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Established in 2019 with initial funding provided by the Nova Scotia Department of Seniors, the Nova Scotia LGBT Seniors Archive began as a project aimed at preserving and providing access to records of the activities of senior members of the LGBT community across Nova Scotia.
Due to the longstanding, state-sanctioned suppression of LGBT voices in Canada through initiatives such as the LGBT Purge, records of the LGBT Seniors Archive are of particular importance as they provide evidence of LGBT lives, stories, and activism that have often been ignored. The Archive's mandate is to increase the visibility and community involvement of LGBT seniors in Nova Scotia by working with them to preserve the cultural memory of their activities. By working directly with seniors, the Archive can collect these stories firsthand, allowing the community to speak for itself.
The goal of the project was to establish a living legacy for LGBT senior members of the community through the collaborative development of an open, accessible, province-wide physical and digital archive. The Archive is for community members, seniors, older and younger generations of LGBT populations, researchers, students, and the Nova Scotia Department of Seniors, among others.
Project staff collected donations, conducted the archival processing of donated materials, and made the materials accessible to the public online and in person. Materials donated to the LGBT Seniors Archive are stored at Dalhousie University Archives in the Killam Memorial Library.
In 2021, additional funding was received to augment this archival collection to include lesbian oral histories. Through community consultation and donations, the Nova Scotia LGBT Seniors Archive became aware of the lack of traditional archival records in Nova Scotia about lesbian history. To mitigate this lack of representation, the Archive developed the Lesbian Oral History Project, which allows lesbians in Nova Scotia to share their personal experiences and tell the stories they feel are important to preserve for posterity. The project has three components: collection, transcription, and archival processing.
As part of community consultations, a list of interested participants was compiled by lead researcher Jacqueline Gahagan. The Lesbian Oral History collection is conducted by volunteers who participate on the Archive's Community Advisory Committee (CAC). A senior lesbian from the community coordinates with interested participants, discusses potential topics, guides interviewing practices and procedures, and coordinates with those working on transcription and archival processing. Interviews are recorded and stored securely for transcription and archival processing before becoming part of the Nova Scotia LGBT Seniors Archive.