The flag commonly associated with gay pride is fluttering on the wharf outside Halifax’s Maritime Museum of the Atlantic to mark a new show that delves into age-old stereotypes of sexuality at sea.
The exhibition looks primarily at a gay subculture that flourished aboard British passenger liners of the 1950s and 1960s, many of which docked in Halifax. At a time when homosexuality was illegal, there was a remarkable openness on board.
“Homophobia from shipmates was relatively rare,” said Dan Conlin, the museum’s curator of marine history, to the Globe and Mail.