOOT, and Fiona explained that it was a fairly new group, made up of lesbians who had decided to rent part of the house at 342 Jarvis. LOOT would occupy the first and second floors. The programming included a phone line call-in once a week for women exploring their sexuality. Women could call in and speak with a peer counsellor. There was also a drop-in coffee house every Thursday evening for women to connect and socialize. Maria felt like she was learning a new language: phone line call-in, peer counsellor, and drop-in/coffee house were initially unfamiliar terms. She later learned others that would become part of her new vocabulary: potlucks and women’s music.
Fiona introduced Maria to some of the lesbians who were at the drop-in. Maria was very disappointed because none of them looked like her. All of them were white! “There must be other brown trini lesbians out there,” Maria thought. “I have to find them!” Maria was always the optimist, and she was fierce, tenacious, and persistent. Maria decided that she had to become part of this new organization in order to help shape its goals and objectives. She had a hidden agenda, too: meeting new lesbians and enjoying more of those forbidden orgasms she had come to love!
Later that evening Fiona suggested they check out the CHAT drop-in, which was in the basement of a building nearby. Maria was carefully and very subtly surveying the crowd, thinking: “Where are the lesbians? These people look mostly like men.” She very shyly asked Fiona her question. “Where are the lesbians, Fiona?”
Fiona laughed. “These are butch and femme lesbians. Some are ‘separatists.’”
“Separatists?! All the way from Quebec for a lesbian drop-in?” asked Maria incredulously.
Fiona laughed again. “No. . . . These are separatists from men,” Fiona answered. She then went on to explain that Maria would have to decide if she was butch, femme or a separatist when she officially came out as a lesbian. Maria now faced a major dilemma. She had three brothers, so she could not be a separatist. She certainly did not feel like she fit into the categories of butch or femme based on what they were wearing at the drop-in. She wondered how she was going to find her place in this community.
Later that evening while in the washroom a woman approached Maria. “Hi. . . . You must be feeling really out of place here.”
Maria sighed. “Yes. Can you tell that it’s my first time being with other lesbians?” she asked, glad that someone was being nice to her.
“Oh no,” the woman replied, “I meant that you are the only black here. . . . You really stand out!”
“I’m from Trinidad, and I’m brown,” replied Maria. “How can you not know the difference between black and brown?”
Being from Trinidad, which was then known as the “most cosmopolitan country” in the world, Maria was very used to being in a diverse setting. When Maria started primary school in Trinidad, her father had to complete a form which asked about race. The choices were white, Black, Chinese, Indian or mixed race. Maria’s father had checked off the box for mixed and added brown.
The woman replied: “In Canada, there are only whites and blacks. Get used to it!”
Maria was shocked and stunned. “Why does the colour of my skin matter? We are all lesbians here,” she thought. She certainly was not expecting this reaction. She had thought that just being a lesbian and sharing similar experiences of coming out would unite them as a group. How wrong this assumption was! She was about to find out exactly how wrong. This was Maria’s initiation into the lesbian community of Toronto. She felt sad and angry. However, Maria was not to be deterred.
She was introduced to the bar and club scene where she met three other nonwhite lesbians. They were the only nonwhite lesbians and dykes “out” in the bar scene in 1977. Together they partied and enjoyed the disco scene at Toronto’s lesbian bars. These bars included the Cameo, an underground club that was literally underground, causing Maria to question why lesbian bars always seemed to be in the basement! In 1977, lesbians were not welcome or tolerated at the many gay men’s bars in the city. The Studio was the only gay bar where gay men and lesbians coexisted peacefully, bonding in solidarity during the many police raids of the establishment. This spot at the corner of Church and Carlton Street was more recently known as the Cellblock/Zippers and was demolished in the fall of 2016 to make way for a new condominium.
Maria had her first personal encounter with the police when they raided LOOT in 1977. This led to Maria’s first act of protest as an out dyke, reclaiming the derogatory word that straight people were using against her and her new lesbian friends as a powerful word to describe a lesbian who was politically active. The police stated that they were looking for under-age girls who might be influenced by the older lesbians on the premises. Maria was outraged. She wanted to fight back against this police harassment. The lesbians of LOOT protested against the police raids outside the police station at Dundas Street and McCaul Street, not realizing how much danger they could be in.
