Mother Goose

This is the fourth and final episode of Mother Goose, The St. Charles Mob. This episode is about the changing scene on Yonge street in the late 1960s, which saw a rise a rise in invasive police surveillance and the rise a new Halloween drag ball that drew a very different crowd than the one at Letros.

This episode is largely about an annual event in Toronto that was a direct challenge to gender norms – the Halloween Drag Ball at Letros Tavern on King street. We don’t know exactly how old a tradition the Halloween drag ball was in Toronto. The first mention we’ve found was in 1949, in a tabloid called Flash. In that story though, the writer alluded to the fact that it defin

This is the second episode of Mother Goose, Fairy-Go-Round, and it’s all about the challenge of holding on to a gay bar. Whereas the last episode was about finding a bar, this episode will explore how the people challenged the closet in formal and informal ways, as well as the relationship between queers and the racialized community that lived in the neighbourhood of Toronto know

In this episode, our main character, Garrett, who has just moved to Toronto, is looking for a gay bar. This episode will deal primarily with the way the “closet,” was imposed on queer people in Toronto in the 1950s. During the Cold War, the RCMP started investigating and keeping files on civil servants who were suspected of being gay. By the end of the 1960, they’d have compi

A quick preview of Mother Goose!