This rather simple street map of Montreal pinpoints the ‘Gay Spots’ across the city during the early 1970s, when disco reigned supreme. Nearly 30 nightclubs, taverns, saunas, and cruising spots are located throughout the image. Of particular interest is Madame Arthur’s, an influential and longstanding lesbian bar that was the setting for Marie Claire Blais’s novel Nights in the Underground. The building is now home to the Simon De Beauvoir Institute, part of Concordia University and one of the oldest Women’s Studies programs in Canada. The map was prepared by the Gay Line and published in a 1973 issue of The Body Politic, a monthly self-described gay liberation newspaper published in Toronto from 1971 to 1987. The featured article is “The Gay Movement in Germany – Part One: 1860-1910.” Source.
