A Dialog with Sarah Worthman
Sarah Worthman is govt director of the NL Queer Analysis Initiative (NLQRI), a social science analysis collective primarily based out of Newfoundland and Labrador. In February 2025, she sat down to speak with sequence editor Jess Wilton about her work on queer historical past within the province.
Jess Wilton: What sort of labor do you do on the NLQRI?
Sarah Worthman: The majority of our analysis has centered on making a digital queer archive for Newfoundland and Labrador—the primary ever. We additionally do numerous totally different outreach occasions, together with a current Black Historical past Month occasion the place we’re prioritizing Black Queer voices.
JW: What sort of historical past/inventive/archival tasks are you concerned with round queer Atlantic Canada, apart from the NLQRI?
SW: I’m additionally a contract researcher, so I’ve carried out numerous work into the queer historical past of the First World Conflict. I’ve revealed a report on that, and am at the moment engaged on a e-book on that topic. It’s primarily centered on Canada writ massive, however numerous the issues I’ve discovered—and it could be a sure bias in the kind of analysis I do. As an Atlantic Canadian, I’m at all times looking out for tales that characterize us. I’ve discovered numerous queer troopers and nursing sisters with connections to Atlantic Canada by means of that analysis, together with one drag queen who I’ve carried out numerous work on and outreach associated to. His identify was Ross Douglas Hamilton and he was born in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. His drag persona was “Marjorie.” We even have a challenge right here in St. John’s that we launched as a part of the NLQRI that challenged conventional notions of oral historical past by means of what was referred to as, colloquially, Solidari-tea. It had its personal tea and the challenge was all about connecting elders and youth within the 2sLGBTQ+ group over a 13-week oral historical past challenge. It centered on connection and consent of the elders concerned versus extra conventional approaches and fashions. It additionally gave the youth numerous coaching alternatives as effectively.One different factor we do, although much less historically-related, is we run a queer library in St. John’s. It’s at the moment the most important queer library and I’m nearly so as to add a number of the forty books sitting on my flooring proper now.
JW: That’s superb. Is the library open to anybody?
SW: Yeah, yeah! All you want is an e-mail or a telephone quantity, and we do must know should you’re 18+ as a result of we have now some sexual well being content material that’s geared in the direction of adults. Many of the books are bodily primarily based in St. John’s. However we’re going to work on some pilot tasks to ship across the province (funding dependent).
JW: All the time funding dependent. Do you’ve gotten any sort of favorite or distinctive findings or tales or archives from any of your work?
SW: To emphasise the Newfoundland and Labrador perspective, I actually wished to focus on the story of Peter Miller, who proper now could be very related. Peter Miller was a poet—who’s publically recognized by their delivery identify Florence—however was generally known as Peter to shut family and friends. He glided by a mixture of she/her and he/him pronouns, and we have now this unbelievable quote from Peter that was written within the early 20th century. Peter was born in July of 1889 and labored professionally as a poet, designing hallmark playing cards, and as postmaster/postmistress of their group of Torbay. What’s been actually attention-grabbing about Peter is that we’ve discovered numerous his letters to different individuals in his life and have a scrapbook. The letters are fascinating and provides an perception into the character of gender range, particularly at a time when it wasn’t as protected to share that have and people expressions. There’s a passage the place Peter really transforms his brother’s overalls in order that they might match and writes, “I really feel like a nice younger man.” There’s additionally one which was about gender and it’s one of the evident examples I’ve seen expressing gender range, particularly in a non-public letter. This was from a letter from August 15, 1946 between Edwin Duder and Florence Miller which stated “there was a mistake made as soon as, way back. The angels of protoplasm bungled and made me a lady as a substitute of a person” (6.06.022 Coll-016, p.1). All of this in collective, I believe, brings into consideration the nuances of gender identification and the truth that gender identification has at all times been much more numerous than widespread creativeness likes to think about or depict. Peter is such a superb instance of that.
JW: What points or frustrations have you ever encountered throughout your analysis?
