Angles: A legacy of community and collaboration

Angles magazine was more than just a printed publication; it was a collective effort that brought together the voices from B.C.’s 2SLGBTQI+ community. The original magazine arose when the VGCC newsletter committee decided to take the publication away from the gay and lesbian community centre and turn it into an independent tabloid. A mostly friendly negotiation resulted in a new publisher, the West Coast Angles Publishing Society and the later Lavender Publishing Society, putting out Angles as a monthly paper from 1983 to 1998.

The Angles volunteers insisted that the paper should be a consensus-based collective. If it was to offer a voice and a mirror to B.C.’s queer communities, it couldn’t have an outside executive deciding who should be in it and how they were heard. That mainly left gay men working together with lesbians, people of colour, diverse genders and more than a few political conservatives.

Several hundred volunteers including Eastside artists, international students, professional writers, medical professionals, waiters, skaters, business people, retirees and many others chose to work past their differences to help the community see itself in its diversity.

Oddly, it worked because everyone felt that the objective was the community. Things were more together before digital algorithms allowed people to choose their own media and narrow their vision.

At first, putting out a paper was a slog — typing copy on an IBM Selectric typewriter, pasting columns of type, graphics and ads onto printed layout sheets, and driving the layouts to the printers before the sun rose in the morning.

The first computer was a loaner, a cute little first-generation Apple Macintosh. When the owner took it back, volunteers learned Windows word processing and graphics programs. They printed out pages on a 40-pound laser printer and still pasted up stories and ads for the press. The age of the internet was just opening up when the paper closed.

This issue and October’s pilot issue reprint some articles from the past. Some issues remain memorable: the lesbian sex issue, thrown out of gay bars and libraries for being too sexy, and the follow-up issue with a centrespread filled with letters to the editor, both supportive and against; the Celebration ’90 issue with a thick supplement of arts and fiction marking the Gay Games’ first appearance in Vancouver; many feature issues exploring communities of colour, women’s history, the sports communities, sex workers, pornography, health and the joy of being together.

Why try to re-create that? Does a printed paper (with an online presence at the QMUNITY website) offer anything of value to a world of digital media? We think it can — a tactile, analog link to our past that can be held, shared and revisited; a bridge to stories and people that have contributed to the foundations of our current community; a showcase for contemporary writers and artists that does not disappear into the digital ether. Please read and share the magazine. If you want to comment on what you read, or offer your own news, opinion piece or creative submission, contact us at angles@qmunity.ca

Richard Banner (he/him) worked on Angles from its earliest days to the “last“ issue in May 1998.