Sackville’s pride week kicked off last week with a flag raising at the Mount Allison chapel. One of the signature events was a book launch originally scheduled for last year’s Pride Week which was preempted by Hurricane Fiona. The book is called Len & Cub: A Queer History by Meredith J. Batt and Dusty Green.
Batt and Green spoke with CHMA about their remarkable book, based on the lives of Leonard “Len” Keith and Joseph “Cub” Coates, two men who grew up in the rural New Brunswick village of Havelock in the early 20th century.
Green and Batt came across the story of Len and Cub thanks to a local history buff who brought a collection of family photos mostly shot by Len Keith to the New Brunswick Archives, where Green eventually found them. The images show life in Havelock and the region in the early 1900s, and also document the relationship between Len and Cub, by all appearances a happy though covert romantic bond that lasted roughly 15 years.
Batt and Green think Len and Cub’s story may be one of the oldest photographic records of a same-sex couple in the Maritimes.