Thus began Maria’s activism. Over the years she became more assertive about protecting herself from homophobic harassment. Maria decided that it was in her best interest to start being loud and proud in every aspect of her life. As part of this new understanding, she decided to come out at her workplace. It was 1980. Maria went to the personnel department and put them on notice. “I do my job well and get excellent evaluations, so the fact that I’m a lesbian must not affect my job status,” she bravely informed them. Maria even took out an ad in the Globe & Mail newspaper trying to find other brown dykes. When she tried to place her ad, she was told that words like “lesbian,” “dyke,” “gay,” and “brown” were not allowed in the paper. As a result, she was left with the wording, “Homosexual female seeking same for socializing and dancing.” Not exactly what she had intended, but there it was.
Maria was part of lesbian and dyke communities in Toronto throughout the 1980s. In September 1989, while sitting with some white friends outside The Rose, a lesbian bar on Parliament Street, Maria was targeted by two cops. They brutally physically assaulted her, and when Maria cried out that she could see the number on his badge and that she would report him and his partner, one of the officers stated: “Go ahead, we can find out where you live!” This was terrifying. Maria became even more frightened of cops after that episode and soon found out that many of her dyke friends of colour were being targeted and assaulted by cops on a regular basis. Together, they then strategized to travel in groups of four or more whenever they went out late at night to the lesbian bars to help protect each other from harassment.
As the years went by Maria started to discover more women who looked like her. She was very happy. But Maria was still looking for mixed-race women like herself. She started a group for mixed-race lesbians and lo and behold there were many in Toronto! Once the group started meeting, they decided that they had to make a positive political statement about their struggles as mixed-race lesbians and dykes. Their narratives were later compiled into the anthology Miscegenation Blues.2 The group had decided to do something politically active for the Toronto Pride parade in 1991 and formed the subgroup Lesbians of Colour. They loudly and proudly participated in the parade and were joined by many gay men of colour carrying boomboxes and swaying and dancing to the rhythms of soca, reggae, and bhangra music. The people along the parade route cheered loudly as the group marched by. This was the first official QTBIPOC presence in the Toronto Pride parade. At the end of the parade, Maria was approached by a young brown trini guy named Anthony.
“I know that you are a trini too,” he said, “How about organizing something together for the 1992 Pride Parade?” Maria was sceptical because she had not organized with men before.
“Let’s join your group with gay men of colour and include other groups of colour in Toronto,” Anthony continued.
They then looked at each other and said in unison: “Let’s make a carnival jump-up band with soca music!”
So Maria and Anthony joined forces and formed a group of like-minded lesbians, dykes, and gay men of colour. A massive outreach was done across Toronto and outlying areas via community radio stations CKLN 88.1 FM, CIUT 89.5 FM, and CHRY 105.1 FM through community newspapers and other informal networks. They held many meetings at the 519 Church Street Community Centre and eventually the Proud and Visible Coalition was formed. Word had spread about this exciting and unique venture and people came in from New York, Ottawa, and Vancouver to join them at the parade. On Pride Sunday in 1992, Lesbians and Gays of Colour and the newly formed Proud and Visible Coalition met under a banner that proclaimed: “The Proud and Visible Coalition—500 Years of Pride—Celebrating Our Resistance.” Behind their little red pickup truck were more than one hundred fifty people of colour dancing, chanting, and proudly living OUT lives.
In 1993, Lesbians and Dykes of Colour reclaimed their space in the parade. The group renamed itself World Majority Lesbians because people of colour were quickly becoming the majority of people in the world. On Pride Sunday 1993, they met under a new banner that proclaimed: “World Majority Lesbians: A REVOLUTION OF COLOUR.” They marched loudly and proudly behind their pickup truck waving signs of protest against racism, homophobia and lesbo-phobia and chanting in solidarity with other oppressed groups of colour. The numbers were growing steadily; more than three hundred people of colour marched with them that day. Maria continued organizing Pride events and got the World Majority Lesbians involved in many dyke marches over the years.
