Kingston has a long legacy of queer spaces, but much of this history is hidden, not unlike the queer community itself. With Kingston’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community experiencing a shortage of queer nightlife spaces today, history serves as a reminder that queer people have always found ways to exist, whether out in the open or in the shadows.
Drag queen Tyffanie Morgan moved to Kingston in 1999 as an incoming Queen’s student. Though she hadn’t yet started her career in drag, it wasn’t long until she found a community in Club 477, a local gay bar located at 477 Princess St.
Previously known as Robert’s Club Vogue, Club 477 is where Tyffanie met her drag mother, Jas Morgan. Tyffanie started performing in March 2000. Club 477 was a vibrant hub for drag at the time, with performers like Crystal Cage and Jas Morgan for Tyffanie to look up to as a “second gen drag queen.”
Club 477 was a safe haven for Tyffanie and other queer students to express themselves without fear of being ostracized or attacked because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“It was quite the little community,” Tyffanie said in an interview with The Journal. “I was accepted very quickly.”
Despite the homophobia and hecklers outside the club, Tyffanie felt protected—something queer students continue to desire in Kingston.
“The staff were just amazing there […] sometimes you’d be outside and there would be some car stopped that would roll the window down and you’d be like, ‘I know what’s gonna happen here,’” she said.
“But then the bouncers would jump out and chase after them. It was just kind of nice to know that it was a safe space. It was definitely a safe space,” she shared.
Club 477 was the centre of Kingston’s queer community, Tyffanie said. It brought together queer people from all walks of life and helped birth new safe spaces in people’s homes.
“It was quite the community hub because you’d always bump into people you knew there. But also, people tended to live fairly close to it,” she added.
When Tyffanie first got into drag, she and her friends would get dressed up and do their makeup at a friend’s house that was conveniently located right behind Club 477 on Colborne St.
“My first apartment was on Johnson St., like two blocks away. Sometimes coming home in drag, the neighbours would say, ‘be careful of that house because people come in one gender and come out a different gender,’” she joked.
Club 477 closed for good in the early ’00s. According to The Journal, an influx of hate crimes and heckling drove away many patrons, and Kingston lost an iconic part of its queer nightlife scene. It wasn’t the only safe space in Kingston at the time. There was still Wally’s, a gay bar on Bath Rd., and Shay Foo Foo’s, a martini lounge on Princess St.
Eventually, these places closed too, with Shay Foo Foo, the last standing gay bar, shutting its doors in 2009. This left Kingston without much of a queer nightlife scene, and Kingston’s queer community went back into hiding.
Hiding wasn’t a foreign concept for Kingston’s queer community. This is something historian Marney McDiarmid discovered in her Master’s thesis, From Mouth to Mouth: An Oral History of Lesbians and Gays in Kingston from World War II to 1980s.
As a queer history student at Queen’s in the late 90s, McDiarmid realized queer stories were completely excluded from the historical records of Kingston and other small cities in Canada.
“I was queer, living in Kingston at the time, and I noticed when I was reading more about queer history, there wasn’t anything written about people living in smaller urban centres. The narrative was that people from smaller towns and rural areas—because it was too hard to be queer there—all left and went to bigger cities,” McDiarmid said in an interview with The Journal.
But McDiarmid knew that this wasn’t the case. Having been part of the queer community as a student, she knew several older gays and lesbians who had lived in Kingston for decades. She wanted to share their stories.
“By looking at old microfilms of The Kingston Whig Standard and the engineering paper and The Queen’s Journal, whenever I saw a name of anybody in the paper who identified as gay, I tried to contact them through alumni affairs. The other thing I did was I put posters everywhere and mainly was able to reach people through word of mouth because at that point, I was already quite active in the community,” she explained.
It took McDiarmid years to gather all the stories she used in her Master’s thesis. Many queer people in Kingston were closeted, and others were hesitant to become part of Kingston’s documented history. McDiarmid spoke with one participant for three years until he became comfortable enough to have his story shared.
“We have this idea that history is about people who have fought wars or been political leaders, so some people didn’t understand why their story was important,” McDiarmid said. “Their stories are as important as these other understandings of the past that we have.”
Through her research, McDiarmid discovered many of the creative ways gays and lesbians formed a community in Kingston up until the ’80s, despite the rampant homophobia at the time. Before the early 1980s, openly queer nightlife spaces didn’t exist in Kingston. Queer people found a way to blend into “straight” drinking establishments, while still being able to identify each other.
One of these establishments was the Cat’s Meow. The Cat’s Meow was one of the most popular nightlife spaces for gay men between the ’60s and ’70s. Before it became the Cat’s Meow, this bar was called the Elbow Room. Both as the Elbow Room and as the Cat’s Meow, this space was a covert meeting place for gay men in Kingston.
According to a piece McDiarmid wrote for Stones Kingston, what made the Cat’s Meow a relatively safe space for gay men at the time was, somewhat ironically, the fact that it also had a large clientele of straight men. Many gay men were closeted at the time and didn’t want to be outed by their presence in such spaces. Since straight men frequented the Cat’s Meow as well, this concern was partially mitigated.
