SASKATOON — Belinda Betker and Cheryl Loadman know the feeling of growing up different during a time when the world was not yet that accepting of gays and lesbians. Now, they want to share their stories of struggles and victories as part of history in the prairies.
Betker and Loadman are part of the Spark Your Pride committee, which organized last week’s Sharing Our Stories: Queering our Proud Prairie Past event at the Western Development Museum as part of the Pride Month celebration in the city.
“This is all volunteer work. We’re doing this because we want our stories to be known. We want our history going forward. We wanted to be visible. We want people to know that we’re here and have been here a long time,” Betker said.
“When I was young, I didn’t know anybody was gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. I didn’t know any of the terminologies that we use existed. There was no visibility, there were no parades and there were no social media.”
She adds that it was illegal to be gay back then and everything was underground as it was hard to find people to connect with from their community, unlike today. She then moved to Victoria in British Columbia where it was more open.
“I moved to Victoria. There was a gay bar there and I went in. It was like, ‘oh my goodness. That’s amazing.’ But a lot of it is history now. So, older [LGBTQ+ and Tw Spirit] people have that long history of discrimination and hate crimes or homophobia at all levels.”
Loadman grew up in rural Saskatchewan in a family that expects the traditional way of getting married and having children like a normal family. She said that she felt isolated growing up and knows the feeling of others like her.
“Those of us who grew up in the past talk about isolation where we were the only gay person for hundreds of miles, or so we thought. We grew up in fear that people would find out we were gay and harass, hurt or ostracize not only us but our family,” said Loadman.
“We grew up knowing we were different and not having a way to be part of our community in those traditional ways — were not going to get married, have children and be the ‘normal’ family.”
And their stories and other now senior LGBTQ+ members are what they wanted to be known and be recorded as part of their community’s history in the province.
“You know, back then, people were afraid. We fought long and hard to be out, be in the open and be accepted. So, part of this is getting the stories of our seniors out there,” said Betker.
Loadman said that despite barriers having disappeared for LGBTQ+2S members, there is still a long road for those in their community in rural Saskatchewan where a lot of towns across the province either do not have or just now having their first pride march events.
“That it is a tentative step. Schools are taking steps to change this, but it is still hard,” said Loadman, who added that change is slowly coming like what happened last Friday to her hometown in Unity.
“I want to shout out to Unity, my hometown, which had its first Pride march [last Friday] led by an inspiring group of teachers and students including my niece and sister-in-law. Change is coming, slowly, relentlessly, often led by small groups like those folks.”
Betker conducted a writing workshop during the Spark Your Pride event, which also featured Dr. Melre Massie, Ph.D., presenting her book A Radiant Life: The Honourable Sylvia Fedoruk where she briefly spoke about the hidden story about one of the province’s popular public figures.
