Monday, March 14 is the 11th Anniversary of the founding of the Grand River Rainbow Historical Project. Here is some background about this online resource.
Since 1971, Jim Parrott (a professional librarian) has been collecting documents like newsletters, posters, event programmes, etc. that were produced by local rainbow organizations or community members for the rainbow communities in Waterloo-Wellington. After repeated requests from community leaders to create a public online archive of these documents, Jim set up the Grand River Rainbow Historical Project on March 14, 2011. Because there were many gaps in his personal collection of documents, Jim obtained copyright permissions to digitize and publicize the collections of several Waterloo-Wellington organizations, including GLOW, Guelph Queer Equality, Rainbow Chorus of Waterloo-Wellington, tri-Pride Community Association, Rainbow Reels Film Festival – and similarly for some publications produced by individuals; examples include Pink Triangle Community Calendar (PTCC) [1989-1996], Outlook Magazine [1995-1998], and The Voice [1998-2003] (not yet digitized).
The central feature is the digital Library which you can find here. The Project includes other useful resources as well, like the Chronology of Events near the bottom of the top page of the Project.
Jim had to put most work on the Historical Project on hold after he took on the role of SPECTRUM’s Executive Director in 2014. Now that he has stepped back from that position for a full year, he is keen to see further work proceed in documenting the history of our community. We expect 2022 to be a year of significant development. Part of that work will be done in conjunction with a student who is joining SPECTRUM for a placement of a couple of months, We are also working to find additional support for this work over the summer. Look for announcements about further developments.
