Kevin Allen preserves Calgary's hidden queer history through walking tours and research

One Sunday evening in the early 2010s, Kevin Allen asked his parents a simple question: where did gay Calgarians hang out in the 1950s and 60s? His mother said there were no gay people in Calgary at the time. His father remembered differently—gay men drank at the Palliser Hotel in the 1960s, a fact he recalled only because he avoided the hotel out of fear of being misidentified.

That family conversation set Allen, a born-and-raised Calgarian who had worked in arts administration, on a path to become a historian of his own city's queer past. "That got me interested in history and led me down the rabbit hole of becoming a historian," Allen said. He quit his job.

Six months later, Allen applied for a small grant to become historian-in-residence at the Old Y building on 12th Avenue, a space itself steeped in Calgary's LGBTQ+ history. The building housed queer support services, including Calgary Outlink until the building's closure in 2025. The Calgary Gay History Project began there in 2012 as a website and blog dedicated to collecting stories about the city's queer community. It has since grown into a research hub where Allen and a team of researchers and community members sift through decades-old newspapers and magazines.

Nearly 12 years later, Allen has become one of Calgary's most prominent keepers of queer history. He leads historical walking tours throughout downtown, collaborated with the University of Calgary to create a queer map of the city as part of the Calgary Atlas project, and presents his research to raise awareness of LGBTQ+ issues. In 2018, he published "Our Past Matters: Stories of Gay Calgary", a collection of short stories detailing the lived experiences of gay Calgarians. That same year, he produced a short documentary about Everett Klippert, a Calgary bus driver who was the last Canadian jailed for being gay before the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969. The film, "Gross Indecency: The Everett Klippert Story", won the Best of Alberta award at the 2018 Calgary International Film Festival.

Allen's roots in the city run deep. A fourth-generation Calgarian and graduate of Crescent Heights High School and the University of Calgary, he spent much of his professional life immersed in the arts scene—working with the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers and Arts Commons, and serving as a founding member of the Calgary Queer Arts Society, which began with the annual Fairy Tales Queer Art & Film Festival.

Preserving stories of figures like Klippert and Lois Szabo—a community pioneer who co-founded Club Carousel, Calgary's first gay bar, in 1970—is about more than historical documentation. It is about visibility. "There was a vacuum to be filled or a niche to be filled," Allen said. "I basically said yes to most opportunities that have come my way, and it's been really gratifying."