Owning Our Histories – Full Programme
Owning Our Histories: Celebrating DIY Archives from Queer & BIPOC MTL
Self-started. Self-made. Self-kept.
A series of public events celebrating how Montreal’s queer and BIPOC communities create, share, and preserve their own histories through zines, oral traditions, grassroots collections, and independent publishing.
13 Feb – 29 March 2026
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
All activities are free and open to the public.
PROGRAMME:
(Event descriptions listed below)
Feb 13
Owning Our Histories Zine Exhibit: DIY radical, Queer & BIPOC Zines from Community Archives
Webster Library, 2nd-floor wooden display cases and Discovery Centre, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Exhibit: Feb 13 – March 17
Opening & Curator Talk: Feb 13, 4-6 pm, LB-361 (Friends of the Library Room)
Feb 20
Youth Documenting Chinatown & Black Montreal: Presentations from the Black Community Resource Centre and Jeunesse Quartier Chinois (JQC)
Chinatown House, 116 de la Gauchetière Ouest
6-8 pm
Feb 26
Presentation from the Kanien’kehá:ka Onkwawén:na Raotitióhkwa Language and Cultural Centre & Panel on Queer & BIPOC DIY Archiving
In person: 4th Space, Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Room LB-103
Online: Join us on Zoom or by watching live on YouTube.
2-5:30 pm
Mar 7
Open House and Guided Tour of the Quebec Gay Archives
Archives gaies du québec, 1000 Atateken, Suite 201-A
3-4 pm
Queer Voices in Print: Panel & Poetry Reading
l’Euguélionne bookstore , 1426 Beaudry
5-7 pm
Mar 12
QAHN Heritage Talks 2026: Mapping Black Montreal Music History
7-8 pm
Mar 17
DIY Historiography: Queer Stories & Memories with Eloisa Aquino and Elio Choquette
QPIRG Concordia, 2100 Guy, Suite 205
1:30-3:30 pm
Student Activism Archives : The Challenges and Urgency of Preserving Student Organizing
QPIRG Concordia, 2100 Guy, Suite 205
4-6 pm
Mar 23
A practical workshop on 3D scanning for memory-keeping
Cyber Love Garden, 10 av. des Pins O. #114
6-8 pm
Mar 29
Queer Quilting Bee with Aaron McIntosh
Les Affûtés (Village), 1385 Ontario E.
2-5 pm
Event Descriptions
Feb 13
Owning Our Histories Zine Exhibit: DIY radical, Queer & BIPOC Zines from Community Archives
Webster Library, 2nd-floor wooden display cases and Discovery Centre, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Exhibit: Feb 13 – March 17
Opening & Curator Talk: Feb 13, 4-6 pm, LB-361 (Friends of the Library Room)
Zines as archives. Archives as art. Art as collective practice.
This exhibit showcases zines from Montreal’s queer and BIPOC communities, drawn from the collections of ARCMTL/Expozine, the Concordia Fine Arts Reading Room, Les Archives gaies du Québec, QPIRG Concordia, and QPIRG McGill.
The exhibit features dozens of rare and important zines from the 1980s to today from Montreal and elsewhere, from riot grrrl zines to beautifully produced queer and BIPOC expressions. Zines have always been how communities document themselves. For generations, Montreal’s queer and BIPOC artists have used this accessible, DIY format to capture the full spectrum of their lives: handmade artists’ books, community magazines, organizing manuals that hold political work, creative experiments, humor, rage, and joy.
These archives weren’t built by institutions. They were built and maintained by the communities they document. Volunteers have spent decades organizing these collections, cataloguing zines, and making them accessible to the public. From QPIRG’s social justice libraries to Les Archives gaies du Québec’s LGBTQ+ collections to ARCMTL’s Expozine archives. This is DIY preservation: collective care, no institutional funding, just commitment to keeping these stories alive.Zines are cheap to produce, easy to distribute, and impossible to censor. This fluidity has made them the perfect medium for documenting what gets left out of official records. These collections represent what communities chose to make, share, and save. This exhibit celebrates both the zine artform and the grassroots archival practices that keep these publications alive and accessible.
Feb 20
Youth Documenting Chinatown & Black Montreal: Presentations from the Black Community Resource Centre and Jeunesse Quartier Chinois (JQC)
Chinatown House, 116 de la Gauchetière Ouest
6-8 pm
The next generation is already documenting.
Young people from the Black Community Resource Centre and Jeunesse du Quartier Chinois present recent DIY projects exploring under-documented Black and Chinese histories in Montreal through audio storytelling, community tours, and zine-making, connecting past struggles to present realities.
