Betty Baxter: Gay Games I

Board member, Betty Baxter, is interviewed in the Vancouver Aquatic Centre about her experience of Gay Games I in 1982.

Baxter: “Well, the 1982 Gay Games were an especially important time for me because I had been fired as the coach of Canada’s national volleyball team in…April was my last…or actually March… was my last time. And so in May I came back to Vancouver where I had some community and I was really looking to get back into the gay and lesbian community and, frankly, to get out of the sport community. So when I found out that the Games were happening in San Francisco, and in fact I was in a new relationship and my partner was playing in San Francisco, I went down to watch, and for me it was like coming back to healthy place where my lifestyle, my sexuality, was celebrated, as opposed to being the cause for being thrown out of a sporting environment, it was a place where it was celebrated. And it was really a healing experience to have ten days of people who actually were drawn to me and liked me because I was a lesbian in sport as opposed to trying to get me out of the sport environment because of who I was. So that really had me convinced that what Tom Waddell was talking about with the Gay Games was something that was critically important for women in sport and critically important for me as an individual. So, when I came back to Vancouver, virtually, I stayed out of the sport environment and got more involved in the lesbian community and also much more involved in the feminist community in Vancouver and basically worked on women’s issues for two or three years. And in 1985 Richard Dopson and Barry McDell approached me to help put together a bid to bring the 1990 Games to Vancouver. By that time, I was planning to attend the 1986 Games and I said I’d be happy to help bring the Games to Vancouver, and I’m glad that’s what we managed to do.”