Halifax • 2021-11-21
November 21 marks the 20th birthday of the Halifax Rainbow Encyclopedia! The Encyclopedia was brought up a few days or weeks prior to November 21, 2001; we celebrate the first time there was a major promotion of it.
"The goal is to have an article for every person, place, thing and event of significance to the Q community in Halifax, ever," says publisher Dan MacKay, "ahh... and there are lots of articles on things of not quite earthshaking significance."
The Encyclopedia now houses 600,000 words of Halifax Q fact and lore from hundreds of contributors over the years, including:
- Scott MacNeil's autobiographical story cycle, Reflections in a Mirror Ball
- Reg Giles' autobiographical story cycle, Peanut Butter and Jam Sandwich
- A list of the pioneers in our community
- A list of homophobic murders in Halifax
- A list of Q "firsts" for Halifax and the province
- Many articles that mention Citadel Hill
- Many oral histories of Q leaders
- The Halifax Q history project's to-do list
- A Halifax Q events calendar
- A history of the encyclopedia itself
- And, about nineteen hundred more... click here for the big index of articles.
The Encyclopedia was first called gayHalifax and ran on the creator's dad's computer on the kitchen table; it's moved several times over the years and is now housed in a server room in Robaix, France and is backed up every day to a server in Publisher Dan's basement in the north end of Halifax. The history of edits and changes to articles is kept forever.
Links in most of the articles will take you off on a journey through queer time and space in Halifax and Nova Scotia. If you’d like to contribute, perhaps by writing a biography or autobiography, perhaps by improving an article, get in touch.