Revealing this part of Kingston’s history was especially important to McDiarmid because of her experience not feeling entirely welcome at Queen’s because of her queer identity.
“I think BIPOC students and queer students can end up feeling really estranged from their environment, and that takes its toll psychically and spiritually on people,” McDiarmid explained. “It’s changing and it’s changed a lot, but not enough.”
Throughout history, queer people have had to fight for their right to exist in Kingston, McDiarmid said. Spaces like the Cat’s Meow and Club 477 prove they won that fight. McDiarmid believes it’s important for queer people today, particularly queer students, to learn about the roots of the local pride movement and acts of queer resistance.
“Despite everything, they still managed to find space and community and a way to see themselves in community with other people that counters negative discourses. That kind of resistance is powerful, I think collectively and on an individual level, it matters. We come from a history where people have been doing that in this town for a long time, so knowing that helps people feel a sense of pride and connection to the movement,” McDiarmid said.
Without any gay bars or clubs downtown today, Kingston’s queer nightlife scene is practically non-existent. Although Kingston now celebrates pride every year, with several businesses being Rainbow Registered year-round, many queer students still long for designated queer spaces.
“For me, queer spaces are a celebration of an identity that isn’t always kindly looked upon,” Ella East, ArtSci ’27, said in an interview with The Journal. “I think it’s essential to have a queer nightlife space to go to, especially in a fairly big university town such as Kingston.”
For many queer students, including East, the need for a queer nightlife space is a matter of safety and comfort.
“When I visit straight nightlife places, I am always slightly on edge and careful of how I present and act. In straight clubs, I’ve felt uncomfortable as men try to push themselves onto me despite my disinterest,” East said.
“In my experience, queer spaces have always upheld stronger values of respect and consent, and I strongly believe Kingston needs that alternative,” East said.
This sentiment isn’t unique. It’s echoed by several other queer students at Queen’s, who feel dissatisfied with the current nightlife scene in Kingston.
“Kingston’s nightlife is for cis, straight, and often older people,” Brianna Karley, ArtSci ’27, said in an interview with The Journal. “Clubs are rare and difficult to get into, and their target audience consists of cis, straight, popular students. This is not at all a welcoming place for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, and it absolutely doesn’t feel safe for a minute as a queer woman out partying.”
Despite a clear demand for queer nightlife spaces with more people living out of the closet, it’s been difficult to get a gay bar or club off the ground in downtown Kingston.
Club 338 was supposed to be Kingston’s first gay bar in over a decade, inspired by Club 477 of the ’80s and ’90s. Located at 338 Princess St., the club was initially set to open in 2023. However, in a statement to The Journal, drag queen Tyffanie Morgan, a friend of drag queen Bekka Blake, the visionary behind Club 338, revealed that city planning issues prevented the club’s opening.
“That, unfortunately, is dead in the water,” Tyffanie said. “They’re not opening up.”
Just as gay men carved out a space for themselves at the Cat’s Meow, queer students say they want to take up space in queer-friendly nightlife establishments in an effort to prove Kingston’s queer community isn’t invisible.
Having been part of Kingston’s queer community since 1999, Tyffanie has found spaces that despite not being designated queer spaces are inclusive. At the top of her list is the Grad Club, where she’s done several drag performances in the past.
Next is Tavern 2.0, a former hotspot for biker gangs that
today is a welcoming space, Tyffanie said. She also recommends Tir Nan Og for their recurring Beers for Queers event. The University Tavern is another great spot that is in fact gay-owned and operated. Finally, Tyffanie recommends Something in the Water, another queer-friendly space where Tyffanie has done many drag shows.
Despite the lack of designated queer spaces, queer students should take advantage of these spaces and stay hopeful for new queer spaces in the future, Tyffanie said.
McDiarmid believes it’s important for queer students today to help change Kingston’s reputation. As a Queen’s student in the ’90s, McDiarmid felt the University wasn’t particularly welcoming to queer students. However, she chose to stay in Kingston and bolster awareness of local queer history through her research.
“It becomes a self-perpetuating thing where Queen’s doesn’t have that reputation, so people don’t choose it because they don’t see themselves reflected in the history or the space,” McDiarmid said. “I know lots of people who have come and who have left because they’re like, ‘this really sucks for me.’”
It is for this reason that queer spaces are so essential, according to McDiarmid. To those outside of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, these spaces may seem redundant since conventional nightlife spaces don’t explicitly discriminate against queer people. However, McDiarmid believes it’s important to have both designated queer spaces as well as conventional spaces that welcome queer clientele.
“It’s about comfort and being able to express yourself, and it’s nice to have a space where that’s always the case. Instead of a space where you go into it, and maybe the last time you were there it felt comfortable, but this time there are different people there and it’s like, ‘Oh actually, my friend who is trans isn’t going to feel comfortable or might even get harassed,” McDiarmid said.
“There are spaces for [queer] people, as long as you fit a convention of what is normal,” McDiarmid said. “How liberating it is to walk into a place and feel like these are my people.”
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