Drag the Archives Featured in Ottawa Citizen
The following excerpt is from the Ottawa Citizen article, “New exhibit explores decades of Ottawa drag and queer history: Carleton University students dug through decades of photographs to uncover some of the people and stories behind Ottawa’s queer history,” by Michael McBean.
When Morgan Mercury looks at photographs of queer people in Ottawa from decades ago, the faces may be different and the clothes belong to another era, but something feels familiar.
“This would have been us,” the local drag performer said. “It’s us living here in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.”
As Capital Pride week unfolds, that connection between generations is at the heart of Drag The Archive: Photographs of Gender Queer Performance, an exhibition at the City of Ottawa Archives in Nepean that brings photographs of drag, queer nightlife and political activism out of archival collections and onto gallery walls.
Developed by Carleton University students in partnership with the City of Ottawa’s equity team and archives, the exhibition draws primarily from the collections of photographer and queer-rights activist Philip Hannan and Paul “Peaches Latour” Fournier, one of Ottawa’s best-known drag performers.
James Opp, a Carleton history professor, said the project