I claim Alexander Wood, I claim Emily Carr, I claim... Mazo

Heh heh. Mazo de la Roche! Mazo de la Roche! Feels good to mention La Roche again. I missed her.

So, why does the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives have in its collection materials related to the much debated maybe-she-is, maybe-she-isn't auteur of a gazillion Jalna books?

Cuz somebody gave it to them, of course. "Collecting has been a fairly passive kind of process," archives president Mary MacDonald told me in a telephone interview a couple of weeks ago. "They call and say, do you want it?" And in the archives' first few years ('twas founded in 1973), it's not like anyone would say no, git that crap outta here. Says MacDonald: "You collect what they want to give you."

But of course, space is not infinite. Who deserves to be included? "Those are things that have to be figured out," says MacDonald. "We are not in the business of deciding who's gay, lesbian, bisexual... it hasn't been an issue." After all, if someone thought X and Y (or should that be X and X?) deserved to be in there, then it probably did: "If they have a place in that archive, then that's true for them." There are closet cases who've worked for the community, ditto straights....

MacDonald adds that a person's hold over the collective queer imagination must also be taken into account. Alexander Wood, run outta Toronto in 1810 for allegedly fondling penises, has become an icon in Hogtown's gay village. "We know what that's representing, but I'm not in the business of saying yes he was gay," says MacDonald. "There's no branding going on."

I just did a quick e-search of archive files and there's not a dag-nabbed thing on Emily Carr.

Carr is the terribly famous British Columbia painter (dates are 1871 to 1945, and she's even got a school named after her). "One of Canada’s best-known personalities," it sez here, "Emily Carr was famous for her well-documented eccentricities such as her yearning to be surrounded by numerous dogs, cats, birds, a monkey called Woo and a rat! [...] Emily Carr was an independent woman and a 'westerner' who was gaining a prominence at a time when independent women and western Canadians were not well-known internationally. Carr wrote, painted, hooked rugs, made pottery, ran a boarding house and spoke her mind.... Fifty-five years after her death, Carr can be seen as an environmentalist who painted insightful images of both lush forests and clearcut mountainsides, a person aware of cultural diversity who found something intrinsic in native northwest coast art, and a nationalist who was always drawn to Canada, its natural beauty and power and its important First Nations presence."

I rediscovered Carr on the weekend by reading 1942's "The Book of Small," a delightful collection of short prose about her childhood. I should call it poetry, actually. Beautiful writing.

And of course, Carr is suspected of being a lesbian. As here: "She never married and is listed as lesbian in several authoritative works." (Er, I couldn't find any of those authoritative works... [anyone?])

Lesbian? Dunno. Should be in the archive? Well, why not? Alex Wood and de la Roche are. Heck, get'em all in there. As long as we actually remember that Wood and de la Roche and Carr might have been appalled at their inclusion.


More on the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives tomorrow.