On October 16 and 17, the Canadian Pride Historical Society hosted their first national virtual conference on 2SLGBTQIA+ history in Northern Turtle Island (Canada). The 2026 Pride History in Canada conference was held in English and French to facilitate collective learning and recollection of Pride movements in Canada’s history. The volunteer-run historical society focuses on digitally preserving historic Pride stories year-round.
The conference featured a keynote presentation on Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer history by Connie Merasty, writer and activist from Opaskwayak Cree Nation and Brett Lougheed, university archivist and digital curator at the University of Winnipeg. The session touched on the development of the Two-Spirit archives at the university.
The conference also featured a presentation on “Two-Spirit Leadership in Pride Marches” hosted by Merasty and Albert McLeod, a director of the 2Spirit Manitoba Inc and “a Status Indian [under the Indian Act] with ancestry from Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation and the Métis community of Norway House,” as stated in his website. The talk explored Pride events through history, highlighting the active role Two-Spirit contingents have in decolonization and reconciliation, and how they lead Pride marches to honour precolonial Two-Spirit histories.
The Peak interviewed Jonathan Niemczak, founder of the Canadian Pride Historical Society, who shared that after the summer of 2025, he noticed a lack of awareness of the society’s work. “We saw the need for some type of national gathering where we could bring together archivists, historians, but also pride organizations, educators, Indigenous Elders, knowledge keepers, and even just students, community members and really just everyone and anyone,” he said. Non-keynote presentations included “Navigating the World While Queer,” “The B is Not Silent: Bi+ History and the Pride Movement in Canada,” and “Black Queer History.”
The work of preserving Pride history is examined “through two lenses,” Niemczak shared. “One, we look at it as a country movement in terms of how Pride has helped to promote rights and equality for 2SLGBTQIA+ folks across Canada. We also look at it on the microlens in a sense of, ‘How did Pride get started in specific communities within Canada? How has it evolved?’” He highlighted one of the presentations about the history of the queer communities in Toronto’s Chinatown.
One of the biggest challenges the Canadian Pride Historical Society faces is that “2SLGBTQIA+ history as a whole is fairly fragmented in terms of its documentation,” said Niemczak. Before 1969, anything that indicated same-gender attraction was illegal throughout Canada in its ongoing colonial state, although Indigenous Nations traditionally did not ostracize non-conforming people. “2SLGBTQIA+ history extends far beyond the ‘90s, but [ . . . ] there wasn’t a lot of widespread effort for a variety of institutions including government to really spend any time or effort doing any form of documentation,” he said.
The organization conducts research and turns it into educational resources such as lesson plans, field trip ideas, videos, and a variety of other educational media.
“We think it’s vital that we do as much as we can to record and preserve as much of our history as we possibly can because no one else is going to do it.” – Jonathan Niemczak, founder of Canadian Pride Historical Society
“We think it’s vital that we do as much as we can to record and preserve as much of our history as we possibly can because no one else is going to do it.” Niemezak expressed that the group aims to make the conference an annual event, with work in progress for the 2027 event.
