Berto_Tony_201307_PhD .pdf - University of Guelph

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included meeting places, networks to warn about police, and complex social hierarchies
(Leznoff 31-40).
This era also saw conservative trends reforming pre-war notions that associated
homosexuality with national degeneration into new threats of “national, social and criminal
sexual danger” (Kinsman 157). Sprung from these ideas came various witch hunts that
aimed to purge government and military departments of homosexuals (174). As an example
of these dangers, the notion of the homosexual as child molester became promoted in this
era (“Boys”). Criminalisation of male-male sex was refined in the rewriting of the Criminal
Code in 1953, which was to eventually include “dangerous sexual offender” provisions.
These additions to the Code could determine offenders as a specific type of person, unable
to control their urges, and thus requiring more restrictive punishments (Kinsman 183).
Furthermore, the 1952 Canadian Immigration Act considered homosexuals as “subversives”
(Girard 10). This consideration was used to police new Canadians’ entry in the country
(10).
The social location of gay men in Canada continued to change in the sixties. This
decade brought socio-sexual upheavals around the western world as the sexual revolution
and various counter-culture movements developed. In 1964 a political awareness group
initially comprised of gay men, the Association for Social Knowledge, or ASK, was formed
in Vancouver (“Canadian Lesbian”, 1964). Its mandate was to sponsor and disseminate
research about possible causes of homosexuality, to help with both homosexuals’ and
greater society’s adjustment to each other, and to reform laws concerning homosexuality
(Kinsman 231). On New Year’s 1966, ASK opened a gay space for its members, providing
a place for meetings, dances, a library, newsletter production and counselling services. ASK