Dear historians,
I’m sure you’ll all want to join me in congratulating all those involved
in yesterday evening’s Community Conversation with the Toronto
Portuguese community on “The Summer of ’77: How Emanuel Jaques’ Murder
Changed Toronto” and, in particular, its main organizer, our former PhD
student and now postdoctoral fellow, Gilberto Fernandes.
The event took place at the Gallery of the Portuguese Pioneers/ Galeria
dos Pioneiros Portugueses on St. Clair West, and featured wonderfully
evocative talks by Gilberto himself and two of the Department’s most
freshly minted PhDs, Daniel Ross and Tom Hooper. They were joined by sex
worker/advocate Valerie Scott (Sex Professionals of Canada) in a
fascinating discussion of how the gruesome murder of the 12-year-old
shoeshine boy, Emanuel Jaques, son of Portuguese immigrants, in 1977 led
to a whole series of protests against the “sin strip” of that part of
Yonge Street and had a series of very important ramifications within the
Toronto gay community, among sex workers and within the Toronto
Portuguese community, which were all explored in fascinating depth in
the talks and the discussion that followed.
The talks stimulated a very lively discussion at the gallery, and the
event was featured by the CBC, who interviewed Gilberto, Dan and Valerie
Scott: see
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/emanuel-jaques-yonge-street-sex-work-1.4172511
(today’s editor’s pick on cbc.ca). The event has also been picked up on
all sorts of social media, with more than 6,000 shares so far. You can
listen to the talks on the Gallery of the Portuguese Pioneers Facebook
page: https://www.facebook.com/galleryoftheportuguesepioneers/.
The event was organized by the Portuguese Canadian History Project,
directed by Gilberto Fernandes (on which see further:
https://pchpblog.wordpress.com/ and, for online exhibits,
http://archives.library.yorku.ca/exhibits/show/pchp), with support from
the Department of History, the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, the
Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Studies Programme at York,
ActiveHistory.ca, and from the Associate Dean Global and Community
Engagement, LA&PS, Narda Razack.
On behalf of the Department, I’d like to thank Daniel Ross, Tom Hooper
and, in particular, Gilberto Fernandes most warmly for organizing and
participating in such a memorable and important event.
All best wishes, Jonathan