Trains of Thought is an audio tribute to Stanley Sinclair Grizzle, sleeping car porter, civil rights advocate, and trailblazer whose legacy continues to shape conversations around Black labour history, resistance, and leadership in Canada. Launched in September 2024, this DIY audio project uses storytelling, education, and intergenerational dialogue to document community history. Created by the Black Community Resource Centre (BCRC), a Montreal-based, community-rooted non-profit organization dedicated to empowering the English-speaking Black community through projects just like these.
Chinatown Social Justice Tours & Zines: A cohort of 11 youth with varying connections to Chinatown spent six months deepening their knowledge of the neighbourhood’s social history. They met with community members, organizers, and seniors, visited hard-to-access parts of Chinatown, and created tours and zines exploring their own curiosities and connections to the neighbourhood. Launched in November 2024 by Jeunesse du Quartier chinois, a youth-led grassroots group dedicated to deepening youth engagement and belonging in Chinatown.
Read a recap of the event here.
Feb 26
Presentation from the Kanien’kehá:ka Onkwawén:na Raotitióhkwa Language and Cultural Centre & Panel on Queer & BIPOC DIY Archiving
In person: 4th Space, Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Room LB-103
Online: Join us on Zoom or by watching live on YouTube.
2-5:30 pm
This event features two complementary activities exploring how communities document and preserve their own histories through DIY archiving practices.
PART 1: Presentation on the KORLCC (2:00-3:00pm)
Scott Berwick, Manager of the Arts and Archives Department at Kanien’kehá:ka Onkwawén:na Raotitióhkwa Language and Cultural Centre presents the Centre’s initiatives to preserve Mohawk language materials, photography, video, and artifacts. This presentation explores community-led cultural preservation work integrating artistic and archival practices with meaningful community engagement.
PART 2: Panel discussion on DIY Archiving in Queer & BIPOC Communities (3:15-5:30pm)
Moderated by Taïna Mueth, this panel brings together archivists, researchers, and cultural educators from Gay, Lesbian, Chinese, and Caribbean communities to discuss recent projects documenting and preserving their own histories.
When mainstream institutions don’t document your community, you document it yourself. This panel explores what happens when communities take archiving into their own hands through grassroots, DIY preservation projects.
The panel will discuss:
- Examples of recent community-led history and heritage projects
- What community insiders bring to archival work
- How DIY archives engage the communities they document
- Who gets to creates and controls community archives
PARTICIPANT BIOS
Presenter:
Scott Berwick is a Fine Arts graduate from Concordia University and the current Manager of the Arts and Archives Department at KORLCC in Kahnawà:ke. Since 2018, he has developed programming that integrates artistic and archival practices with meaningful community engagement.
Panel Moderator:
Taïna Mueth is an artist based in Tiotiaké, of Haitian and Cameroonian descent. She began her transition to the arts during the pandemic in 2020, after a career as a clinical nurse. Influenced by themes of cultural hybridization and identity, and an aesthetic marked by Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism, Taïna seeks to challenge dominant narratives and create spaces for expression and imagination around the realities of marginalized people. Beyond her artistic practice, Taïna is actively involved in community and educational projects. Co-founder of the collectives Je suis Montréal and Learning Loop, she enjoys facilitating numerous workshops on topics such as anti-racism and social justice.
Panelists:
Parker Mah 馬世聰 is a fourth-generation Chinese Montrealer of Toisanese descent, based in Tio’tia:ke. Multimedia artist, musician, and DJ, his diverse body of work tackles themes and realities of migration, hybridization and identity. He is also active in different cultural and activist spaces as a curator, moderator, trainer and community organizer. He is a founding member of Progressive Chinese Quebecers, and of the Jia Foundation. He co-hosted the feature length documentary Being Chinese in Quebec (2013), with Bethany Or. He also acted as curator and artistic director for two major site-based Chinatown exhibitions produced by the MEM.
Founded in 1983, the Quebec Gay Archives have a mandate to acquire, conserve and preserve any handwritten, printed, visual or audio material which testify to the history of the LGBTQ+ communities of Quebec. Mark Andrew Hamilton is a historian and researcher who specializes in queer archival histories and oral history. His MA thesis focuses on the graphic ephemera of HIV/AIDS activist collective ACT UP Montréal, utilizing oral history and aesthetic analysis. He as also worked as the community director for QueerMTL at Tourisme Montréal and the curator of special exhibitions at the Archives gaies du Québec, where his exhibitions have included L’activisme esthétique d’ACT UP MONTRÉAL : une histoire en photos et en affiches, FAG QC* : 40 ans, 40 invité·es, 40 propositions tirées des Fonds des Archives Gaies du Québec, and GÉNÉRATION XEROX, an exhibition on queer zine and self-publishing culture.
