The Bank Street Business Improvement Area is in the throes of launching the Village Legacy Project, which aims to create a physical representation of Ottawa’s LGBTTQ+ community.
The art project — which has already been chosen but not yet revealed — will be integrated in the traditional hub of the city’s LGBTTQ+ commercial district in the area of Bank and Somerset.
Proposals were invited for a variety of artistic media, including paintings, plaques and more.
The $15,000 project is due for completion on Oct. 28. Proposals were submitted to BIA executive director Christine Leadman in July. The BIA is currently meeting with the winner to finalize the agreement and contracts.
Leadman was inspired to elevate the image of the Village — which was officially designated by the City of Ottawa in 2011 — while attending a conference in San Francisco. Similar artistic initiatives were being taken in that city’s famous Castro District, the heart of San Francisco’s LGBTTQ+ community.
“I just felt there should be more done to show people what the (LGBTTQ+) community is about, why the village was designated on Bank Street, the history of it, the champions of the (LGBTTQ+) movement and so on,” she said.
The city’s 2011 designation included decorative rainbow street signs in several places and the display of distinctive banners during Pride month. But Leadman said she wanted to see something celebrating the neighbourhood’s identity on a permanent basis.
“I think it’s important for a city, not just the Centretown community, but I think every city has a significant village or an area that has been the gathering spot for the (LGBTTQ+) community throughout the decades.”
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Leadman said the Village in Ottawa lacks artistic appeal.
“It’s time to step up,” she said. “The designation was done but more has to be done in terms of elevating the visual for the Village, the city itself, and how far the community has come.”
The Centretown-based Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity applauded the initiative.
“We’re optimistic that this project will be an opportunity to highlight our community’s collective history and to engage our community in new ways,” said Katie McCarthy, a CCGSD spokesperson. “This project also has the amazing opportunity to engage our elders, those who were around in Ottawa during significant events in the LGBTTQ+ history, such as the bathhouse raids, the height of the HIV epidemic, the inception of the ‘fruit machine’, or even the very first Pride march in Ottawa.”
The bathhouse raids were targeted invasions on gay Toronto bathhouses in 1981; hundreds of people were arrested. The “fruit machine” was a so-called “test” used to determine homosexuality in the 1950s and ’60s to remove gay men from the civil service.
Ottawa Capital Pride, a community partner of the BIA, is also supportive of the art project. Centretown resident Sarah Evans, one of the directors of Pride, said it’s important to preserve the legacy of the Village’s senior members.
“I think that community groups are still getting a new sense of what it means for Capital Pride to return to Bank Street,” she said, referring to the decision to hold the annual parade along its historic route. “This project is a legacy project, so I see it more from a social standpoint. As a resident of the area, I think bringing Pride back to Bank Street renews the focus of Bank Street as the village for the community itself. It’s definitely reminded people of the roots of the community in that area.”
McCarthy said similar projects should work towards including and uplifting the voices of the marginalized and silenced, “specifically QTBIPOC (queer, trans, black, indigenous, people of colour) and older queer folks.”
She said she hopes this project will broaden people’s understandings of the presence of queer people throughout the history of Canada — not just Ottawa.
“As a community that has faced oppression and erasure, we must work to carve out our own spaces to celebrate our collective histories, but to also reflect on what else we must do,” she said. “To be able to transform the streetscape to include photography, art and murals would be doing just that.”