Queering the Cable Airwaves: The Evolution of LGBTQ2+ Community Television in Ontario, Canada (1977-2001)

Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews, and close reading, this dissertation develops a history of LGBTQ2+ cable access television programming in the province of Ontario, Canada from 1977 to 2001. In particular, this dissertation traces cable access’s entanglements with local LGBTQ2+ groups and movements, as well as with other forms of media dedicated to amplifying LGBTQ2+ causes in the province. I argue that LGBTQ2+ community television programming was guided by what I conceptualize as queer access mobilization, a process through which queer individuals and groups mobilize to increase access to media and information, as well as access to social, cultural, and/or political networks. In other words, I show that local queer groups and individuals took to the platform with hopes of reaching out to wider constituencies, building solidarity with other groups and individuals at a time when the LGBTQ2+ movement was gaining ground in the province and in Canada as a whole, and communicating information that was not readily available via the mainstream media. I further posit that queer access mobilizations are deeply rooted in an ethics of care and a praxis of connection, as I attend to the relational and affective dimensions of cable access programming. This dissertation, therefore, tells both the story of the LGBTQ2+ movement in Ontario through the lens of cable access television, and the story of the medium of cable access television through the eyes of the LGBTQ2+ movement. It proposes an innovative way of doing media history and queer history, while foregrounding the voices of individuals who were often not included in official histories of LGBTQ2+ activism in the province. It also tells the story of LGBTQ2+ cable access archives, how they came to be, how they can be recovered, and how they can be mobilized in the digital age.