Laure Neuville is an archivist and promoter of Les Archives lesbiennes du Québec, which houses thousands of documents and materials chronicling the social, cultural and political lives of Montreal, Quebec and Canadian lesbians. Neuville has served as administrative manager for the Table des groupes de femmes de Montréal and the Bibliothèque À livres ouverts (BALO) of the CCGLM. She has also been an activist with Amnesty International and contributed to the creation of a housing cooperative in Petite-Patrie. Within the LGBTQ+ community, she served on the editorial board of Homo Sapiens, was the communications officer for the provisional committee that led to the founding of the Réseau des lesbiennes du Québec (RLQ) in 1996, and was coordinator for the magazine Treize. Like Nicole Brossard, she believes that “a lesbian who does not reinvent the world is a lesbian on the verge of extinction.”
Pat Dillon-Moore is an actress, broadcaster, and publicist with a repertoire of skills that includes writing, performance, and as a beloved emcee of cultural events. She carried the film Sitting in Limbo (1986 directed by John N. Smith); racked up notable theatre credits through the Black Theatre Workshop; founded a company (Black Arts Production); co-founded another (Amanda Jackson Communications) and, in 1990, was appointed as radio station manager of CKUT 90.3, the first Black woman to do so in Quebec. For more than 30 years, Pat has hosted the Black magazine and music format weekly show on CKUT radio, Bhum Bhum Tyme. In 2025, she conducted the Pioneer Grooves Afro-Caribbean oral history project, documenting the history of underappreciated local musicians from the community.
Read a recap of the event here.
Mar 7
Open House and Guided Tour of the Quebec Gay Archives
Archives gaies du québec, 1000 Atateken, Suite 201-A
3-4 pm
Join us for a guided tour of Les Archives gaies du Québec and explore their collection documenting over 40 years of Quebec’s queer history. Built and maintained by the community since 1983, this is one of Montreal’s vital DIY archives.
Queer Voices in Print: Panel & Poetry Reading
l’Euguélionne bookstore , 1426 Beaudry
5-7 pm
Poets and publishers Faith Paré, Christopher DiRaddo (Violet Hour Book Club), and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch (Metonymy Press) discuss independent queer publishing as a form of community archiving. How do book clubs, small presses, and poetry readings document queer lives and preserve stories that mainstream publishing overlooks?
The conversation will explore creating spaces for queer anglophone voices in Montreal, navigating the city’s language divide, finding and prioritizing emerging writers, and what it means to put these stories in print and circulate them as acts of cultural preservation.
The panel will be followed by a poetry reading from local queer poets Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, Liana Cusmano, Erin Mouré, Faith Paré, and Misha Solomon.
Participant bios
Christopher DiRaddo is the author of The Family Way (2021), shortlisted for the F.G. Bressani Literary Prize, and The Geography of Pluto (2014). In 2014, he founded the Violet Hour Literary Series & Book Club, which has featured the work of 300+ 2S/LGBTQ+ writers in Canada.
Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is an editor, translator, and writer living in Tio’tia:ke. Their book, knot body, was published by Metatron Press in 2020, and their second book, The Good Arabs, published by Metonymy Press in 2021, was granted the honorary mention for poetry by the Arab American Book Awards and won the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. They are a co-publisher at Metonymy Press.
Faith Paré is a writer and literary event curator of Afro-Guyanese ancestry. She is the recipient of the 2024 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in Poetry from the Writers’ Trust of Canada. She has performed at national art centres such as the Goldfarb Gallery at York University, La Centrale galerie Powerhouse, and the Winter Garden Theatre. Her work has appeared in The Capilano Review, The Ex-Puritan, and Contemporary Verse 2. She served as curator of the Atwater Poetry Project from 2021-2023. Faith’s first collection of poetry is forthcoming in 2027.
Read a recap of the event here.
Mar 12
QAHN Heritage Talks 2026: Mapping Black Montreal Music History
7-8 pm
ARCMTL’s Louis Rastelli and Chloe Martin, and Delilah Edouard Williams present grassroots research projects documenting under-represented Black Montreal music history as part of the Heritage Talks 2026 from the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network. For over a decade, ARCMTL has worked with local community partners to explore and share little-known history of Black Montreal music and culture through zine workshops, radio broadcasts, and Nights of Montreal, an online interactive map that tells the stories of the places and people who made this culture thrive.
Louis Rastelli has been the Director of ARCMTL since 2013, a cultural historian, writer and DJ since the 1990s, and involved in many heritage and arts projects in Quebec and Canada.
