April 1969: Poet Ian Young launched his literary career with his first book of poetry, White Garland: 9 Poems for Richard. The same year, he published his second book, Year of the Quiet Sun. In 1970, he started Catalyst Press, which was the first gay literary publishing house in Canada. In the wake of Stonewall, Young felt the time was right for a small press specializing in books of gay poetry and fiction. Young started Catalyst with no money and virtually no publishing experience. Nevertheless, he was able to publish more than thirty titles by Canadian, British, and American writers before the press suspended publication in 1980.
Describing how literature provided him with an escape from discrimination he stated, “In Canada in the 1960s … homosexuality was at best and illness, at worse a monstrous depravity. … Thousands of Canadian boys and girls grew up thinking to themselves, ‘I’m the only one!’ — I escaped by reading Plato, Walt Whitman, and Oscar Wilde.”*
The following is from Young’s publication Year of the Quiet Sun:
Letter to Vancouver
Remembering our flat
that we had for only two months,
I think of it
empty now, and
silent,
so different
from when you made it warm
and ours for a little while …
the bamboo curtains
and the Chinese tea …
the wall where we never did put my bookshelves
Remembering the things that were broken
or disappeared
when I moved away …
Remembering
the Beatles music
turning
on the record player …
Remembering the street-sounds
and the morning darkness …
Remembering your body,
and then your face …
I think our room
must be
empty and cold
with you not there …
Do you remember
how in those two months
we moved close to each other,
held
each other near,
under the red lamp
by the turning music …
*Quoted in “Gay in the Seventies,” Weekend Magazine, Dec 17, 1977
Describing how literature provided him with an escape from discrimination he stated, “In Canada in the 1960s … homosexuality was at best and illness, at worse a monstrous depravity. … Thousands of Canadian boys and girls grew up thinking to themselves, ‘I’m the only one!’ — I escaped by reading Plato, Walt Whitman, and Oscar Wilde.”*
The following is from Young’s publication Year of the Quiet Sun:
Letter to Vancouver
Remembering our flat
that we had for only two months,
I think of it
empty now, and
silent,
so different
from when you made it warm
and ours for a little while …
the bamboo curtains
and the Chinese tea …
the wall where we never did put my bookshelves
Remembering the things that were broken
or disappeared
when I moved away …
Remembering
the Beatles music
turning
on the record player …
Remembering the street-sounds
and the morning darkness …
Remembering your body,
and then your face …
I think our room
must be
empty and cold
with you not there …
Do you remember
how in those two months
we moved close to each other,
held
each other near,
under the red lamp
by the turning music …
*Quoted in “Gay in the Seventies,” Weekend Magazine, Dec 17, 1977