They were also starting to take up physical space in lesbian bars. World Majority Lesbians would go together to Fly, Together’s, The Rose, Pope Joan’s and other white gay and lesbian spaces. They aimed to make their presence known quietly but not so subtly as dykes and lesbians of colour in Toronto.
By 1999 Maria and other lesbians and dykes of colour decided the time had come to take up space in the gay bar scene on Church Street. Maria started a monthly event, Island Spice, for lesbians and gays of colour and their allies at the Red Spot. She supported other similar events with the Filipina community. These events lasted for a year and were always packed. Maria knew this was the first time that dykes, lesbians, and gay men of colour felt comfortable and safe in the largely white bar scene on Church Street.
World Majority Lesbians decided it was time to do something big for the 1999 Pride Parade. It was the end of an old century and the beginning of a new one. They agreed that their presence in the parade had to be memorable! They knew that they had to make a political statement. They decided on a new name for their float and group: Queer Womyn Colouring the Century. Maria loved this title. It was big and bold! It had always been Maria’s dream, begun in the early days of the little red pickup truck float in the 1992 parade, to have a big truck or float in the parade, of the kind the gay men seemed to have. Queer Womyn Colouring the Century requested a subsidy from the Toronto Pride Committee and rented a big truck from J & P Towing.
In the two months prior to the parade, the Toronto Police had started running ads on billboards and posters on the Toronto Transit Commission buses and subways. The ads featured pictures of two Latino men, with the caption “Help Prevent Crime on the TTC!” Community groups and people of colour communities across the city were angry, shocked and appalled by this blatant example of racism and discrimination. The World Majority Lesbians decided to use their truck as a platform of resistance to this outrageous act of oppression. They agreed to rage, rant and resist this racist policing. The big truck would be the site of their resistance. They readied themselves for the parade. The group created a huge sign for one side of the truck that read, “STOP POLICE RACISM—END THE CRIMINALIZATION OF PEOPLES OF COLOUR” in bold capitals. Finally, their truck was ready. The truck and its followers, numbering over six hundred people, were immediately surrounded by the media and numerous photographers. The group was aware of the risk it was taking by putting up their sign of protest on the truck. Maria and Sil, another group member, were appointed spokeswomen for their group to speak to the press and authorities. While waiting in line to enter the parade, the group was approached by two burly white cops in uniform.
“Who’s in charge here?” they shouted. Maria and Sil stepped forward. The cops pointed to the sign.
“TAKE IT DOWN. NOW!” they demanded. Maria and Sil politely refused. The cops then went over to the driver of the truck.
“J & P Towing has a contract with the Police,” they told the driver. “Get them to remove the sign, or there will be a penalty to your company,” they threatened.
“These lesbians have rented the truck for the day. I can’t do anything about what they have put on their signs,” replied the driver.
Knowing that there could be further retaliation from the police if they did not remove their sign, Maria and Sil asked the media and other photographers to surround the truck. They needed them as witnesses in case things turned ugly. The two cops stormed off, threatening further action. Two white women, wearing gray pantsuits and looking very official, approached the group and asked for the sign to be taken down. Maria and Sil were called over to deal with the women. The pantsuit-clad women identified themselves as undercover police, stating that their job was to protect their group. They threatened, “It would be in your best interest to remove your provocative sign,” adding that it was “degrading to the police of the City of Toronto.” The conversation took place beside the truck, and both officers had their hands on their guns under cover of their jackets for the duration.
Maria and Sil again politely refused to remove their banner, while media and onlookers snapped photos. The two undercover cops did not realize that they had been surrounded and were now the subjects of hundreds of pictures. They backed down and allowed them to keep their sign up. World Majority Lesbians had just struck a huge blow for justice!
At long last, the big truck entered the 1999 Pride Parade, proclaiming loudly on its front: “QUEER WOMYN COLOURING THE CENTURY—CELEBRATING PRIDE LOVE STRENGTH UNITY!!” Hundreds of lesbians, dykes, and gay people of colour marched that day. Together, they took up space and made a bold and brave political statement.