Chloe Martin is a music educator, with a background in music history, and project coordinator with ARCMTL. Since 2024, they have been involved in ARCMTL’s Nights of Montreal mapping project and the “Our Places, Our Stories” zine-making workshops. They are the organizer of “Owning Our Histories: Celebrating DIY Archives from Queer & BIPOC MTL” an ongoing ARCMTL series.
Delilah Edouard Williams is an art and cultural curator dedicated to elevating contemporary emerging BIPOC artists and fostering inclusive, community-engaged arts programming. Delilah has collaborated with ARCMTL as a workshop facilitator for the “Our Places, Our Stories” zine-making series chronicling Black Montreal music history.
Mar 17
DIY Historiography: Queer Stories & Memories
QPIRG Concordia, 2100 Guy, Suite 205
1:30-3:30 pm
How do queer people write their own history? Two presentations on archiving queer joy and resistance through creative projects.
Queer/trans writer and architect Elio (Élo) Choquette presents Here We Will Be, an ongoing research and creative writing project archiving queer joy(s). Through field research, visual documentation, crowdsourcing, and creative writing, the project creates an incomplete, subjective database about queer communities, spaces, and the power of queer joy and love in all their forms.
Followed by an artist talk from Brazilian-Canadian artist and zinester Eloisa Aquino on her new project, The Scaffold, as well as the zine series The Life & Times of Butch Dykes. This series featured portraits of women throughout history who have defied society’s expectations of feminine behaviour and appearance to live more authentic lives. These short vignettes combine biographical sketches with evocative illustrations in the form of a zine. Eloisa has been making zines since the 90s and runs the queer micro-press B&D Press with Jenny Lin.
Student Activism Archives : The Challenges and Urgency of Preserving Student Organizing
QPIRG Concordia, 2100 Guy, Suite 205
4-6 pm
From the Sir George Williams Computer Riots of the 1960s to the 2012 strikes against tuition hikes to recent encampments in Palestinian solidarity, Montreal students have organized against universities that systematically prioritize profits over human rights and accessible education. These movements produce posters, flyers, journals, banners, zones, and other ephemera. But who gets to preserve this crucial history?
Archivists from QPIRG Concordia, QPIRG McGill, and the Student News and Protest Archive (SNAP) discuss the challenges and opportunities of archiving student-led struggles for liberation. Moderated by Éloïse Desjardins, archivist and Master’s student in Library Sciences at Université de Montréal with a research focus on activist community archives.
Read a recap of the event here.
Mar 23
A practical workshop on 3D scanning for memory-keeping
Cyber Love Garden, 10 ave des pins Ouest #114
6-8 pm
Learn new tools for archiving our fast-moving cultures. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn the basics of 3D scanning, a technology that quickly creates replicas of physical objects and spaces. No prior experience needed. Leave with the skills to produce basic 3D scans at home.
Hosted by Things+Time (T+T), a Montreal-based digital archival platform dedicated to preserving ephemeral histories rooted in objects, spaces and lived experiences. Their platform enables users to create multimedia storytelling environments by adding annotations (texts, audio, video, images, map points, and links) to 3D objects. The T+T team will remain available to discuss potential collaborations.
Before attending: Download the free app Polycam on your phone (iOS 17.0 or later, Android 10.0 or later).
Mar 29
Queer Quilting Bee with Aaron McIntosh
Les Affûtés (Village), 1385 Ontario E.
2-5 pm
How can textiles preserve history? What are the scraps of connection that make us who we are? This workshop investigates piecework and appliqué as means of expression and conceptual platform for 2SLGBTQIA+ expression. Starting with a scrap exchange of meaningful cloth, participants will work with collective material as a nod to the tradition of a quilting bee. We will focus on ‘crazy quilt’ patchwork and ‘fancywork’ embroidery, where participants can embellish a small patchwork quilt block (12″ x 12″) with markers of their identity and contemporary times, such as names, dates, sites, and souvenirs.
Aaron McIntosh is a cross-disciplinary artist and fourth-generation quiltmaker whose work mines the intersections of material culture, family tradition, sexual desire and identity politics. His exhibition record includes numerous solo and group exhibitions, most recently Hot House/Maison chaude at FOFA Gallery, The Gloaming at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Entanglements at Northeastern University, and Radical Tradition: Quilts and Social Change at the Toledo Museum of Art. Since 2015, McIntosh has managed Invasive Queer Kudzu, a community storytelling and archive project across the 2SLGBTQ+ Southern United States. His critical writing has been published in the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, the Surface Design Journal, and the Journal of Modern Craft. He currently lives and works in Montreal, where he is an Associate Professor and Coordinator in the Fibres & Material Practices program at Concordia University.
Logo by Marcela Szwarc
