Archives gaies du Québec preserve 2SLGBTQI+ history
Despite many changes, AGQ has remained strong as a community organization
The Archives gaies du Québec (AGQ) is an independent non-profit charity that aims to fulfill its mission by collecting a variety of documents concerning 2SLGBTQI+ history in Quebec, preserving it for generations to come.
AGQ was founded in 1983 by Ross Higgins and Jacques Prince after Higgins started working at Librairie L’Andryogyne, a bookstore that sold books in English and French for women, lesbians and gay men.
“I met Jacques Prince along the way, and he was just about to begin studying library science, and I recruited him to the androgyny collective, [which] had been running the store basically since I started, at the beginning of 1976,” Higgins said.
Somebody in the group suggested that the papers that we were accumulating should be packaged and sent off to the Canadian Gay Archives in Toronto. Jacques and I didn’t think that was a very good idea. — Ross Higgins, co-founder, AGQ
Librairie L’Andryogyne also provided books that advocated against gendered stereotypes for children, in both French and English.
While working at the bookstore, they noticed pamphlets and other material often came through the bookstore's mail.
“Somebody in the group suggested that the papers that we were accumulating should be packaged and sent off to the Canadian Gay Archives in Toronto. Jacques and I didn’t think that was a very good idea,” Higgins said.
Instead, Higgins and Prince made the decision to take care of the materials themselves, with this initial suggestion proposed by a group member blossoming into something much larger.
"So, we decided, especially since he was just getting into library science, that we would start our own archive,” Higgins said.
This early suggestion proposed by a group member quickly blossomed into something much larger.
According to Higgins, AGQ recruited a few other people who helped it incorporate in 1985. Through this, AGQ established itself as a non-profit corporation and obtained charitable status five years later, in 1990.
Higgins and Prince got their first office space in 1993 and moved their materials and documents out of Higgins’ home.
The organization has moved many times since then, most recently in 2013, to 201A-1000 rue Atateken.
Visitors can view fonds (a collection of a work, grouped by either a person or topic) that include meeting minutes, layout planning and advertising materials from Librairie L’Androgyne, offering a fascinating glimpse into the place where AGQ was founded.
Now, of course, there’s a lot of interest in the collections. We have researchers coming from all the main universities, we have people coming to visit us from abroad, and I just feel that I’m happy to be able to contribute to the preservation of this for the future. — Iain Blair, vice-president, AGQ
Iain Blair, the vice-president of AGQ, has been involved with the charity for 31 years. He described the joy he has found in preserving 2SLGBTQI+ history through participating in such a long-lasting community organization.
“Because when the archives started up, I mean, we’re not talking that long ago; we’re talking about the 1960s, '70s, into the '80s. A lot of what we had was very, very marginal. Any sort of sexual minority groups were criminalized,” Blair said.
According to Blair, the AGQ started by archiving what mainstream institutions would not, such as materials and documents considered obscene, inappropriate or otherwise worth discarding.
“Now, of course, there’s a lot of interest in the collections," Blair said. "We have researchers coming from all the main universities, we have people coming to visit us from abroad, and I just feel that I’m happy to be able to contribute to the preservation of this for the future.”
Nicolas Longtin-Martel, who has worked for AGQ as a co-archivist for two years, described last year as a record-breaking year for acquisitions.
“At the beginning, it was really [only] gay male archive fonds [...], and then, with the years, it changed to outside their circles of friends, so now we have [materials that focus on] AIDS/HIV [organizations], trans [people], lesbians," Longtin-Martel said.
AGQ aims to collect documents that showcase a wide variety of queer people, events, groups and organizations within Quebec.
“We’re for all the queer community,” Longtin-Martel said. “We’re called the Archives gaies du Québec [but], they added the subtitle that I really like, it’s ‘memoires LGBTQ2S+.’ And the fonds are getting varied that way also,” Longtin-Martel said.
Various items in the collections focus on HIV/AIDS organizations, with one in particular showcasing various photos from ACT UP protests in the early 1990s.
Longtin-Martel mentioned accessibility issues with the space AGQ currently occupies, and Blair discussed the difficulty of fixing them due to financial constraints.
“Last year, we got a very large rent increase. Commercial rents, there’s no framework for them in the way that there is for residential properties," Blair said. "As tenants, you or I could grieve and go to a tribunal about an increase, where there’s no such thing for commercial rents."
This is further complicated by the fact that AGQ can rent only a limited number of spaces because it must conserve the archival collection.
“You can’t rent in a basement that’s going to be flooded; you’ve got to be concerned about humidity, you have to be concerned about sunlight, UV rays, constant temperatures. All these things limit where you can house the collections,” Blair said.
Funding has also decreased greatly in recent years, and the research support the AGQ offers makes it far more difficult to support researchers.
“We are remaining active and available for researchers, but it is a constant challenge because we don’t have any sustained funding from any sort of government agencies; we're based entirely upon donations. We’re a charitable organization,” Blair said.
Longtin-Martel also echoed Blair's concerns.
“We have to pivot to private charity [and] organizations,” Longtin-Martel said.
Although Longtin-Martel says employees are well paid, weekly work hours for all employees have been slashed from 100 hours to 50 hours in the past year. Increasing AGQ's weekly work hours and hourly pay is not only important for expanding its ability to manage the archives effectively, but is also, for Blair, a larger part of improving the charity.
AGQ, like many other non-profit organizations must navigate these constraints while continuing to offer support to both the larger community as well as researchers. How to navigate these constraints is necessary to consider when looking at the future of AGQ, as well as archives at large.
“I think the future of the archives has to be based a bit more upon its professionalization. Being able to hire people with the professional qualifications to manage an archive, to preserve it,” Blair said.
This also requires employees that are well compensated, a difficult goal for many non-profit organizations to reach.
“And also, just offer [employees] decent working conditions, because a lot of community organizations are very, very shoestring, the budgets, and you want to offer people decent salaries with decent social benefits. I think that would really be the next step in the archives,” Blair said.
This article originally appeared in Volume 47, Issue 5, published November 10, 2026.
