Queering the Café Scene A coffee scene was still largely absent in Edmonton when Café La Gare opened in 1988. By the early 90s, the gourmet coffee shop craze that had been trending across Europe began to flourish, partially due to recessionary pressures and changing health trends. Edmontonians began to migrate from previously popular venues such as cinemas and nightclubs in search of cheaper alternatives. Café La Gare manager and queer community member Vicki Lalonde noted that “[i]n times of recession, there’s not a lot of money to be spent on clothes and cars, but everyone has enough money for a good latte.” Queer Edmontonians, like many others, patronized several local coffee shops and eateries, including The Bagel Tree, Café Mosaic, and Boystown as well as La Gare, which were all known to be safe and inclusive spaces. For all patrons, but especially for Edmonton’s queer communities, a comfortable, relaxed, and safe public space was not always the norm in the 1980s and 1990s. Although the queer community in the early 90s was very Eurocentric, acclaimed queer Albertan filmmaker, producer, and Café La Gare patron Michelle Wong remembered a sense of unity and working towards common goals. “We didn’t fight each other because the community was so small–we just had to work together. And I think that spirit still exists in the queer community in Alberta.” For the emerging queer community in Edmonton, Café La Gare offered that safe and comfortable meeting place. “It was really interesting, this space that Richard created, by virtue of who he was, as a queer man,” Wong reflected, “It just became this natural extension into the queer community.” Cafés in Edmonton and elsewhere became third spaces between home and work to meet and discuss society, economics, or politics in a time of change. In uncertain times, cafés were places to identify with and create a sense of self in. For queer patrons, the draw of Café La Gare went beyond the price point, the relaxed, trendy atmosphere and the gourmet coffee; La Gare was a place for Edmonton’s queer community to connect and belong. Reflecting on the importance of Café La Gare for queer women in the early 90s, Wong recalled: We knew about the bars, but then there was a big drop off, right? What do you do if you aren’t a bar person and didn’t go to bars? You could go to Womonspace of course, or you could go to the University, and maybe find your people there. But La Gare became this hub–this space where people could go. And it attracted a mixed crowd. From the very beginning, Café La Gare was a welcoming location for those who dared to read between the lines. One personal ad in the Edmonton Journal from 1989 reads: Sensitive Man, 29, slim, non-smoker with dry sense of humor looking for similar guy 21-30. If you like to hang out at Café La Gare sipping cappuccino, going to the Princess and sharing special moments, then I’d like to hear from you. Maybe we can bring out the best in each other. Just when you think you’re all by yourself, you’re not. Lattes and the Lesbian Community Café La Gare was a well-known meeting place and date spot for queer women throughout the 1990s, and was an access point to queer, feminist activism and organizations such as Womonspace. One University of Alberta law student recalls Café La Gare as a gateway into Edmonton’s queer community and a refuge from the homophobic culture in class: “Being actively involved in the queer community in Edmonton keeps me strong and balanced. I remember how thrilled I was, when I first moved here, to find a copy of Womonspace News at Café La Gare.” In 1995, queer activists and feminists would retire to Café La Gare’s downtown location after a successful Take Back the Night march in the spirit of creating public safety for women after dark. While a comfortable space for some, the Café was also a setting for more awkward encounters. One Womonspace News writer reflects on one significant conversation: ...at a crowded table at Cafe la Gare, another woman asked me point blank, “So, are you a dyke or what?!” I froze, blushed and said that I didn’t know. When she laughed at my discomfort and said, “I give you five years” I felt like she was claiming control over a process that was mine. And my resentment at that statement delayed my coming out. Café La Gare was so ingrained in local lesbian culture that it was even featured in a tongue-in-cheek submission of Christmas carol parodies to Womonspace News. To the tune of “We Three Kings”, the carol reads: “We three dykes of Edmonton are / Wearing our leathers to go to the bar / Hoping and counting that we meet / Someone / To invite to Café La Gare.” Queer Arts & Community at Café La Gare Café La Gare extended support to the queer community in more ways than providing a comfortable space or stocking the latest issue of Womonspace News, it was also a venue for supporting the arts. One of Horth’s first acts as owner of La Gare was to invite local artists to exhibit their artwork and make the café’s atmosphere more inviting. Valuing artists as patrons, Horth kept prices low and encouraged artists to contribute their talents to the community through activities at the Café. In