SW: The story of Charles Danielle and the Octagon Fort is fascinating to me for a lot of causes, however I believe specifically the extent to which individuals used to cowl up his queerness is a significant frustration. After we began this analysis on Charles Danielle and publishing these data, we seen one thing about many of the articles that have been written about him and his life—and there’s a good variety of them as he was a well-liked and distinctive determine. So, numerous of us wrote about his life, and what’s attention-grabbing is that none of these data, together with ones revealed by the provincial archives and the MUN (Memorial College of Newfoundland) archives, none of them talked about his sexuality in any respect. They only used coded language. They are saying, “oh effectively he was an eccentric man,” or, “he by no means married,” however none of them outright referred to as him queer. And I believe what was irritating for us is that this info wasn’t troublesome to seek out actually in any respect. We discovered these letters perhaps two weeks into analysis. They have been simply on the public library assortment with full public entry. Clearly, it was both the case of somebody not doing their analysis or—what I believe was extra possible—that individuals got here throughout these data and selected to disregard them. For me, the largest frustration in doing queer historical past is the censorship that simply continues to go on and the best way that persons are so prepared to uphold these illusions of heteronormativity. It’s virtually infuriating; on one hand as a result of that’s simply dangerous analysis observe, but additionally as a result of persons are going out of their approach to paint these figures in our historical past as straight and cis, when the reply is far more sophisticated than that. As I discussed earlier than this interview, I’m within the deep thralls of my literature evaluation, and I not too long ago got here throughout this attention-grabbing theoretical framework referred to as institutional or organizational obliviousness. It appears to be like on the manner that individuals uphold discriminatory insurance policies and accomplish that within the identify of neutrality or priority, like saying, “that is the best way it’s at all times been” or in some circumstances, “we don’t need to upset anybody.” They take into account the opinions and emotions of heterosexual individuals and, frankly, homophobic individuals to a a lot increased diploma than they do members of the 2sLGBTQ+ group, in order that has been a very harsh actuality I’ve needed to reckon with in doing the sort of analysis.
To me the neutrality argument is absolutely fascinating. I’ve by no means had a queer individual say this, however there’s so many straight individuals nervous about outing somebody in historical past. They’ll say, “Properly you don’t need to out any individual!” and I’ll reply to them: “They’ve been useless for 100 years and you’ll’t return in time and ask them in the event that they need to be outed or not.” However truthfully who is aware of? However what we all know now’s that it’s a net-positive for the group seeing themselves represented in historical past.
JW: Do you’ve gotten any closing feedback on area or the way forward for queer historical past?
SW: If I can supply a critique of how we measure historical past, I believe that we actually must diversify how we discover sources to speak about queer historical past. In Newfoundland, numerous what we depend on are educational establishments and what I’ve discovered is that you simply’re getting the voices deemed essential sufficient to catalogue and sadly meaning we’ve misplaced numerous racialized queer historical past. For instance, it’s Black Historical past Month, and I’ve dug by means of so many collections to try to discover something associated to Black queer historical past in Newfoundland and it was very troublesome to seek out. What we selected as a substitute was to go along with a sequence of people who find themselves making Black queer historical past. This contains the activists, artists, and writers who’re doing unbelievable issues within the province that can ultimately be within the historical past books. I believe we have to prioritize getting inventive when it comes to how we acquire our information and share our historical past. To not point out accessibility to that historical past.
The previous was an audio interview, transcribed and edited for size and readability. Sarah and the Newfoundland Queer Analysis Initiative could be discovered on Fb and Instagram the place they share superb queer tales from the province. They may also be contacted at NLQueerResearch@gmail.com.
Additional Studying:
NL Digital Queer Archive, Collections.
Rhea Rollmann, A Queer Historical past of Newfoundland, 2023.
Mark Tara, host, Rainbow Nation, podcast, episode 409, “A Queer Historical past of Newfoundland,” August 30, 2024.
Sarah Worthman, “The Untold Queer Historical past of WWI”, Report LGBT Purge Fund, 2023.
Associated
