Who we are
The outcome that we seek is this —
Our passionate communities DARING TOGETHER to set love free
Our Mission
Daring together to set love free — more than simply an empowering and inspiring phrase, this is our Mission at Pink Triangle Press.
We have no owners or shareholders. Founded in 1971 to advance the struggle for sexual liberation, we are guided not by profits, but by our mission statement.
This mission is the impetus for our various business endeavors and it is the heart of our award-winning journalism — our defining activity.
Our aim is to inspire LGBTQ2S+ communities to pursue a future where everyone is free to celebrate who they are. We want our communities to feel seen and heard, to think and act and grow and fill the world.
Pink Triangle Press is Canada’s leading gay and lesbian media organization. Founded in 1971 to advance the struggle for sexual liberation, our defining activity is lesbian and gay journalism.
We are active in business, but everything we do is intended to support or fulfill our mission.
Our History
2021 marks the 50th anniversary of Pink Triangle Press. It began as a bold idea – that queer people needed to speak for ourselves and represent ourselves in our own publication. To this day, the Press continues to inspire bold ideas.
From humble beginnings, we have grown and expanded our influence, just as our communities and our movements have grown and achieved so much.
As we look forward to the necessary steps that still need to be made, we also look back with pride at all that has been accomplished and how our history continues to define our work.
Our Name
The name Pink Triangle Press was taken from the pink triangle that gay inmates of Nazi concentration camps were forced to wear.
That use of the pink triangle was revealed in “Homosexuals and the Third Reich,” an article published in The Body Politic, about the long-forgotten and tragically ended gay liberation movement that sprang up early in the 20th century in Germany.
We chose this name to reflect our interest in our history and our commitment to vigilance.
Our Logo
Our logo is a pink triangle inscribed in an aleph, the first letter of the ancient Phoenician alphabet.
The Phoenician alphabet was the first writing system that recorded a language by employing just a handful of letters rather than thousands of characters or pictographs.
It was this economical alphabetic principle that thousands of years later facilitated the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. Using a small store of movable type to print letters of the alphabet, he was able to produce large numbers of identical pages cheaply and quickly.
Almost overnight, expensively produced handwritten manuscripts were superseded by cheap printed books. And soon Gutenberg’s invention was producing a novel avalanche of political print: Posters, pamphlets and newspapers.
The Jac Collection
In 1980, John Grube, Alex Liros and Clarence Barnes banded together in the experimental JAC Collective. They hoped to capture in paintings and drawings the life of Toronto’s gay community.