response, local artists, many from Edmonton’s queer community, flocked to La Gare to write, compose, conduct public readings, perform on open mic stages, and even to film. Filmmaker Michelle Wong described how Café La Gare inspired her first queer film, Proximity: I didn’t have a lot to do with the Café but my connection was through Vicki Lalonde who was the manager at the time. So, I started to generate an idea, you know, just a fantasy. I was sitting at the Café and seeing all these people come and go. Vicki would tell me about all the little connections between people. And so, the film came out of being there–sitting at the Café and having this moment of what if, right? Instead of just sitting and watching some cute woman come in and get a coffee and sit at another table and you’re over here and she’s over there, and you’re kind of looking… I was in my mid-twenties and coming from a small town in rural Alberta. I didn’t have the skills or the tools to even understand how, you know, to really even approach somebody. So, you know, the video allowed the fantasy in my brain to be interactive. So, I approached Vicki and asked her if it was possible to shoot a film at La Gare and she said absolutely, we can do it in the morning before it gets too busy. And then I asked friends Pat and Sharon to do it. I knew they were a couple. And there was a lot of androgyny presentation at the time, but there was still this nice butch/femme energy with them. So, I asked if they would be interested in being in it and they said they would. So, it was a very simple scenario and that’s why the situation you see [is] comfortable in a way–because of course they were a couple. So, the film was just a way of creating that moment, playing that whole thing. There wasn’t a lot of lesbian imagery out there of course. You never saw women kissing–you never saw women together. It was a full day of filming–but it was really just to play with that fantasy one can have sitting alone in a coffee shop. I called it Proximity because it was about being close and not being close. As an emerging queer filmmaker and playwright in the early 90s, Michelle Wong remembered La Gare providing funds to help her produce her one-act play at Calgary’s Maenad Theatre New Voices/Fem Fest. Michelle remarked that “even back then, there was a space for [queer] community, that supported community. All of that was very new back then.” The local artwork on the walls and associated events that animated Café La Gare were also important connection points to Edmonton’s queer community. Clay Stam, “perhaps the most successful and prolific art show organizer and promoter in the city’s history,” curated the artwork on display at the two Strathcona locations of La Gare before becoming the café’s owner. Stam, as part of local arts group Unit-E, aimed to organize events for a young crowd between ages 20 and 35, gay and straight, receiving “a lot of support from the gay community” in particular. In 1999, Stam had small events at La Gare once every six weeks as well as larger events that captured the attention of Edmonton’s queer community. Over coffee at Café La Gare, Stam explained the inspiration behind IMPURE, a one-night “hit-and-run” art show, in an interview with gay Canadian magazine Outlooks: “[Three or four Western Canadian artists] wanted to take the theme of sexually explicit material and turn it into publicly acceptable art.” Despite concerns that Edmonton was too conservative a town for the display, IMPURE was a successful exhibition and returned the next year for another night of “controversy and celebration”. Apart from being a comfortable and affordable venue for queer Edmontonians to enjoy coffee and canvases, Café La Gare provided a venue for queer organizations to network and promote local events and fundraisers. La Gare was one venue at which community members could purchase tickets for events, including the Gay and Lesbian Awareness (GALA) Society’s annual dinner and dance in 1992 and the Partico Productions Flamingo Pride Dance in 2000. Café La Gare was also thanked as one of several local businesses that contributed to the success of the AIDS Network of Edmonton’s Silent Auction at the 1994 Black and White Affair. The auction alone raised over $10,000 to support those diagnosed with HIV. In return, the AIDS Network encouraged members to patronize businesses such as La Gare and let them know how much their support meant to the community. Station Closed: The End of an Era Café La Gare, before succumbing to the increased competition from the influx of bars, high rents, anti-smoking bylaws and Old Strathcona’s changing atmosphere in the early 2000s, represented a dynamic cross-section of Edmonton’s queer and allied community. The relaxed and comfortable atmosphere made art, activism, and connections between queer patrons possible. In a time in Edmonton when third spaces, outside of bar culture, had been hard to find, and support for the queer community even harder, Café La Gare provided unique and affordable luxuries to patrons, funding for community artists, and a safe and supportive place that queer people from many different backgrounds could call their own.