Remembering "A Great Fag": Visualizing Public Memory and the Construction of Queer Space

This essay examines how public memory is visualized in the statue to Canada's "gay pioneer," Alexander Wood. By analyzing three viewing positions of the statue-the official democratic memory, traditionalist countermemory, and camp countermemory-I argue each position enacts a distinct form of remembering Wood with implications for both materializing queer memories and how space and identity are understood in the city. Based upon these visualizations, I extend arguments for how rhetoricians critique memory texts and contribute to defining "queer public memory" in light of this statue.