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.”
The Green Lantern Building was formerly called the Keith Building, and from 1915 to 1917 was the site of the Atlantic Advocate news magazine—one of Nova Scotia’s first Black news magazines. From this location, Dr. C.C. Ligoure, Wilfred and Miriam DeCosta, and others published the magazine, which contained contributions from Black literati, activists, and intellectuals from many communities in the province and the wider Black Canadian Community.
The Atlantic Advocate was instrumental in the call for Black men to enlist in the Number 2 Construction Battalion. In 1917, the newspaper moved to North Street, where Ligoure had taken up residence and established the Amanda Hospital. A decision that would prove invaluable later in the year.
About the Image:
The Atlantic Advocate
The Atlantic Advocate was Nova Scotia’s first African Canadian newsmagazine. Its publishers, Wilfred A. DeCosta, Miriam A. DeCosta and Dr. Clement Courtenay Ligoure, incorporated as The Atlantic Advocate Association Ltd. on 8 June 1916. Only four issues have survived — the first, for April 1915 (held by Nova Scotia Archives) and three others, namely January, April and May 1917 (held by Vaughan Memorial Library, Acadia University, Wolfville, NS). The magazine covered a range of topics — historical, religious, economic, political, military, literary, social and local. Community notes appeared from across Nova Scotia, including Amherst, Digby, Halifax, Hammonds Plains, Liverpool, Shelburne, Westville, Weymouth and Wolfville, as well as from New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. (Nova Scotia Archives)
Reference: Esther Clark Wright Archives, Acadia University
