In a Queer Country is a collection of extended and updated versions of papers given at the “Queer Nation? Conference”, on lesbian and gay approaches to Canadian studies, at York University in Toronto in March 1996.

As any reader might guess, there are many steps and missteps in the journey from the conference to the book.

One part of that process has been the title. I thought the reference to the Queer Nation movement, quibbled by the question mark, was at once cute and informative.

As well as the “nation,” it might be seen to question “queer,” which I was using primarily as shorthand for “gays and lesbians” but which of course is often used to include what has been called the alphabet soup of sexual diversity: bisexuals, transsexuals, intersexuals, etcetera.

Many, however, including many of the contributors, thought that it implied an acceptance of “queers” in Canada, which denies the homophobia most have experienced.

In a Queer Country: Gay and Lesbian Studies in the Canadian Context is a bit of a compromise, as is no doubt suitable.

It offers possible suggestions of the compromising position that many political theorists have long asserted is the Canadian way of life. The title implies the contradictions of Canadian geography, in which our claims to the north are met by our tendency to live close to the southern border, in which our rural heritage is met by our tendency to live in cities, and in which our hardiness is met by our tendency to stay indoors.

Yet perhaps In a Queer Country also implies something else. In old western movies, the cowboys always feel tremors of fear when they move into “Indian country.”

Native people in Canada now use that phrase to identify a state of mind, an epistemological territory that they control no matter how the nation-state decides land title.

We who claim a different sexual identity might live in our own world, that indefinable space, which could be called “queer country.”

The conference itself was the result of a specific opportunity. In 1995–1996 I was privileged to hold the Robarts Chair of Canadian Studies. As part of this office, I held a series of seminars on gay and lesbian involvement in journalism, theatre and the law, and also gave a public lecture.

These are part of the normal mandate of the Robarts Chair, but as the first person to hold the position that had an overtly “gay” project, I wanted to do something new, to assemble a national meeting of those who wished to find the queer side of Canadian studies.

The idea of the conference was to examine gay and lesbian issues in Canada. There had been other gay and lesbian conferences in Canada, but they had not to date had this focus. They either were less about academic analysis than about community activism or, as in the case of “La Ville en Rose” at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 1992 and “Queer Sites” at the University of Toronto in 1993, divided their attentions between Canadian and international matters.

I had earlier been one of the organizers of a conference on “Theoretical Discourse in the Canadian Intellectual Community” and this could be said to be a “Queer Theory” version.

I have been involved in Canadian studies for some thirty years, and its response to theoretical developments and its attention to minorities might seem a stereotypical reflection of our position on the fringes of empire: innovation in most fields began elsewhere.

There are exceptions. For example, Nicole Brossard’s inventive combination of feminism, linguistics, and postmodernism, led the world but most of the world did not realize that this creativity is not French but Québécoise. Most English Canadians who have heard of Brossard assume she is of only parochial importance. After all, she may be from Quebec but she is still just Canadian.

Most of the signature names of our disciplinesâe”Gramsci, Foucault, Habermas, and so on &#0151 are not Canadians, and we would be very surprised if they were.

Even the Canadian academics who have become markers of paradigm shifts in international thought have seldom made those shifts through the study of Canadian culture.

Northrop Frye defined Canada’s “garrison mentality” during off-hours from thinking about more important matters outside the ramparts, such as William Blake and the Bible. Marshall McLuhan saw the global village from his home in Toronto, but Canada seldom figured prominently in his work. His ironic and iconic appearance in Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall has no interest in his place of residence.

The situation is somewhat similar for Canadians interest in minorities.

Canada was the location of many noteworthy events in the history of women’s rights but women’s studies as a field in Canada has developed after similar programs south of the border. African American studies were well established in the United States before Canadians recognized similar needs in Canada.

As noted in various of the essays in this book, there have been many moments where Canadian society has been in advance of the American in changes in homophobic legislation, and yet queer studies developed elsewhere and queer theory remains very much an American incursion — albeit in response to French thinkers such as Foucault and Lacan.

Not that the conference or this collection concentrated on the, at times, abstruse poststructuralist methods of queer theory.

My intention was that the conference should incorporate developments in lesbian, gay, and queer studies but that they could follow a variety of paths.

When the submissions came in, my primary concern was that those selected should be innovative, whether in theoretical method or in its application, and that they should have an interest in Canada beyond the usual veneer.

Thus, the essays, in this volume use many different methods to approach a wide range of specifically Canadian problems.

It is always tempting to acclaim such collections as “first.”

There have been other anthologies on Canada’s sexualities but arguably none pays such attention to scholarly issues in so many fields and contexts.

This is a quite disparate collection, which moves in a variety of directions.

Some pieces are overtly theoretical, some more empirical, some descriptive and some polemical. Some combine all of these approaches. They show the possible range in academic studies of gay and lesbian cultures in Canada.

The dimensions of those cultures are complex and varied. This collection reflects that diversity.

Reprinted with permission from In a Queer Country: Gay and Lesbian Studies in the Canadian Context, edited by Terry Goldie (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2001). This version has been slightly revised for rabble.ca. In a Queer Country is nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in the non-fiction anthology category. These U.S.-based awards celebrate the best gay and lesbian books of the year. Winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on May 2, 2002.