In the early and mid 1970s The Green Lantern Building – located at 1585 Barrington Street – was the hub of gay Halifax.
The building housed gay bars Club 777/Thee Klub (owned by David Gray) and Condon’s Bar (owned by Condon MacLeod) throughout the 1970s. Thee Klub was casually known as, naturally, David’s. Lesbian activist Anne Fulton called Thee Klub “a disco closet hidden in the dark recesses of the Green Lantern building.”
Thee Klub patron, and long-time gay activist, Mike Sangster called it “liberating” to be with other gay men and women. “There wasn’t the pressure to be straight, to pretend” he said.
“That was a thrill. The first time you get asked to dance, right?” said regular Lorne Izzard, who was later a Thee Klub DJ. “And it’s not a girl from high school. It’s actually a guy asking you to dance.”
Mostly gay men frequented David’s, but there was one table of lesbian women. Thee Klub hosted variety and drag shows, and an annual Halloween Gala.
Read the late Scott MacNeil’s account of gay nightlife in the 1970s and 80s, Reflections in a Mirror Ball on the Halifax Rainbow Encyclopedia, for a detailed first-hand account of Thee Klub.
The Green Lantern Building was also home to several not-so-legal-offices-turned-apartments, where various gay men lived, including David Gray and other founding members of the Gay Alliance for Equality (G.A.E).
The G.A.E. was Nova Scotia’s first Gay and Lesbian advocacy group. The building, and Thee Klub, was also where the Gay Alliance for Equality held many of it’s first meetings and first set up the Gayline phone line.
Photo credit: Jim DeYoung. Anne Fulton in Thee Klub.
This listing was created by Rebecca Rose on July 4, 2023. Rebecca Rose (she/her) is a Cape Breton-born, and Dartmouth-raised queer femme writer and activist. Rebecca’s book Before the Parade: A History of Halifax’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Communities (1972-1984) – published by Nimbus Publishing – is a narrative non-fiction account of 1970s and 80s 2SLGB (Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual) Halifax. In 2021 Before the Parade was one of three books shortlisted for The Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award.”
