Amy Gottlieb
Amy Gottlieb is a Canadian queer activist, artist and educator. She was one of the organizers of the first Pride Toronto in 1981. She was also an organizer of the Dykes on the Street March, organized by Lesbians Against the Right, which occurred in October of the same year.
Biography
Amy Gottlieb was born in New York City in 1953. She arrived in Canada in 1972 to finish university, attaining a B.A. in Sociology from Trent University. Since the early 1970s, she was involved in socialist and feminist activism. Gottlieb's political involvement started with the peace movement and the civil rights movement. She met her first lesbian lover in 1973 and soon began to dedicate herself to queer causes as well. Subsequently, Gottlieb was active in numerous queer, Jewish, and artistic causes, including the Lesbian Organization of Toronto, the Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and MIX: the Magazine of Artist-Run Culture.In June 1981, she spoke at The Toronto Marxist Institute with Gary Kinsman and Tim McCaskell at the public forum titled "Strange Bedfellows: Lesbians, Gays, and the left".
In 1998, Gottlieb's portrait was painted for The ArQuives.
In 2017, Gottlieb published an essay discussing her experiences as an organizer of Toronto's first lesbian march titled "Toronto’s Unrecognized First Dyke March" in Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer.
In 2020, the Rise Up Feminist Archive published an interview with Gottlieb and well known feminists Sue Colley and Meg Luxton about becoming feminist activists.
In 2022, the Globe and Mail published a first person account of Gottlieb's battle with cancer.
In 2023, Spacing magazine interviewed Gottlieb about the early years of Pride organizing in Toronto and protesting the bath house raids.