Collection MS-15-3 - Lynn Murphy fonds

The Gay and Lesbian Association of Nova Scotia (GALA) was the outgrowth or renaming of the Gay Alliance for Equality (GAE), which was a Halifax-based organization founded in the summer of 1972. GAE was incorporated in 1973 and changed its name to the Gay and Lesbian Association (GALA) in 1988. The organization created a help line (the Gayline), which offered information, referral and peer counselling; a Speaker's Bureau to educate the public about gay issues; and a civil rights committee to organize educational and political activity. In January 1976 GAE established a social club and bar on Barrington Street called the Turret. The only gay bar in Halifax for many years, the Turret became the social, political and cultural centre for Halifax's gay and lesbian communities and hosted a national conference of gay organizations in 1978. In the summer of 1982 the Turret was closed and re-opened as Rumours Bar on Granville Street (moving to Gottingen Street in 1987). The bulk of the organization's revenues came from the bar; at its peak, it had revenues of half a million dollars a year. In addition to operating Rumours and the Gayline, GAE/GALA also organized activities for Pride Week, protested anti-gay political, legal and media discrimination, networked with other gay groups across Canada, and acquired funding for projects such as a community health promotion. It also published its own newsletter (the Gaezette) and supported the successful campaign of Lesbian and Gay Rights Nova Scotia (LGRNS) to include sexual orientation in the Human Rights Act in 1991. GALA disbanded in 1995 due to financial difficulties.

Lynn Murphy is a Halifax-based librarian and LGBTQ+ activist. Murphy was born in Summerside, PEI, and raised on a potato farm in Clermont, PEI. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Saint Dunstan's University and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Prince Edward Island before moving to Halifax in 1968, where she received a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. She has worked in she worked in university, special, and public libraries, and as a freelance bibliographer. Murphy was a longstanding member of the Gay Alliance for Equality/Gay and Lesbian Association of Nova Scotia [GAE/GALA], serving on the Executive, the Management Board, and the Civil Rights Committee over her time with the organization. Since 2010, she has been a member of the Board for the Nova Scotia Rainbow Action Project [NSRAP], helping to found the Elderberries social group for LGBT seniors. She has also participated in the planning of Halifax Pride events, and has been a member of the WildeBunch, the Atlantic History and Archives Network, the Making Waves Collective, the Sisters' Lightship Collective. She was awarded the 2012 Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal for her activism, and in 2015 was the first recipient of NSRAP's Leighann Wichman Award for Lifetime Achievement.