The 1942 Same-sex Trials in Edmonton: On the Stateâs Repression of Sexual Minorities, Archives, and Human Rights in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
En 1942, la GRC et la force constabulaire de la ville d'Edmonton ont orga nisé une opération coup de filet qui a mené à l'enquête, à l'accusation, au procès et à l'emprisonnement d'au moins six des dix hommes inculpés de rapports sexuels de même sexe dans la ville.Les arrestations et les procès ont généré une publicité éten due, des déclarations d'opprobre de la part des politiciens et une « panique morale » chez le grand public.Dans plusieurs cas, la correspondance privée des hommes accusés a été saisie, on s'en est servi pour extraire des confessions, puis elle a été présentée en cour comme preuve à l'appui des accusations dans le but d'assurer une condamnation.Décrivant la sexualité de même sexe de « bestialité » et de « perver sion », des membres du système judiciaire ont nuit à la possibilité pour les accusés d'obtenir un procès impartial à Edmonton à cette époque.L'article se termine par une analyse de la valeur des documents légaux pour faire l'étude de l'histoire des rapports de même sexe au Canada, ainsi que sa marginalisation historique.La répression des minorités sexuelles par l'État, telle que documentée dans les dossiers de cas criminels du District judiciaire d'Edmonton aux Provincial Archives of Alberta, révèle la fragi lité des droits humains et des libertés civiles avant l'introduction de la Charte cana dienne des droits et libertés, enchâssée dans la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982.L'auteur soutient que la conservation et la diffusion des documents d'archives de la cour et de * Thanks are due to Ron Frohwerk and Jean Barman for continued sound advice on matters of form and content, and to Cheryl Avery, University Archivist, University of Saskatchewan Archives, and Chair of the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) Program Committee, for proposing the session entitled "Archives and Public Policy: Sexuality, Gender, Personal Life" for the ACA Conference in Calgary in 2009, and to Jean Barman and Betsy Jameson, my co-presenters at that session.I would like to acknowledge the early assistance of Scott Goodine, formerly with the Provincial Archives of Alberta, who first drew my attention to the 1942 criminal case files in the records of the Judicial District of Edmonton.The help ful assistance of archivists Jonathan Davidson at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, and Brenda McCafferty at the Legal Archives Society of Alberta, was also appreciated.I also wish to thank issue co-editors Marcel Barriault and Rebecka Sheffield, and general editor Carolyn Heald of Archivaria for their sound guidance in addressing archival and other issues raised by this case study, as well as two anonymous assessors of the journal for their perceptive and helpful comments.Research in the court records at the Provincial Archives of Alberta was enabled in part by the Michael Lynch Grant in Queer History, and the support of the Grant Committee is sincerely appreciated.Archivaria 68 la police est cruciale pour connaître et être sensibilisé aux abus du passé, contribuant ainsi -de façon assez tangible -à la sauvegarde des droits humains et des libertés civiles au Canada.ABSTRACT In 1942 the RCMP and Edmonton's municipal constabulary organized a dragnet operation involving the investigation, arraignment, trial, and imprisonment of at least six of ten men charged with same-sex activities in the city.The arrests and trials generated widespread publicity, pronouncements of opprobrium by politicians, and a "moral panic" among the general public.In several cases, the private correspon dence of the accused men was seized and used to induce confessions, and then intro duced in court as corroborating evidence to secure their convictions.Characterizing same-sex sexuality as "bestiality" and "perversion," members of the judiciary under mined assertions that the defendants could receive a fair trial in Edmonton in that period.The paper concludes with an assessment of the value of legal records for the study of the history of same sex experience and its historical marginalization in this country.The State's repression of sexual minorities as documented in the criminal case files of the Judicial District of Edmonton at the Provincial Archives of Alberta reveals the fragility of human rights and civil liberties prior to the inauguration of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms within Canada's Constitution Act of 1982.It is argued that preserving and making accessible archival court and police records is a critical step toward maintaining knowledge and awareness of past abuses, thereby making a tangible contribution toward safeguarding human rights and civil liberties in Canada.3 United Nations, Hundred and Seventy-Seventh Plenary Meeting, 217 (III), Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ (accessed 28
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.033 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".